Online Reporter
Freeman Razemba
Senior Reporter
THE Government says it is aware of a photograph currently circulating on social media showing a crack at a steel bridge connection, which some members of the public have described as being part of Birchenough Bridge over the Save River.
According to the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development, the structure shown in the image is not Birchenough Bridge.
In a statement the Ministry said: “The ministry wishes to clarify that the structure shown in the circulating image is not Birchenough Bridge. The public is urged to rely on official Ministry communication for accurate information.
“The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development is aware of a photograph currently circulating on social media showing a crack at a steel bridge connection, which some members of the public have described as being Birchenough Bridge over the Save River.
“The Ministry wishes to reassure the travelling public that the structure shown in the image is not Birchenough Bridge.”
The ministry said this position is founded on the clear structural differences between the bridge in the photograph and Birchenough Bridge.
“Birchenough Bridge is a steel arch suspension bridge, and it carries its loads through a very specific arrangement. The road surface is carried on longitudinal steel members known as stringers.
“These stringers are in turn supported by transverse cross beams (cross girders) that run across the width of the deck. The cross beams are suspended at each end by vertical hangers, and the hangers are themselves supported from the steel arches that span the river.
“In this way the full weight of the deck, and of the traffic upon it, is transferred upward through the stringers, then the cross beams, then the hangers, and finally into the arches, which carry the load down to the abutments on either bank with no piers or supports standing in the river beneath. The structure in the photograph works on an entirely different principle: it is a riveted steel truss (lattice) bridge, in which loads are carried through a framework of steel members joined by riveted gusset plates, and not through an arch-and-hanger system at all.”
The ministry further said the arrangement of the steel members shown in the photograph is different from that of Birchenough Bridge.
