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NewsAugust 5, 1999

The new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge will be the first in the Midwest to include sensitive, state-of-the-art equipment designed to measure the impact of earthquakes. It also will be the first cable-stay bridge to be outfitted with such equipment. Only a handful of bridges in the world have seismic devices, and most are in California and Japan...

The new Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge will be the first in the Midwest to include sensitive, state-of-the-art equipment designed to measure the impact of earthquakes.

It also will be the first cable-stay bridge to be outfitted with such equipment. Only a handful of bridges in the world have seismic devices, and most are in California and Japan.

"This is cutting edge stuff," said Randy Hitt, Missouri Department of Transportation area engineer, as he stood on the Illinois shore where construction crews are erecting concrete piers as part of the bridge project.

Hitt visited the construction site with about 20 seismic experts and engineers. The group was in Cape Girardeau to plan for the installation of the equipment.

The group included staff from MoDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Geological Survey, the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Kansas City engineering firm of HNTB, which designed the span.

Also on hand were seismic engineers from the Multidisciplinary Center for Earth Engineering Research in Buffalo, N.Y., and engineering faculty from several universities, including Washington University and the University of Missouri-Rolla.

A $500,000 grant has been obtained from the Federal Highway Administration to pay for the equipment and install it. The Buffalo firm has been hired to do the work.

The equipment will be installed on the cable-stay span, the main section of the bridge.

The equipment will include stress and strain gauges and ground positioning system instrumentation with recorders to track movements of the span and the surrounding land.

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Hitt said the monitoring system, which makes use of global positioning satellite technology, will provide information that will aid engineers in improving seismic designs on future bridges.

The equipment is expected to be housed inside the two main towers of the cable-stay span.

"Most of the equipment won't be installed until after the bridge is complete," said Hitt. The bridge is expected to be completed by 2003.

The U.S. Geological Survey would maintain the equipment and monitor the data. The data would be made available to the public.

At some point the data would be available to computer users on the Internet, Hitt said.

While designed to measure the impact of earthquakes, the sensitive equipment also could be used to measure the effects of strong winds on the span.

Cable-stay spans have more give-and-take than conventional bridges, Hitt said.

The Cape Girardeau bridge is designed to withstand an 8.2-magnitude earthquake.

That would be a devastating quake, said Hitt. "It would be pretty much a worst-case scenario."

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