Utica Covered Bridge Damage
Although it's been a nice eight year stretch since the last time the Utica Covered Bridge needed work, it was bound to happen sooner or later that some 'unattentive driver' in an oversized truck would ignore the height limitations and damage our beloved bridge.On Thursday morning, June 15th, 2006, a box truck traveling through the Utica Covered Bridge struck the bridge in several places causing significant cosmetic and structural damage.
While the bridge is 'officially' closed to all vehicular traffic, it is passable by cyclists.
For more information, check the Utica Covered Bridge Status Page for the full story and updates as this is likely to be the beginning of a long saga.
To Frederick County's credit, they got the detour signs up quickly
There shouldn't be any doubt that cars won't get through . . .
At least cyclists can still get through !
There won't be much traffic on this bridge for a while
Looking at the west entrance, you can see over 2/3 of the fascia boards are gone,
along with the left side support beam. It's likely the truck knocked out the fascia
along the top as it exited the bridge, and work crews simply removed whatever
boards were loose when they cleaned up the debris.
You can see where the top of the truck scraped underneath the cross beam
in the foreground of this picture and completely fractured the next cross
beam behind it.
Here you get a closer look at the fractured beam and a smaller support behind
it. These aren't flimsy 2x4's - it took a lot of stupidity to break these suckers.