Southbound I-280 will likely remain closed into next week in North Toledo and East Toledo because of the latest mishap involving a gantry crane at the Maumee River Crossing construction site.

Mike Gramza, the bridge project manager for the Ohio Department of Transportation, said state officials want to move the crane, which dropped one of its legs on Saturday, into a retracted position on the completed portion of the bridge before I-280 reopens to southbound traffic.

"Obviously, we're going to do this cautiously," Mr. Gramza said. "At the outer limit, it might take until the end of next week. Right now it's all tentative."

Northbound I-280 remains open, and Mr. Gramza said a full-week closing scheduled to start Nov. 6 will probably be reduced to a weekend.

An investigation of why a telescoping leg fell out of the "LG-1" crane while it was being repositioned continues.

Jule Jones, area director for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, could provide no estimate yesterday of how long that inquiry might take, except to say that it probably won't be as long as the 5 1/2-month investigation of the Feb. 16 collapse of an identical crane that killed four construction workers and injured four others at the site.

OSHA's report on the Feb. 16 accident faulted project contractor Fru-Con Inc., of Ballwin, Mo., for failing to ensure that the 315-foot, 900-ton cranes used to assemble bridge spans from prefabricated segments were properly anchored during the repositioning process, known as launching. Fru-Con has appealed a $280,000 fine that OSHA proposed.

The accident on Saturday, in which no one was hurt, occurred on the first day that work had resumed using "LG-1" after it was modified to prevent a collapse like the one that felled its twin, "LG-2." After the latest accident, ODOT officials ordered the surviving crane removed from the project, saying that they had lost all confidence that it could be used safely on the $220 million project.

Steve Houston, a Fru-Con spokesman, said yesterday that the company is "still exploring its options" regarding how to proceed with the bridge project using alternative equipment.

Last week, as he and ODOT officials announced their plans to resume work following the Feb. 16 accident, Fru-Con President Matti Jaekel said his firm had located two cranes overseas that it might obtain in order to complete the I-280 project by October, 2006, its contractual deadline.

But that target assumed that the "LG-1" crane would continue working on the East Toledo approach spans while the others would be assigned to the North Toledo end.

Approach spans on both sides of the Maumee are being built above existing I-280. To keep traffic moving underneath, project officials had relied on the large overhead cranes, which had innovative "self-launching" systems that eliminated the need to use ground-based cranes for repositioning.

But during a news conference Saturday, Richard Martinko, an ODOT assistant director, said the "self-launching" feature also introduced a level of complexity to the cranes' operation that was no longer desirable. Both of the crane accidents occurred during launching.

The cranes that Mr. Jaekel mentioned last week do not have the "self-launching" capability.

Contact David Patch at:

dpatch@theblade.com

or 419-724-6094.

First Published October 27, 2004, 12:19 p.m.