WSDOT still seeking cause of Hood Canal Bridge jam

Although traffic is moving again over the Hood Canal floating bridge, state workers are still trying to locate a mechanical problem that caused the drawspan to be stuck open Monday for eight hours.

Divers were scheduled to enter the water around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and begin searching for obstructions or damage, said Cara Mitchell, a regional spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Transportation, which didn’t expect further information until at least Wednesday. She explained that they needed to wait for the tides to get near their low point so there would be less turbulence from shifting currents.

Until the issue is solved, WSDOT will provide marine openings of only 300 feet, or half the usual breadth, as a precaution, she said. Monday’s malfunction affected the west half, or the Jefferson County side, of the drawspan that contains two retracting halves.

An average of 18,200 drivers per day cross this stretch of Highway 104, the world’s third-longest floating bridge, which provides crucial links from the Olympic Peninsula to Kitsap Peninsula and the urban Puget Sound region beyond.

Traffic is back to normal on the bridge. Drivers must still slow or stop for flaggers at the waterway’s northwest shore in Shine, Jefferson County, where WSDOT contractors are building a roundabout for safety that is expected to be done late this week.

Monday’s glitch happened around 1 p.m., after the drawspan opened for a military vessel, then couldn’t close again, Mitchell said. She likened the problem to a rolling closet door that needed a nudge to overcome resistance.

“The electricity was working, but the span didn’t move like it should,” she said. After review by engineers, WSDOT brought a tugboat to hook up lines and tow the span piece through its sticking point. From there, the electrical system was able to restore the full deck to highway position. Operators then carried out a test opening and closure of the retractable span, Mitchell said.

Traffic returned around 9:30 p.m.

Although the state has long underfunded road and bridge preservation — a habit directly related to this spring’s permanent loss of a corroded steel bridge near Mount Rainier — officials haven’t found evidence that delayed repairs are to blame for Monday’s hangup at Hood Canal.

“We do maintenance work every single day because it sits in saltwater,” Mitchell said. It must withstand severe storms, and tidal changes as huge as 18½ feet, while anchored in a fjord as deep as 340 feet.

When a ship approaches, WSDOT operators lift a portion of both the west and east roadway decks of the main bridge. From there, the west and east drawspan pieces are each retracted so they tuck beneath adjacent roadway decks, and provide the 600-foot shipping lane. An up-close video of how the bridge opens can be found here.

The investigation was just beginning, Mitchell emphasized. “It could have been a log jam underneath the bridge, for all we know,” she said.

Previously scheduled traffic shutdowns for maintenance will occur Thursday for one hour each, at 9 and 11 a.m.

WSDOT does have a $2.9 million project underway to renovate the bridge’s center lock, which secures the halves together, and it will be bolstered to withstand tide and storm forces.

The bridge opens on average about once per day for vessels in springtime.

The original Hood Canal Bridge was completed in 1961. The west half sank Feb. 13, 1979, and was rebuilt by 1983. WSDOT later replaced the full bridge in phases, while largely maintaining traffic, from 2003 to 2009 — a $511 million structure, of which 6,521 feet float on pontoons.

Any prolonged blockage would partly isolate Olympic Peninsula communities such as Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles, causing motorists to detour three hours via Shelton or Olympia, or across Puget Sound on a small state ferry to Whidbey Island.

Four of the world’s five longest floating bridges are in Washington state, led by the Highway 520 bridge at 7,710 feet long.