Safety Issue Closes Bridge to All Traffic

The Main Street Bridge is closed to all vehicular traffic since Ventura city engineers discovered this week that it may be at risk of collapse.

City maintenance services Manager John Betonte said the rain-swollen Ventura River must subside for crews to assess damage, but he estimated Thursday that repairs could take several months and cost up to $300,000.

It may take weeks for the river to calm enough for city crews to see what is happening. Fortunately, no rain is predicted for this weekend.

“Right now, it looks like we’re going to be clearing out,” said Robert Baruffaldi, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

“We’ll be seeing a few high clouds here for the next few days, but other than that, it’s going to be sunny.”

The bridge, a key link to the Ventura Freeway from downtown Ventura, has been closed to all but local traffic, contractors and city crews since Jan. 11 due to heavy storm damage. Now, high, turbulent water from this week’s storms has exacerbated the situation--although no one knows to what extent.

Wednesday’s decision to close the bridge to cars and trucks inconveniences about a dozen people who live at Taylor Ranch.

It also affects ranch workers and the contractors removing mud and debris from the Ventura Beach RV Resort.

To gain access to the area, they must detour to the Ventura Freeway off-ramps north of the ranch and loop back.

Betonte said joints in the bridge separated one to two inches as a result of the storm that began Jan. 10, indicating that the rain-swollen river had moved the piers supporting the span, which was built in 1934.

He said new joints opened during this week’s storm. In some places, the cracks are wide enough to see the river rushing below.

Betonte said that if one of the piers moves even a little more, it could shake one of the two concrete slabs that span the river off its eight-inch-wide shelf and cause one or both of the slabs to crash into the river.

“At this point we’re concerned that there’s erosion under the bridge piers, and the bridge piers are moving a bit,” Betonte said. “We’re monitoring it daily to see if there’s additional movement.”

This week’s storm also caused Casitas Reservoir to spill over Wednesday--an unusual occurrence that could continue for weeks.

“The creeks that feed into it are in recession, but it’s a slow recession because the mountains are so wet,” said Dolores Taylor, division engineer for the county flood control district, on Thursday.

Taylor said the spillover is notable because of the lake’s huge capacity--its surface area is 2,500 acres, so even a one-inch overflow is a huge volume of water.