Engineers move 1,100 foot, 6.8 million pound bridge… all in one piece [Video]

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Let’s say you have a long, heavy bridge that is old and deteriorating in condition. This bridge is critical to the area. What do you do to fix the issue? This is the exact situation the engineers at Oregon’s Multnomah County faced. What did they decide? To move the bridge (Sellwood Bridge) and use a temporary detour bridge while a new bridge was being built.

So, this past Saturday engineers took roughly twelve hours to move the ‘truss span’ of the bridge a grand total of 68 feet north to make room for the temporary detour bridge. The bridge itself is 1,971 ft long but the truss span is 1,100 feet long and 6.8 million pounds. The miraculous part of the move is the truss span was moved all in one piece — it wasn’t broken apart first. Check it out:

[via Sellwood Bridge, OregonLive]

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