Strömsund bridge closed after truck incident

When the Strömsund Bridge gave way on Tuesday evening, the lives of around 10,000 municipal residents changed.

In principle, everyone is affected by the fact that the 330-meter-long bridge over Ströms Vattudal cannot be used since the 100-ton truck caused the bridge to change position.

The three to four minute travel time between the conurbation of Strömsund and Näsviken, where many people live and work, suddenly turned into a daily detour of at least 1.5 hours. For schools, home and emergency services and people who have relatives and friends on the "wrong side", nothing is the same as before last Tuesday.

- We fully understand how it affects the residents and are doing everything we can to find a temporary solution as soon as possible, says Peter Jonsson at the Swedish Transport Administration.

At the moment, they are looking at two options; a temporary pontoon bridge or some kind of boat - mainly for pedestrians or cyclists, but perhaps also a solution that can handle school buses.

According to Peter Jonsson, the Swedish Transport Administration is now working hard with three parallel tracks:

1. Get the truck off the bridge without further damage to the bridge. Before it is gone, it is difficult to calculate the stresses in the concrete, the beams and the relatively new cables that hold the bridge.

The tow truck, as it is called in technical terms, can either be dismantled piece by piece or somehow rolled off the bridge. That option requires knowing that there won't be any kind of reaction in the bridge's material that damages it further.

2. Secure the route that serves as a diversion. It is about a 3.5 mile long dirt road. It is already approved for heavy traffic, but it will be loaded in a completely new way now. Between 2,000 and 2,400 vehicles normally pass the Strömsund Bridge per day - of which between 200 and 400 are heavy vehicles. Now they will meet on the dirt road.

It will require daily road inspections, nightly maintenance with graveling and leveling of the road.

3. A possible temporary transport solution over the water. what is being discussed is a pontoon bridge or some kind of boat.

- How this will happen is still written in the stars. We simply do not know what is broken and why it is broken until we have removed the truck from the bridge, notes Peter Jonsson.

The 100-tonne truck had been given a dispensation to drive over the bridge, which has a load capacity of 74 tonnes. The latter means that in normal traffic, without exemption, a single vehicle may weigh a maximum of 74 tonnes. This does not mean that the bridge can only hold 74 tonnes – several vehicles in that weight class can be on the bridge at the same time. It is also common - especially here where there are several timber transports per day.

It is also very common for heavy vehicles to be exempted. Then the passages are controlled. A conductor stops other traffic and the transport is driven in the middle of the road to distribute the weight as favorably as possible over the bridge's supporting structure. This has also happened many times over this particular bridge.

The Strömsund Bridge has undergone extensive renovation and updating work over the past four years. The focus has been on replacing the supporting wires. The bridge was completed this summer.

- At the moment, we do not know if it has anything to do with the matter, so there is no reason to speculate. We just know that we have to investigate this thoroughly and carefully through lots of measurements, calculations and observations, says Peter Jonsson and adds:

- I wish I could give an answer to the question of how long it will take. But unfortunately I can't.