SEQUIM — The Dungeness River Bridge is expected to be closed for weeks, if not months, after flood-strength waters knocked loose several support pilings, threatening collapse of the span’s western walkway.
The bridge, on Jamestown S’Klallam tribal property and the centerpiece of Railroad Bridge Park, will be repaired “within the next couple of months,” tribal Chairman Ron Allen said Saturday.
Concern is focused not on the iconic steel railroad bridge itself across the Dungeness — it is anchored in concrete at both ends — but on the bridge’s old trestle portion, which continues across the west side of the river.
“We’re gonna take a very active leadership on repairing it,” Allen said.
“We’ve already alerted [state Department of] Transportation folks and are trying to access emergency money to make it available as soon as possible.
“We’re definitely moving as fast as we can.”
Allen said tribal Chief Operating Officer Annette Nesse and representatives of the tribe’s excavation company were at the site Saturday morning, as well as Clallam County Engineer Ross Tyler.
“This is not repairable in the short term,” Tyler said.
Detour for trail users
Railroad Bridge Park is also home to the Dungeness River Audubon Center.
Powell Jones, director of the center, said that as of Friday night, six bridge piles had been torn away by debris and the rushing river.
The walking and bike paths through the park and over the bridge are part of the Olympic Discovery Trail.
The trail will eventually run from Port Townsend to the Pacific Coast, but for now, most of it is about 60 miles in and around Port Angeles and Sequim.
Walkers, horse riders and bikers using the trail will now need to detour around the Dungeness bridge area by using the nearby U.S. Highway 101 and Old Olympic Highway bridges, Powell said.
“You’re talking about a mile of trail that’s been cut off,” he said.
Repairs cannot begin until the end of the rainy season, Allen said.
Permitting also is complicated because the river is home to endangered fish species, Tyler said.
The Dungeness River’s chinook and summer chum salmon, steelhead and bull trout are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, according to the state Department of Ecology.
The old railroad trestle, now a planked walkway, is held up by wooden pilings, some rising 20 feet from the ground.
The Dungeness River, normally a placid and shallow waterway, swelled to a torrent early Friday from heavy rains that gorged the waterway, which overflowed its banks in many areas, reaching about a foot below its official flood stage.
Trees undermined by the flooding also have crashed down on the trestle.
‘Hazardous situation’
Repair crews were called in to assess the situation, and late Friday, the Clallam County Sheriff’s Office closed the entire bridge and its eastern and western approaches and in a news release warned of “a very hazardous situation”:
“The bridge at Railroad Bridge Park has been damaged due to high water in the Dungeness River and trees falling on it to the point where it is suspected that collapse [of the western trestle portion] is possible if not probable.
“Authorities have closed the [Olympic] Discovery Trail at either side of the bridge and are warning citizens to stay out of the area.
“Emergency personnel are on scene and monitoring the situation.”
