A driver narrowly missed being injured when a chunk of concrete fell from a Beltway bridge onto a passing car Tuesday afternoon.
The driver, Katherine Dean, said she was driving on Suitland Road in Morningside, Maryland, when pieces of the overpass fell onto her car. The concrete smashed in Dean's windshield and hood, but she wasn't seriously hurt.
"I thought somebody threw something over the bridge. I never would have thought the bridge itself would have given way," Dean said. "There was glass all over me, everywhere."
Dean says she was scared to death, but that she was grateful and lucky it wasn't worse.
The pieces fell from an overpass for the Inner Loop of Interstate 95/Interstate 495.
The Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) made repairs to the overpass following the incident, but engineers were planning to return Wednesday to take another look as a precaution.
A spokesman for SHA said that overpass above Suitland Road is one of 82 "structurally deficient" bridges, out of 2,576 bridges maintained and owned by SHA.
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
The spokesman, David Buck, said the bridge is safe.
"The debris that fell from the bridge is superficial and has nothing at all to do with the integrity or safety of the bridge," he said in an email to News4. "As with all of our structurally deficient bridges, this [b]ridge is under design for repair and/or replacement. Since there is no structural issue and no safety issue, there is no specific timetable for major repairs beyond those underway [Wednesday]."
"I think that's horrible for them to say because they didn't take my life into consideration at all," Dean said. "That's saying that what happened to me is normal, acceptable. It's not normal. It's not acceptable."
Buck said the SHA inspects bridges at least once every two years, and more often if they are listed as structurally deficient.
