Engineer says he's not surprised by bridge collapse

What happened at 9:35pm in Minneapolis, MN Wednesday night was no surprise to RIT Civil Engineer Dr. Abu Aghayere.  Aghayere says, "This is a huge wakeup call but I think its a necessary wakeup." Dr. Aghayere inspects bridges across New York and he says presently 38% of bridges are what is called structurally deficient. They have corrosions, swelling and other maintenance problems left unattended for too long. "There are bridges that are many many years old that are still performing, and its just depends on maintenance, you know it just depends on maintenance that is not done as regularly as it should be," says Aghayere. The Ballentyne Bridge is one of the newest bridges in Monroe County but age nor make has anything to do with how well a bridge will hold up. It has everything to do with how well it is maintained. In Monroe County bridges are repaired every year. The most recent one is the Smith Street Bridge in Brockport, which is now closed to traffic until it is repaired. Terrence Rice, who is the Director of Transportation for Monroe County says,  "You have to stay on top of your normal maintenance as well as doing repairs or rehabilitation when you need to do, and we replace and we do a program that we have 3 or 4 bridges every year that need to be replaced."