Does kayaker’s 2016 photo show fracture that closed Memphis bridge? What officials say

Bailey Aldridge
·3 min read

A photo taken in 2016 appears to show the fracture that shuttered a vital Memphis bridge connecting Tennessee and Arkansas — but transportation officials have not confirmed its accuracy.

Barry Moore said he took photos of the Interstate 40 Hernando de Soto Bridge in August 2016 while kayaking on the Mississippi River with his son. One of the photos he posted Monday on Facebook appears to show a crack starting to form, seemingly in the same part of the bridge as the fracture discovered last week.

“I decided to go back and look at my photos just in case I captured that ‘critical find,’” Moore wrote on Facebook. “I think I did.”

Local outlets WMC and the Memphis Commercial Appeal used metadata to confirm the photos were taken in 2016.

Moore told WMC he sent the photo to the Arkansas Department of Transportation and the Tennessee Department of Transportation and received a “thank you” reply from Arkansas officials.

McClatchy News reached out to the Arkansas and Tennessee transportation departments about the photo. A spokesperson for the Tennessee DOT said officials have seen the photos but directed questions to Arkansas transportation officials as they “house the final inspections.”

McClatchy News reached out to the Arkansas DOT for comment Thursday and was awaiting a response.

But ARDOT spokesperson Dave Parker told the Commercial Appeal that the department couldn’t comment on the accuracy of the photos and that it had reviewed photos back to the early 2000s and found “nothing that would confirm this particular photo.”

A department spokesperson declined to comment to WMC about the photo.

The bridge was closed to waterway and interstate traffic May 11 after the fracture in the steel beam was discovered during a routine inspection. It has since reopened to river traffic but could remain closed to vehicular traffic for several months while crews make repairs, transportation officials have said.

The Hernando DeSoto Bridge over the Mississippi River is indefinitely closed after a “significant fracture” was discovered in a steel beam during a routine inspection.
The Hernando DeSoto Bridge over the Mississippi River is indefinitely closed after a “significant fracture” was discovered in a steel beam during a routine inspection.

Officials said at first that a 2020 inspection of the bridge did not reveal “any structural deficiencies.”

But on Monday, Arkansas DOT Director Lorie Tudor said drone footage showed the crack was visible in 2019 and that the worker who inspected the bridge in 2019 and 2020 “failed to carry out his responsibilities correctly.”

“This is unacceptable and this employee has been terminated as of this morning,” Tudor said Monday.

Tudor said a “failure in the inspection process” allowed the fracture to go unnoticed.

“He didn’t see it,” she said of the worker. “But the reason he didn’t see it is because he wasn’t following proper protocol. The way we’re supposed to inspect a bridge is you literally go inch by inch along that beam and physically inspect every inch of the beam. That did not happen.”

Rex Vines, Arkansas DOT deputy director and chief engineer, said Monday the employee had worked for the department for about 15 years but that he didn’t know how many bridges or structures he had inspected.

Vines said the department does not have drone footage from 2018, and Parker told the Commercial Appeal that the department didn’t use drones before 2019.

Vines said the DOT will be changing how it does inspections in the future.