After Bridge Falls, Speedway Fans Endure Own Race

Joyce Burnham grabbed her cooler, looked both ways and ran for her life, an unwilling participant in the latest event at Lowe’s Motor Speedway: the Race Across U.S. 29.

“You’ve got to do what you can to get into the track,” her husband, Buck Burnham, said. “If you run, you can make it.”

Since one of the track’s pedestrian walkways collapsed Saturday, getting to and from the speedway has become a challenge in itself. Throughout the day fans sprinted across the highway from the parking lots to reach the track, where qualifying for the Coca-Cola 600 was underway.

“I’ll take my chances with the traffic before I cross any bridge,” Buck Burnham said, adding, “We’ve fought with heavier traffic than this at other racetracks.”

Race fans previously used two 320-foot cement footbridges to cross the four-lane highway. An 80-foot section of one bridge collapsed Saturday as fans left NASCAR’s all-star race, and the second bridge was closed for further inspection. Three of the 107 people injured in the collapse remained in critical condition Wednesday.

Engineers suspect corrosion weakened the steel cables running through the concrete slabs of the bridge that collapsed. Rust was spotted on the second bridge as well. Track President H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler said Wednesday that speedway investigators should have an answer to what caused the collapse by today.

Construction crews on Wednesday were building two 50-foot-wide pedestrian crosswalks to be used by the 190,000 fans expected at Sunday’s race.