The San Francisco Bay Bridge reopened just after 9 a.m. today, after work crews finally finished a repair that had kept the span closed for nearly a week, according to the Chron. CalTrans says the bridge repair held up under extensive stress tests performed over night. The previous repair of the span failed last Tuesday night when strong winds sent 5,000 pounds of steel cascading onto traffic. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
It took crews nearly a week to come up with an altered version of the repair so that it would hold up. However, CalTrans cannot be completely sure if it will work, because it’s not possible for the agency to simulate all wind conditions on the bridge. “There’s no realistic way for us to put a wind tunnel on the bridge,” CalTrans spokesman Bart Ney told the Chron. “So there’s no effective way for us to test for wind out there.”
