A fix for the Deh Cho Bridge isn’t coming until this summer, when the NWT government will begin work to repair a cable broken in August.
The bridge, which cost $200 million to build, spans the Mackenzie River just outside Fort Providence, providing a year-round highway link between Yellowknife and the south.
Traffic has been down to one lane on the bridge since one of 24 giant cables came away.
Now, the GNWT says the fault has been traced to a “metal adjustment bar” connecting the cable to its anchor on the bridge.
According to the Department of Infrastructure, the metal bar “appears to have a metallurgical defect that caused it to fail.” The department said there was no sign of any vandalism or collision that could have contributed to the incident.
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The good news? The department said an inspection of the remaining 23 cables and their adjustment bars showed “no defects or concerns.”
The bad news? All 24 metal bars were “manufactured from the same fabrication batch as the one that was connected to the damaged cable,” the department wrote, so “the GNWT will be replacing all 24 adjustment bars out of an abundance of caution.”
The department declined to provide a cost estimate for the repairs, saying that hadn’t been finalized, but said work is expected to take place this summer.
That work will also repair sections of damaged guardrail and a broken overhead light.
The one-lane restriction and traffic lights will remain until repairs are finished, the department said.
The Deh Cho Bridge was completed just over a decade ago. It’s a cable-supported truss bridge that replaced a ferry service previously used to carry vehicles and supplies across the Mackenzie River.
