It was not a pretty sight along Howard Gap Road in June last year.

“We will have to basically move the bad material, refill it in and fix it up from there,” North Carolina Department of Transportation Bridge Maintenance Engineer Mark Hill said in June after seeing the Howard Gap Road bridge damaged by flooding.

The bridge is still undriveable. It’s been that way for more than six months, and it’s going to stay that way for the rest of 2024. However, the NCDOT is optimistic it will be back in use in 2025.

“NCDOT determined that the repairs were far beyond what we could do,” Communications Officer David Uchiyama said. “So, the engineers decided this was the best time to do a full bridge replacement.”

With TGS Engineers doing the designing and RE Burns Contractor doing the building, the bridge will be completely rebuilt by April 2025.

Though that’s almost a year and a half away, the DOT said the two entities partnering up will save time.

“The same company is designing it and building it,” Uchiyama said. “What that allows for is a faster process from start to finish.

This bridge will be designed with scour prevention. As in, there will be additional defenses for when the river rises. In this case, it was the debris that knocked out the edge of the bridge.

However, the project means 15 more months of detours, including for emergency services.

“There’s still that concern,” Polk County Emergency Management Director and Fire Marshal Bobby Arledge said. “There may be some delay to get certain emergency services to some areas that normally take 5 minutes, might take a little longer now. It’s going to take another route to get to [those places].”

Arledge said he trusts the DOT to do the best job with the full bridge replacement, work the county emergency management director said is well overdue.

“That bridge has been seen a lot over the years,” Arledge said. “So, I’m happy to see a new, modern bridge going in.”

 

STORY & PHOTO COURTESY OF ABC 13 WLOSPlan in place for Howard Gap Road bridge in Polk County after flood damage | WLOS