Damage-Assessment Crews Check O.C. Overpasses, Find Them Sound

Rick Shaker and Jeff Troxell were getting ready to remove debris from the road, repair potholes or lay asphalt when the earthquake hit.

They didn’t feel the temblor, but it meant a big change in their job duties for the day.

As always after a quake, they and other crews from the California Department of Transportation climbed into their bright-orange trucks and set off to assess the damage.

With a push broom twirling in the back, their truck rolled to a stop by the side of the Corona del Mar Freeway near the Costa Mesa Freeway interchange.

“Well, it’s not the Oakland Bay Bridge,” said Troxell, 39, an equipment operator, referring to the bridge that partially collapsed during the 1989 Bay Area earthquake.

“The overpasses like this are the ones they worry about the most because they are so high off the ground with only the central support,” said Shaker, pointing to the sweeping, gray connecting ramp. “What we have to look for is just any cracks, any structural damage.”

The two men in heavy boots and worn blue jeans made their way along various overpasses, peering at the structures and searching for pieces of cement that might have been shaken onto the ground below.

“We look for large separations, broken or cracked pieces of cement,” Shaker said. “It’s our job to make sure the traveling public is safe, to make sure there’s no damage. If we find something, we report it to a bridge crew. Then they come out and evaluate the situation and make a decision.”

Shaker has performed damage-assessment duty after previous quakes. When a quake hit along the Newport-Inglewood Fault a couple of years ago, he and a California Highway Patrol officer were standing near an overpass when “bang--it felt like a truck crashed,” Shaker said. Off he went to look for cracks. Some minor structural damage was discovered.

After the 1987 Whittier quake, he and other Caltrans workers spent the entire night shoring up an overpass at the intersection of the Santa Ana and San Gabriel River freeways.

“That bridge almost came down,” Shaker said. “That was a bad one. It had broken a lot of cement loose. They had to close the bridge down for about 18 hours.”

But on Friday, the men found nothing out of the ordinary.

“If (the quake had been) centered in this area, it might have been different,” Shaker said. “It could have done all kinds of damage. If you walk out onto the center of this (Corona del Mar) bridge, you can feel it swaying from just the traffic going by. But it is built to withstand motion just like high-rise buildings.”