By KEITH WALKER
For Potomac Local News
FALMOUTH, Va. – A hole opened up in eastbound lane of the Chatham Bridge on Saturday, but Virginia Department of Transportation Officials say everything is fine now.
According to VDOT engineer Marcie Parker, police called VDOT’s transportation and operation center and reported the 2-foot by 3-foot hole through the deck of the bridge on Va. 3 that crosses the Rappahannock River between Stafford and Fredericksburg.
“Once we arrived on scene, we closed the lane off and investigated and put a plate over the top of it. We kept the lane closed because we were concerned that our plate wasn’t going to be large enough,” Parker said.
According to Parker, the Fredericksburg Public Works Department helped by bringing in extra steel plates.
“On Sunday we went down and put all the additional plates in and then put some asphalt cold-patch around them to kind of lock them into place and we were able to open the lane again,” Parker said.
Parker said that VDOT recognizes that the Chatham and Falmouth bridges — both of which link Stafford to Fredericksburg via Routes 3 and 1, respectively, are “aging structures and will need replacement sooner than later.”
During a scheduled VDOT quarterly update on Tuesday, Parker briefed the Stafford County Board of Supervisors about the weekend bridge repair and told them that the hole that opened on the bridge Saturday in spite of recent maintenance.
“We did extensive work in the fall. We took all of the asphalt off the bridge and did a bunch of patching of the areas that needed patching at that time and we put brand new asphalt on the bridge,” Parker said. “The area that failed this weekend was not one of the areas we patched because it was good at the time. Now it is not.”
Parker said VDOT engineers will inspect the bridge again shortly.
“That does have us concerned a little bit,” Parker said of the hole in the bridge deck. “That’s why we’re going to go through and do another inspection of the bridge to see if there are any other areas de-laminated. I would think they would be done in the next couple of weeks.”
Parker said the bridge repairs, which included pouring concrete and replacing asphalt, were scheduled to be completed Wednesday afternoon.
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