Fuel Tanker Fire Destroyed Original Bridge

TX Dot, Jan 27, 2005

The Texas Department of Transportation plans to open the bridge over the Pecos River south of McCamey on Monday, Jan. 24, according to a TxDOT official in Midland.

Reece Albert, Inc., a construction firm headquartered in San Angelo, is expected to finish work this week rebuilding the approaches and adding guard rail to the newly-built bridge on Farm to Market Road 305 about 12 miles south of McCamey. The original bridge was badly damaged when a fuel transport truck crashed and caught fire on Sept. 29. The accident closed a 19-mile section of FM 305 between McCamey and Iraan and detoured traffic.

Both southbound and northbound traffic has been detoured to FM 1901 or SH 349 since the accident.

Doug Eichorst, the TxDOT engineer in charge of the repair project, said that TxDOT plans to re-open the bridge this weekend, less than four months after the accident that closed it.

Eichorst said that the contractor is working on bridges approaches today and a sub-contractor scheduled to place the guard rail is expected to do that work this weekend.

He explained that the guard rail is the final item needed to allow traffic to use the bridge –all other work to be done is off the roadway. In addition to placing the guard rail, the contractor also has to seed and provide for erosion control on the embankments of the bridge approaches. The total project cost just over $1.42 million.

TxDOT engineers, including a field inspector from the agency’s Austin-based Bridge Division, inspected the bridge following the truck and tanker accident on Sept. 29 and determined that no part of the structure was salvageable.