Flooding Damages Bridge In Laurel, Closes Portion Of Route 198
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Flooding has damaged a bridge in Anne Arundel County. The bridge on Route 198 runs over the Little Patuxent River and broke in two. Portions of the bridge is reportedly missing.
Route 198 is closed in both directions with all lanes blocked between Bald Eagle Drive and Route 32, not too far from Fort Meade.
Crews are working around the clock to fix the bridge.
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Drivers were frustrated Monday morning.
"But I'm pretty irritated. Cause--now I have to go back where I came from," driver Seara Marcsis said.
"Did you see the pile of stuff? That's incredible," driver Becky Bush said. "Now I apparently have to follow detour signs all the way around."
"We were trying to do a shortcut, but it seems like it's closed," driver Gabriel Rebolledo said. "At my complex, one of the apartments got flooded, one on the bottom. It has been really ugly."
"Just going to make a u-turn and get back on the highway," driver Antoine Hymes said.
The State Highway Administration brought in heavy equipment to break up the logjam--a tough and time consuming job.
"A lot of debris came in and built up around the center span," said Charlie Gischlar of the State Highway Administration. "That caused the water to go off to the side and it washed out the east end of the bridge abutment. So, it's completely gone. So right now, what we're going to have do is--the first priority--is to get some of this debris, a lot of it, gently from that center span to open up the waterway underneath the bridge to get that hydrostatic pressure off the bridge.
Five storms in three weeks have dumped more than 10 inches of rain on parts of Maryland. Even though it stopped falling, creeks and streams are feeding rising rivers.
There was no major damage to the bridge and crews say it could reopen in a week or less.
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