The Repairs & Reopening
July 8-12, 2002

Repairs began Sunday, July 7th, to interchange ramps and overheads that were clear of water. Nebraska Department of Roads Director, John Craig declared that fixing the I-80 break was "priority No. 1." Gov. Mike Johanns toured the scene and declared the area a disaster, allowing the Roads Department to forgo the usual bidding process to find a contractor. Flooding receded sufficiently by Monday to allow engineers to determine that the bridges were structurally sound and only the approaches needed rebuilding.

At 1 pm. Monday, July 8, Les O'Donnell, NDOR District Engineer for District 6,  gave Dave Neill, the project manager, until 2:30 pm. to come up with a repair estimate. At 3 pm., they announced that the bridge approaches would be fixed by the following Monday at an estimated cost of less than $1 million. "Then it all just started falling into place," O'Donnell said.

The repairs occurred at a dizzying pace. Volunteers appeared. Lights were set up for night work. Scores of workers from the State Department of Roads and 11 construction and trucking companies labored around the clock. They hauled about 1,000 truckloads of fill material and laid hundreds of tons of asphalt. The State Patrol and the National Guard rerouted traffic.

"Whatever you needed, people were willing to pitch in," Neill said. Loaders. Trucks. Bulldozers. Excavators. Neill finally had to start turning down the offers: The project just wasn't big enough for all those machines.

The result of the furious, round-the-clock repair effort was that the connection was restored two days before the one-week target.

"It's just an unbelievable effort on a lot of people's parts," O'Donnell said Friday afternoon, July 12, 2002.

(Click on each thumbnail below to see a larger view)

Removing one of the obstructions	Rebuilding the banks	Another truck load of rock	Rebuilding the banks-stabilization
Bank stabilization	Bank stabilization	Using a nuclear density gauge to check the compaction	Setting a string line before laying another layer of asphalt.
Resurface work	Resurface work	Making sure there are no bumps	Aerial View Thursday afternoon, July 11th
The above photos were taken by Linda Wilson, NDOR Communication Division
Shortly after 9 pm CDT, Friday, July 12, 2002, traffic flows smoothly once more over the bridges that had been damaged by the flood waters.		Another photo taken right after I-80 reopened.
Re-opening photos by Roger Klasna, District 6, NDOR Thanks to the Omaha World Herald for allowing us to use some material from their stories about the flood