On this day in 2020: West Seattle Bridge suddenly closes after stress cracks discovered

On this day in 2020, the West Seattle Bridge was closed “indefinitely” for city SDOT engineers to repair cracks weakening the enormous support columns holding the bridge up.

As Gary Horcher wrote in 2020, “Estimates of the length of the closure vary, but the complexity of the issue suggests repairs could take months.”

The closure would last over two years.

“There’s concerns that the West Seattle high rise bridge cannot safely support vehicular traffic at this time,” said then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan in 2020.

Durkan explained engineers had been watching and repairing stress cracks in the high-rise West Seattle Bridge for years. Still, an inspection in March 2020 showed the cracks becoming severe enough to deteriorate the strength of the support columns.

According to SDOT Director Sam Zimbabwe, the cracks were so severe that the bridge was not safe for typical pre-pandemic crisis traffic, which was about 100,000 vehicles per day.

“The extent and the type of cracking that we’ve seen have concerned our structural engineering experts to the point what we’re removing live load traffic from the bridge in the best interest of public safety at this point,” Zimbabwe said in 2020.

Cracks could clearly be seen in the sides of the upper high rise-rise bridge deck, but SDOT engineers said much of the danger was deteriorating the interior of the support columns, where water and air were said to be seeping in and weakening the structure.

The bridge reopened to traffic on Sept. 18, 2022, after an estimated $94 million in repairs.