As state and city engineers wrestle with thoughts of what could have been done to prevent the Minnesota bridge collapse, Cullman County engineer Fred Penn said the state of bridges in Cullman County is good.

With 161 bridges, only eight to 10 are listed for minor repairs, according to engineering assistant Keith Creel.

Penn, who has inspected bridges for more than 20 years, knows where each bridge is, what type of bridge it is and its condition by memory.

He said that five or six years ago several bridges were replaced when a statewide amendment passed allowing bridges to be replaced if school buses could not cross a bridge.

“We still have a lot of bridges that school buses can’t cross,” said Penn. “It’s because that’s the way they were built.”

As more people have populated the county and the outlying areas, the bridges can’t handle the heavy vehicles and traffic the bridges are now experiencing.

“Through the years transportation has grown,” Penn said. “People built houses in areas where there were few before.”

Buses were re-routed, but the County Roads Department tried to replace bridges where buses had the longest detour.

“If we had some funding, we would like to do some construction work,” said Penn.

Creel provided a list of the 10 most traveled bridges in the county. The bridges are rated on a scale of one to nine with the highest number reflecting the best condition.

Three of the most traveled bridges are on County Road 222.

Big Bridge in Brushy Pond is 15 miles past the Smith Lake Park entrance.

“It’s a main artery to that part of the county,” said Penn. “The piers were built before they backed water up in Smith Lake.”

Smith Lake Dam was built in the late 1950s, according to Penn; and the water was backed up in the early 1960s.

“They had to back up water to put the deck on,” said Penn. He said it was 300 feet from the top of the deck to the bottom of the creek.

Bridges are rated by the state in four categories: the deck including the riding surface, deck structure, railing, drains and joints; the superstructure meaning the girders, beams, deck slabs, trusses, collision damage, deflection under load, alignment of members and vibration under load; the substructure or piles, erosion, piers and collision damage, and the final rating is for the channel or stream bed.

Big Bridge rated a 6 for the deck, superstructure and substructure and a 7 for the channel.

Boaters tying cables onto bridge piers to dock boats is the biggest problem, according to Penn.

“Everything looks pretty good,” he said.

The second bridge on County Road 222 is past downtown Trimble over Rock Creek which feeds into Smith Lake. The deck was rated 6; the superstructure, 7; the substructure, 6 and the channel, 6.

The third bridge on County Road 222 is a culvert before the intersection at County Road 813. Penn said a guard rail had been put up in the last five or six years.

“You really don’t see it (the bridge). It is in the ground. There is a little creek that runs in there,” said Penn.

Culverts are rated differently. There is a culvert score that rates the barrel, walls, debris etc. and a channel score.

The County Road 222 culvert received a culvert score of 5 and a channel score of 6.

Two bridges on County Road 747 also made the most traveled list. One is located one mile north of Ala. Highway 69 on 747. It crosses Brindley Creek and was replaced in 1999. Its ratings are 8 across the board.

The other bridge located on County Road 747 is one mile south of Welti past the residence with the stone wall. It is rated 7 for culvert and 6 for channel.

“A lot of time, you don’t even see them (the bridges). The main concern is you will have multiple barrels. Every barrel has a wall. Logs, debris and trash get clogged up on the end of each. The bridges are pretty well maintained except for that,” said Penn.

Two bridges are on County Road 703. The first one was built in the 1960s.

“It’s in pretty good shape,” Penn said.

The second one is between Cullman and Welti.

“It was constructed about the same time and is the same type of bridge, like twins” said Penn.

Penn said the bridge was located about two miles from the four-way stop sign at County Roads 747 and 703.

Both bridges received 6s except for a deck rating of 5 for the second bridge.

A bridge on County Road 813 was rated 6 except for the channel which was a 7.

“It is in Trimble where you turn and go out to Smith Lake Park over Ryan’s Creek,” said Penn.

It is a steel girder bridge.

The bridge on County Road 1398 was built in 1999 or 2000 when the road to the airport was put in, said Penn. It mainly crosses the railroad track, but it also crosses a small creek. It was rated 8s with the channel a 7.

The last most traveled bridge Penn described was on County Road 1669.

“It’s an older bridge,” he said.

It is located on the road between Holly Pond on U.S. Highway 278 and Fairview on Ala. Highway 69 and crosses Duck River.

“There is nothing particular or peculiar about it,” said Penn.

The bridge received all 6s.

Bridges are inspected every two years.

“Posted bridges have to be done every year,” said Creel. “Some are posted with a load limit. You can’t take a big heavy trailer truck over it, not because it has deteriorated or is in bad shape but because of the time it was built and the standard it was built to. It might have 8-inch beams as opposed to 24-inch beams.”

Bridges needing minor repairs include bridges on County Roads 5, 562, 821, 828, 986, 1036, 1647, 1755,1823 and one off of U.S. Highway 31 next to Mullins Body Shop.