State says partly collapsed South Anchorage pedestrian bridge will be rebuilt

What’s left of a South Anchorage pedestrian bridge that partly collapsed amid a brutal windstorm early Sunday is structurally sound, and the crossing will eventually be rebuilt, the Alaska Department of Transportation said Monday.

The decking and fencing atop the pedestrian bridge across the Seward Highway near Rabbit Creek Elementary School and DeArmoun Road sheared off around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday during the windstorm that buffeted Anchorage over the weekend, causing widespread damage and power outages. Wreckage of the top part of the bridge tumbled into lanes of the Seward Highway, forcing the highway to close briefly. No one was injured, police and state officials have said. Dramatic photos of the incident circulated on social media.

“Bridge lost its hat,” one person commented on the Department of Transportation’s official Facebook account. “It did kind of, didn’t it?” the official DOT account responded.

But the sudden failure of the bridge components raised serious questions about the safety of the infrastructure — a daily highway crossing for dozens of schoolchildren, among other users.

It’s not yet clear why the bridge separated in the high winds, and if the wind alone caused the damage or if the structure was weakened, according to Shannon McCarthy, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Transportation. Age may be a factor, she said. The structure was built in 1972, more than 50 years ago.

“We build our bridges pretty tough in Alaska, but in 1972 probably had different standards,” she said.

[Thousands in Southcentral Alaska remain without power after Sunday’s wind and rain storm]

On Monday, the wreckage of twisted metal, fencing and wood had been moved out of the lanes of the highway onto the median and the shoulders of the road. Bridge inspectors took photos and peered at the wreckage as cold rain fell on ice.

“We’re making sure what’s left up there isn’t a hazard to anybody,” said Nicholas Murray, a bridge engineer with the Alaska Department of Transportation.

The bridge’s remaining steel span is intact and structurally sound, he said.

The bridge will be rebuilt, but it’s too early to offer a timeline or detailed information about what it might cost or how it would be paid for, said McCarthy. It will need to be rebuilt to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“This is a challenge with all of our pedestrian bridges that were built at such a time that they are no longer considered ADA compliant,” she said. “We’ll have to look into it.”

Officials have cordoned off the staircases leading to the now unenclosed steel span of the bridge, which leads from Rabbit Creek Elementary on the east side across the busy six-lane highway to the parking lot of Bell’s Nursery on the west side.

About 40 Rabbit Creek students use the bridge to get to school, said Anchorage School District spokesman Corey Young on Monday.

“Those families on the west side of the Seward Highway will have a newly established bus route indefinitely while the pedestrian bridge is inoperable,” he wrote in an email. The walking trail behind the school that runs along the Seward Highway is still accessible, and walkers who use it to access their neighborhood should still be able to walk home, he said.

The Rabbit Creek pedestrian bridge was erected in 1972 and underwent a 2020 rehabilitation project that involved replacing deteriorating stairs and an anti-rust paint job, she said. The bridge had last been inspected in the summer of 2023, with no deficiencies noted, she said.

The department was not aware of any flaws or structural problems with the bridge before the catastrophic loss of the decking and fencing, other than a few calls from the public about an expansion joint — a component designed to expand and contract with temperature cycles, McCarthy said. The department sent out maintenance staff to look at the expansion joint, and saw no problems, she said.

The Department of Transportation bridge inspection team now in Anchorage will inspect all the city’s pedestrian bridges while they are in town, McCarthy said.

The nearest weather station, at Huffman Road and the Seward Highway, did not record particularly high winds around the time that the bridge components collapsed, according to National Weather Service data. But meteorologists say a very localized wind gust could have happened at the Seward Highway and DeArmoun Road without being picked up.

The Huffman wind monitor station recorded a 75 mph gust around 11 a.m. on Sunday, hours after the bridge partially collapsed.

On Monday, Anna Andrews stopped to take a photo of the wreckage of the bridge decking and cage.

Andrews and her family live in the neighborhood east of Rabbit Creek Elementary School, and the pedestrian bridge had been a constant in her life for years — a family tradition involved hauling a Christmas tree purchased at nearby Bell’s Nursery across it by sled. Some of her neighbors reported hearing a thundering noise from the highway area around the time the bridge decking tore loose, but Andrews hadn’t heard a thing, she said.

She stood looking over the rain-slicked highway at the wreckage of twisted lumber and metal.

“It’s so surreal to see all of this mangled stuff,” she said.