Part of the steel structure of the old Mississippi River Bridge from Lansing into Wisconsin will be dropped with explosives this morning.
DOT engineer Clayton Burke says they plan is to take down the east and middle sections of the bridge at 9:30 a.m. Workers have removed the cement deck off the bridge. The DOT has a live video feed of the implosion that you can find on their website.
They will manually remove the Iowa portion of the bridge as it’s over a roadway and a railroad and next to houses.
“They will carefully take that apart piece by piece after the bridge is dropped in the river. And then all of that should be complete by 2026,” he says.
The bridge, which was first used in 1931, was closed for good on October 15th so work could continue on the new bridge. The new bridge will open in 2027. The DOT has been running a ferry service for area residents to cross the Mississippi since the old bridge closed.
