It will end up taking the Florida Department of Transportation nearly three years to replace the Hurricane Irma damaged streetlights and railings on the 17th Street Bridge.
FDOT plans to undertake a $1.1 million hurricane repair project on the span, which is also known as the Alma Lee Loy Bridge, in spring 2020 and finish the work that fall.
The time lag between the September 2017 storm and the repair project doesn’t sit well with community minded residents like Ann Marie McCrystal and Kent and Ann Seeley.
They believe FDOT should have replaced downed streetlights much sooner. They also want to see soot stains from vehicle fumes cleaned from the bridge walls.
“Of course, I think it should’ve happened a year ago,” said McCrystal said about the repair project. “I’ve been working on this for a year. We were lucky last hurricane season, we didn’t have a bad hurricane like we did two years ago that caused the lights to fall. That’s my No. 1 concern.”
Bridge light poles that survived Hurricane Irma could have sustained structural damage that would make them more likely to topple during another tropical storm, said McCrystal, a registered nurse who is well known in the community as a Hospital District trustee and head of the Visiting Nurses Association.
“They have never been secured in any way,” McCrystal said. “There has never been anything to address reinforcing them.”
If high winds knock over additional light poles and block traffic before the bridge is closed in preparation for a tropical storm, it could block traffic and prove disastrous, McCrystal said.
FDOT plans to replace the existing lighting with an LED system and repair sections of the concrete median barrier, said FDOT project manager May Cheng said in an April 9 public information flier.
FDOT spokesman Guillermo Canedo said the project took a relatively long time because the state must follow Federal Highway Administration process in order to qualify for storm damage reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We know the condition of the bridge is a concern in regard to the lighting and the appearance of things, but the bridge is sound,” Canedo said. Inspectors checked the bridge immediately after the storm.
“We have been working with the City of Vero Beach to affect repairs to the lighting on the bridge as soon as possible,” Canedo said. “We are doing everything we can. We’ve done the design work in expedited fashion.”
“Because of federal standards and requirements, we have to go through an entire design process and bid this out to contract,” Canedo said. “Everything we do at FDOT takes a long time to do because there are a lot of steps we have to meet, environmental steps, design steps, etc.”
But the Seeley’s said they believe FDOT should have already repaired the damage caused by the Sept. 10, 2017 storm that closed the bridge for several days.
“From the hurricane two years this fall, a number of the light poles, I think I counted seven of them, fell over,” Kent Seeley said. “I don’t know who is in charge of I, but I can’t believe they haven’t fixed this thing. It’s dark at night in some spots. The lag of two and a half years seems ridiculous.”