Roads were closed all across Louisiana as freezing temperatures Tuesday led to iced over bridges and overpasses.
Department of Transportation and Development spokesman Rodney Mallett said crews began applying brine and salt to roadways Monday afternoon.
“When you have this much precipitation and the temperature gets that low, the elevated highways are going to ice over. At that point it becomes unsafe and unfortunately, we have to close those overpasses to protect our drivers,” said Mallett.
Because elevated roads and bridges ice over first, Mallett said DOTD crews in conjunction with State Police worked throughout the day Monday and overnight.
“We’ve been having to move people off of the elevated highways to the US-Highways, like I-55 down by LaPlace we have people taking U.S. 51,” said Mallett.
One of the major roadways shutdown was the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge. Because it’s elevated for 18 miles, Mallett said it presents a huge challenge. He says they pretreat bridges on priority routes in Louisiana and they try to keep the Interstates open as long as possible.
“We know the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge would take way too much salt and manpower to keep open when we can take that traffic and put it on US-190 and instead of an 18-mile bridge we have the four-mile bridge at Krotz Springs,” said Mallett.
