MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Photos taken by a Mississippi River kayaker about five years before a crack was found in the Interstate 40 bridge linking Tennessee and Arkansas appear to show the fracture that led transportation officials to close the span indefinitely last week.
Arkansas transportation officials said they cannot confirm or refute what’s shown in the 2016 photos, which raise questions about how early the crack appeared.
The I-40 bridge connecting Memphis and the Arkansas city of West Memphis was shut down May 11 after inspectors found a crack in one of two 900-foot (275-meter) horizontal steel beams that are critical for the bridge’s structural integrity. River barge traffic under the span was closed that day but reopened three days later. Road traffic has been rerouted to the nearby Interstate 55 bridge.
Repairs to the heavily used, six-lane I-40 bridge are expected to begin this week, but a long-term fix could take months, officials said. The states are relying on the four-lane, 71-year-old I-55 bridge to get cars and trucks across the Mississippi River and maintain the flow of commercial vehicles. Engineers are inspecting the I-55 bridge to make sure it can withstand the heavier traffic.
Barry W. Moore, 64, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he took the photos while kayaking on the Mississippi River in August 2016 with a group of friends from the Boy Scouts, where he volunteers. Moore said he stored the images in his computer after the trip and went back to look for them after he heard about the discovery of the crack.
Moore said he zoomed in on the photos, found the crack and showed them to his brother.
“Our jaws dropped,” Moore said.
An Associated Press photo editor inspected metadata from one of Moore’s photos and determined it was shot on Aug. 6, 2016, verifying its authenticity.
Moore said he sent the photos to the state transportation departments in Tennessee and Arkansas. He heard back from the Arkansas Department of Transportation this week, he said.
Arkansas Department of Transportation spokesman Dave Parker said the agency went back through its photos of the bridge dating back to the early 2000s and couldn’t find any confirming or refuting the 2016 pictures. The department, which inspects the bridge at least annually, did not have access to drone videos for its inspections before 2019.
“I can’t really comment as to the accuracy of these photos,” Parker said.
The kayaker’s pictures, which were first reported by WMC-TV in Memphis, bring into question just how long the crack had been visible in the bridge’s structure.
