The department’s report said the agency’s failure to adequately respond to employees concerned with the fired inspector’s job performance “perpetuated a culture where team members did not feel they had the authority or support to question a lead inspector’s procedures or thoroughness.” Another inspector who had missed the crack in 2018 had never inspected that portion of the bridge before, and the department said he has been “verbally counselled” and will receive additional training. The fired inspector had missed the crack in 2016, 2017, 20. The reports and the retirements were first reported Thursday by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The department said it was placing its heavy bridge maintenance section under new management and is reorganizing the inspection program. The report said the fracture spread in phases, starting with the weld, until it was discovered in May.Ī department spokesman said two officials with the inspection program - state heavy bridge maintenance engineer Michael Hill and staff engineer Stewart Linz - retired Wednesday.
The initial fracture occurred on the interior face of the box where it was not visible by conventional inspection. The problems with the weld were not detected when ultrasonic testing was performed on the bridge’s girder welds in 1982 because of defects found with similar bridges. “We will now move forward with confidence and make the changes necessary to improve our program so that the past will not be repeated,” Arkansas DOT Director Lorie Tudor said in a statement. Department of Transportation’s inspector general is also conducting an investigation and has interviewed Arkansas bridge inspection employees. The department released the forensic investigation, its review of the crack and a review conducted by the Federal Highway Administration as it announced changes to its bridge inspection program.
Road traffic had been diverted to the nearby Interstate 55 bridge - about 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) south of the I-40 bridge - during the I-40 bridge’s repairs. The I-40 bridge spanning the Mississippi River was shut down May 11 after inspectors found the crack in one of two 900-foot (275-meter) horizontal steel beams critical to the bridge’s structural integrity. The report said the weld fracture initially was not visible by conventional inspection and was not caught by an ultrasonic inspection in 1982.
The crack had been visible in 2016, and an inspector who had missed it was fired by the department in May.
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