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- The 2020 Magna earthquake led UDOT to enhance bridge safety protocols statewide.
- UDOT developed an app to expedite bridge inspections, improving post-quake assessments.
- UDOT bridges are prepared for larger quakes, with ongoing innovations for resilience.
SALT LAKE CITY — In the years after a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Magna in 2020, engineers at the Utah Department of Transportation said the event helped it refine its methods for quickly checking the status of bridges statewide.
"We've modified our procedure for inspecting the bridges after earthquake events," Mark Daniels, UDOT's structures design manager, said. "We've developed an app that we think will expedite our ability to inspect."
Engineers across Utah regularly check up on more than 3,000 bridges managed by UDOT, but its pictures and findings go into the app so that everything can be accessed and seen by team members. The system started being developed as crews worked to assess 700 bridges around northern Utah after the Magna quake.
"It gave us a chance to test out the protocols that we have in place to go out and inspect bridges," Daniels said. "We had a procedure in place of ranking and grading the bridges, and they performed really well."
While the flyover bridge at 13th street for I-215 southbound was briefly closed down after the quake, Daniels said it was structurally sound. Four more bridges later underwent larger repairs as maintenance measures.
Daniels added that UDOT's bridges are largely ready for an even larger quake, thanks to improvements dating back to preparations made prior to the 2002 Olympics. Daniels said in the meantime, UDOT keeps up with innovations as they come to make each newer bridge is even more resilient.
"The code is always progressing and advancing. And we're staying, you know, in line with all of those advancements," Daniels said. "We design our bridges in a way that is very redundant and (we) have a lot of confidence that they will hold up."
