NIPIGON, Ont. -- Bolts that snapped on the Nipigon River Bridge in January have been tested but the Minister of Northern Development and Mines isn’t releasing the results, saying he won’t be satisfied until he knows the whole story.
The bolts holding the girder to the bearing on an expansion joint broke on the bridge’s north side on Jan. 10, only 42 days after its construction was complete.
Suspecting the bolts were the cause of the bridge’s failure, Michael Gravelle almost immediately announced they would undergo testing at the National Research Council in Ottawa and the Surface Science Western research facility at the University of Western Ontario.
The tests, which took six months to complete, are now finished but the findings of those institutions will not be made public.
“There’s more to this and we do need the full answer,” said Gravelle, who is also the MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North where the bridge is being built.
“I feel the same frustration others would feel which is, ‘if you have part of the answer, why not provide it?’ That’s because we need to know the full reason why this happened and there is going to be a full explanation as to why this happened.”
Gravelle said “significant” engineering analyses are underway to determine whether load or other factors may have played a role in the bridge’s failure.
Meanwhile, construction has begun that will build the mirror half of the $106-million bridge. When completed, it will allow for four lanes of traffic on Highway 17 to pass over the Nipigon River. The completed half of the bridge that opened within 17 hours of the January incident has not experienced another failure since.
Gravelle is confident the bridge can stay open and construction can proceed as further investigations take place.
“There’s no question that it’s 100 per cent safe,” he said.
“I said it at the time and I’ll certainly repeat it again that the Ministry of Transportation is going to err on the side of caution in terms of any danger that could be repeated. I have confidence that indeed is the case.”
