300 Utah spans may be 'deficient'

As many as 300 Utah bridges could be considered "structurally deficient," the same ranking given to a Minneapolis bridge that collapsed Wednesday during rush hour, injuring 79, officially killing four.

In the wake of the Minnesota collapse, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. on Thursday asked the Utah Department of Transportation to review about 200 bridges in Utah that pose dangers or that are heavily used. Other governors around the nation also were asking their state transportation departments to review their bridge inspections.

The Utah review will focus on the structural integrity of the bridges, and an independent contractor will verify the results.

"The well-being of all Utahns is my top priority," Huntsman said in a statement.

Rescue workers on Thursday searched the waters of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis for dozens of people still missing in the wreckage of the collapsed highway bridge.

Four people were confirmed dead, officials said. That figure is likely to rise as bodies of the missing, an estimated 20 to about 30 people, are recovered from vehicles that fell into the river on Wednesday evening from the I-35W bridge. The span, which was being resurfaced at the time, was filled with backed up rush-hour traffic when it gave way just after 6 p.m. (CDT). Another 79 people were injured, officials said.

While the cause of the Minneapolis accident is unknown, Utah engineers say residents shouldn't worry. A structurally deficient bridge doesn't mean it's on the brink of catastrophic failure, and the Minneapolis bridge had a design that's more vulnerable than most Utah bridges.

"It's like having the roof leak, but the house isn't falling down," said David Eixenberger, bridge operations engineer for the Utah Department of Transportation. "It does not mean that it's unsafe or not fit for use."

In total, UDOT monitors about 2,700 bridges statewide. Of those bridges, about 1,800 are state-owned bridges and about 900 are owned by local entities. Eixenberger said roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of the local bridges could be considered structurally deficient, while about 2 percent to 3 percent of the state bridges were ranked deficient.

About 13 percent of the nation's nearly 600,000 bridges are structurally deficient, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

UDOT did not have a readily available list of what it would consider the state's worst-ranked bridges. It did provide a document that listed the status of all 1,700 bridges that the agency inspects.