The Repairs Turned Out Better Than I Expected©

We awoke to a cold February morning in 1997 only to find out that during the night the river our B & B and campground abutted had become a raging torrent bringing down trees and taking out our entry bridge that spanned 35 feet of water.

The only thing that was left was two 35 foot steel I-beams.  Our parking lot apparently was flooded out as we had a parking lot now full of stones and rocks and wedged under those I-beams was the root of a huge tree.

We later found out that cars were washed down the river below us and several people were killed.

We immediately called the only guy in Tennessee that could repair this and got a bid of $25,000.00.  While we debated this the U.S. Government came in and identified the whole area a Federal disaster area and all of a sudden the “only guy” was working for FEMA and we were on the bottom of his list.

However, this problem needed to be dealt with immediately as we opened up at the beginning of March for our 1997 season.

Carl is a handy man and this was the challenge of a life time.  Upon inspection we discover that on the road side of the bridge the steel beams were fine but on our side of the bridge the steel beams had dropped down 18 inches.

We could not find any other help in repairing it so it was up to us.

The first thing we did was tie a rope around Carl’s waist and lower him down off one of the steel beams with a chain saw and he started to cut the wedged in root in pieces until it finally all washed under the beams and down stream.

We had to work fast as we did not want the EPA starting to supervise our activities over the next few days.

The next thing we did was to get two hydraulic jacks and Carl started jacking up the steel beams until they were both raised 18 inches and the beams were level again.

He then surrounded them with marine plywood that created a huge form that could be filled in concrete.  The concrete people had a big truck that could funnel in the cement over the 35 foot span, but it was too big to come up our mountain road with about 6 hairpin turns and 50 other curves so they said they could bring up a small truck which only had an eight foot delivery funnel.

Now we had another problem to solve and I told Carl that if the Egyptians could build the pyramids we could do this and his reply was, “Yes, but they had about 30,000 slaves and years to do it in!”

We decided to make a series of X braces out of 2 x 4’s across the beams with the largest or highest ones on the road side going to the smallest or lowest ones on the form side.  We were both feeling like tight rope walkers walking back and forth across those steel beams which were only 6 inches wide.

Then we took 36 inch wide metal roofing and bent it in the middle laying it in the X braces with each one overlapping the other until it spanned the 35 feet.

When we were ready the truck came up and starting poring in the cement on the road side with four of us moving it along with shovels and hoes until it reached the form side.  Within 30 minutes or so several tons of wet cement was in place filling the form and covering the hydraulic jacks which we did not dare remove.

Within 2 days the cement set and we were able to re-plank the bridge, put the new sides up, create and install the lamp posts on each side, electrify them and open the decorative iron gates for business as usual.

This disaster was now a problem solved and the cost came down from $25,000.00 to just under $4,000.00.

Here is a picture of it before the lights went back on it. As you can see how big the campgound form had to be made to match the roadside form.  Eventaully all the dirt and silt build up washed away and the river went back to what it normally was in and that only took about 2 months of natural rushing water.



It really did turn out a lot better than either one of us expected.

May the Creative Force be with you.



Arlene Wright-Correll