Brian: Thanks to this year's record level of rainfall, many of the
state's roads washed away due to erosion and heavy flooding.
And with the condition of aging bridges, many Oklahoma officials are up
in arms on what to do next.
Our Rob McClendon reports.
Rob: You can't get there from here is becoming all
too true in parts of rural Oklahoma.
Heavy rains have damaged roads and washed out bridges, leaving motorists
looking for alternate routes.
The man, on top of the hill up here, works at Caddo Electric, so he has
to go around, to get to Binger.
The people in the Caddo Kiowa Technology Center, this is used a lot for
transportation across.
So, there's hundreds of people that use this road daily.
Rob: Such problems are nothing new to many rural residents.
When a 70-foot section of this bridge collapsed outside the small town of
Marfa, Oklahoma, it signaled life was going to be different for area
farmers like Matt Muller.
Matt Muller: I farm.
My farm headquarters is one mile north of here.
I have 320 acres on the east side of this bridge that I farm, and all the
rest of my land most part.
But I also have 400 acres I farm a mile west and a
half-a-mile south of this bridge.
So, to go check cattle, if I have cattle over there, or to run over with my
equipment was only about a five-minute drive with my equipment.
Now, with this bridge being out, I have to go
15 miles to get over to that farm.
Rob: The collapse of this bridge built more than 60 years ago came as no
surprise to Oklahoma department of transportation director,
Gary Ridley.
He says 2,000 of Oklahoma's bridges are more than a half-century
old, and those are the new ones.
Gary Ridley: We have about 135, 140 bridges that were built before 1920 on the
state system; that means they're over 80 years old.
We have one bridge that was built in 1896, that's 31 years after the civil
war ended, and it's still on the system.
A little known fact that I think explains the situation as far as the
bridges are concerned is that we have 660 bridges on the state system that
are used every day that were built before
Henry Ford quit making the Model A.
That means they were designed and built for the loads that Model A carried
and the traffic volumes of that Model A era.
Rob: And while many of the deficient bridges are in rural Oklahoma, it's far
from just a rural problem.
Ridley: Oh, that's correct.
I think that we could show you pictures of the underneath side of bridges
that are in serious condition on our interstate system and some
of those in our most urban areas.
Rob: Repairing roads and bridges is a costly endeavor, anywhere from a
few hundred thousand dollars to repair a bridge to several million to
completely replace; money Oklahoma's legislature has earmarked to increase
through 2010, before the next one crumbles.