AASHTO Journal, 28 August 2015
At the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi Department of Transportation is recalling how the storm left more than $1 billion in damages to the state’s transportation infrastructure, including destruction of two major bridges crossing bays along the Gulf Coast.
The agency has also highlighted the rebuilding efforts it launched to bring the region’s road system back.
MDOT posted a recent video of the work it took to rebuild large sections of east-west U.S. 90 that runs along the Mississippi coast, and how it tied that work into a coordinated traffic management system linking six towns and 54 signalized intersections in two counties with traffic-responsive signal controls.
And in an Aug. 25 press release, MDOT underscored the work to replace the area bridges over Biloxi Bay on the east and Bay St. Louis on the west along the state’s U.S. 90 corridor.
Katrina left those bridges “damaged beyond repair,” the agency said. “The loss of the bridges disconnected coastal communities, adding to the long road of reconstruction the residents already faced.”
Wayne Brown, former Mississippi southern transportation commissioner, said: “Seeing these huge concrete and steel structures lying in the water, end over end, was to me as an engineer one of the most graphic displays of the hurricane’s strength.”
Normally it takes a least one year to design a bridge the size of those structures and another three or four to build, MDOT said, but the state made those bridges a top priority.
Using a method that allowed the designing, engineering, permitting and construction to be done simultaneously, the new Bay St. Louis Bridge was dedicated in May 2007 and Biloxi Bay Bridge opened in November 2007.
“Restoring mobility along the Gulf Coast was possible because of the efforts and hard work of many,” said MDOT Executive Director Melinda McGrath. “MDOT workers were on the scene the day of the hurricane, the day after the hurricane and for days, weeks, months and years” afterward.
The bridge work also permitted special artistic decoration. Using salvaged bearing plates from the old bridges, local artists created drawings that were made into bronze relief plaques depicting life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. That artwork is installed every tenth of a mile on the pedestrian lane of each bridge to link the area’s past and present.
The department planned to honor those artists Aug. 29 at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi.
Here is the agency’s 11-minute video of the US 90 rebuilding projects:
