CLEARFIELD – The Clearfield County Commissioners discussed county bridges and safety issues involving them on Tuesday.
According to Mike Lytle, county commissioner, the county started receiving calls about the safety of county bridges in the wake of the Minnesota bridge disaster. Lytle and that the county is in control of nine bridges throughout the county. Seven of them are operational and two, one in Knox Township and one in Lawrence Township are closed.
Lytle said that the county contracts Lee Simpson Associates Inc. in DuBois to inspect all of the bridges in the county. Lytle said that this includes bridges under the watch of municipalities as a courtesy.
Six of the seven operational county bridges are inspected yearly. The seventh, the historical covered bridge, is inspected every-other year.
“The fact that we do have a covered bridge makes us unique,” said Lytle. “There just aren’t that many of them out there.”
The last county bridge to have deficiencies that needed to be remedied was the River Street Bridge in Curwensville. Mark McCracken, county commissioner, said that those repairs were done in about a day.