The Waitsfield Select Board will discuss a report on the safety of the Waitsfield Covered Bridge at its meeting on March 30 after the town received a report from Miles Jennesse of Vermont Heavy Timber on the status of the joists.
In a March 23 report Jennesse’s review indicates that there are structural issues with the bridge.
“Because of the level of rot in the joists, we do warn the town that there is a level of danger and liability for continuing to allow the bridge to stay open. VTHT is not an engineering firm, and we base our professional observations and judgements on decades of direct observation of thousands of timber structures in various states of decay. While the bridge is obviously holding the traffic that passes over it at this time, VTHT makes absolutely no representation as to the bridge being safe enough to remain open for vehicular traffic,” he wrote.
“Vermont Heavy Timber (VTHT) was asked to assess the bridge after it was noticed that some deck boards were loose and had sprung up. This turned out to be from the joists being rotten enough that the lags that hold the decking down have lost their ability to grip in the substrate. Using a technique called resistance drilling, we probed all of the joists of the bridge and found that out of forty- seven total, only eleven are still solid. The other thirty-six have significant rot,” he pointed out.
Select board vice chair Larissa Ursprung said that the town was aware that the bridge would need repairs this spring/summer and said this report would inform its work.
