Crews reopen California's Bay Bridge

Sep 8, 2009, 17:01 GMT

San Francisco - Crews working round the clock through the Labour Day weekend fixed a potentially dangerous crack in the San Francisco Bay Bridge Tuesday morning in time for the rush hour peak.

The crack in a steel link that undergirds the eastern side of the bridge was discovered during a maintenance closure for a weekend project to upgrade earthquake safety on the span linking San Francisco with neighbouring Oakland.

Engineers had feared that repairing the crack could take several extra days and bring a traffic nightmare to the San Francisco Bay area, where some 280,000 cars use the bridge daily.

Traffic had originally been scheduled to resume at 5 am on Tuesday morning, after Monday's US observance of Labour Day. The bridge eventually reopened just 90 minutes behind schedule.

'The bridge has been inspected, and it's safer than it was when we closed it on Friday,' said Randy Iwasaki, the director of the California Department of Transportation.

Built 73 years ago, the Bay Bridge was repaired after suffering severe damage in a 1989 earthquake.