Around 7:30 Tuesday morning, a truck carrying an excavator slammed right into the Wilson Road overpass. The support beams for the bridge were contacted by the boom and so the concrete and re-bar at the bottom of those beams has been compromised.
Northbound traffic was completely stopped at the Granada exit, until police put the current detour in place, to State Route 3, which runs between Yreka and Montague and at that point than back to the freeway.
Cal-Trans engineers from Redding have been brought in, because the right side of the overpass is now in danger of collapsing. Cal-Trans does have a work crew on scene that has worked through the late hours of Tuesday and the early hours of Wednesday.
They are going to be making a by-pass for the northbound traffic to cross over to the southbound lanes. Eventually this will allow traffic to move under this side of the bridge which is not in danger of collapsing.
This morning we were back out on the scene, and there was a lot of progress on the by-pass. Workers told us they plan to open the by-pass by 9 am Wednesday morning.
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