best-bridge

PORT ANGELES – For generations, driving out to Ediz Hook in Port Angeles Harbor has meant driving through the middle of what is now the McKinley Paper Mill. Doing so means you also drive under what is known as the roll bridge, the enclosed connection between where they make the paper and where they store and ship the enormous rolls of product. That bridge is currently being replaced to accommodate the new products being produced by the mill. Diana Terry is the company’s Logistics Manager.

“Our current roll bridge can only accommodate paper of about 51 inches in diameter. The role stock coming off of our reconverted PM1 machine will be up to 58 inches in diameter. So given the size of the paper converting plants we’re going to be shipping our product to, we need to expand the role bridge so we can get the paper across.”

Workers are now in the demolition phase that occasionally has the road reduced to one-lane alternating traffic. The Director of Engineering for the project is Tex Rhodes with Precision Industrial Contractors.

“The plan is to have the upper portion out this weekend and the tower this weekend to start for a new foundation next week. So other than the few minutes it takes position the crane on the demolition phase, we’re not going to close the road for more than a few minutes. We’ll just we’ll have a lane open at all times for any emergency vehicles out to the Coast Guard Station or anything that could happen to anybody out.”

Rhodes says that will change around the first week of July when they’ll be bringing in a big crane to lift the larger pieces of the bridge into place. That will require some intermittent full road closures. Day closures would be very short, but evening closures could go long.

Rhodes asked us to emphasize the importance of driver safety out there and looking out for the workers in that narrow section of the road.

“We run into the usual thing that all road construction runs into. There’s there’s people that don’t understand the difference between a red light and a green light, which side of the cones to drive on. So we get a few funny moments out here, but the same time they’re kind of scary because people just don’t pay attention.”

Banner photo: Roll bridge demolition as of June 18.

Below: New bridge design. Photos provided by Tex Rhodes.

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