US 69 over the Missouri River was closed for a short time Thursday morning while crews worked to demolish a portion of the old Platte Purchase Bridge.
"We are starting the first stages of taking down the Platte Purchase Bridge," said Lisa Stupps, Project Manager for the Missouri River Bridge with MoDOT. "We built the new bridge so we have traffic on it and so now we're taking down the Platte Purchase in stages. There will be four different demolitions of that and this was the first one today."
Stupps said Thursday's detonation went as planned with no kinks.
"We're always a little worried because the Platte Purchase Bridge is only about 10 feet from the new bridge," said Stupps.
The next demolition is planned for the middle of December.
"The reason why they demolish it with the blast is they have to get the truss down to cut it all up carefully," she said. "Normally with concrete bridges they can use the big chippers and break the concrete up, but in this case when you have the truss it is better to get that all down in one piece. Then they'll cut it up."
All of the pieces of the bridge will then be recycled.
"We do put it all back into use," said Stupps. "We'll take it and reuse it somewhere so it's all recycled. Same thing with the deck. They've taken that all out and recycled it so that's good."
They hope to have the entire bridge demolished by the end of April.
This is all part of a project to build a new bridge on US-69 over the Missouri River. What use to be the southbound lanes of the old bridge were built in 1933, and often referred to as the Fairfax Bridge. The northbound lanes of the old bridge were built in 1957 and known as the Platte Purchase Bridge.
RELATED | VIDEO: Crews demolish second section of Fairfax Bridge
MoDOT said the bridges were not build to accommodate the high traffic volume and there is heavy truck traffic on the bridges today.
The $79 million pricetag will be split by the Kansas Department of Transportation and the Missouri Department of Transportation.
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Jade DeGood can be reached at Jade.DeGood@KSHB.com.
