The LED light system on the east side of the Owensboro bridge was knocked out due to intense storms on June 29. The system on the west side of the bridge went down a few days later during more storms. The City is hopeful to get the system back up and running in the coming weeks.
“We either had a lightning strike or some water intrusion,” said Lelan Hancock, the Assistant City Manager. “Our contractor has been on site to evaluate things from the ground. We’ll be having a crew come back and actually get up on the bridge to determine (what specifically) has been damaged.”
Hancock said there is an “extensive lightning protection system” on the LED system. It works similar to a breaker in a house, tripping when activated to limit the amount of damage that occurs.
“Our hope is that the very first piece that is set to fail to protect the rest of the system is where the break occurred, and that it will be a fairly easy fix,” Hancock said. “We’ve got a decent idea that it’s one of the controllers up on the bridge itself just based on the signal that we can see, but it’s a matter of really getting up there and inspecting it.”
Madisonville-based Groves Electrical Services, the company that installed the LED system, has the maintenance contract. Hancock said it takes a specialized piece of equipment to inspect around the beams.
Hancock said the City has some spares on the shelf for lights and controllers, but the timeline for finished repairs will depend on what exactly is damaged and when the contractor can both do the more detailed inspection and get back out to do the work.
Hancock said they’ll make an insurance claim for the damage once they determine what happened and how much it costs to fix it.
We will turn this in on our insurance once we determine what it is and how much it is to fix.
