FREEWAYS LACKED REVIEW; ONLY 1 INSPECTOR CHECKED WELDS AT HEIGHT OF PROJECT.

Byline: Associated Press 

Only one state inspector was assigned to review weld X-rays at the height of a $4 billion program to strengthen California's freeway bridges to better withstand earthquakes, transportation officials said.

Some of the hundreds of thousands of welds installed from 1993 to 1996 - including those in the Newhall Pass - were later found to be below contract specifications, forcing costly and inconvenient remediation projects on a handful of California's busiest freeways.

``Quite frankly, we didn't have enough trained inspectors to handle the volume of work,'' Jim Roberts, chief deputy director of the California Department of Transportation, told a legislative hearing in Santa Ana this week.

``There were hundreds of thousands of welds, and one guy couldn't keep up,'' he said.

The welds fuse together steel reinforcing bars that wrap within the concrete bridge columns. During a quake, the bars are supposed to confine any broken concrete within the bridge column and maintain the support needed to hold up the structure.

The agency now has three Sacramento-based inspectors qualified to read weld X-rays and has increased training so that field crews can better recognize bad welds from good ones, Roberts said.

The faulty welds first came to light in 1996, when Caltrans discovered problems at the towering interchange of Interstates 8 and 805 in San Diego's Mission Valley. In that case, the contractor agreed to pay for the repairs.

The San Diego welds sparked a statewide review of more than 1,100 freeway bridges that had undergone seismic retrofit.

State engineers have since identified 299 freeway bridges that have welds that may not meet contract specifications. In the majority of the cases, Caltrans is not planning repairs but seeking money from contractors.

``If you order a Cadillac, you expect a Cadillac,'' said agency spokesman Jim Drago. ``You don't expect a Yugo with no engine. The taxpayers asked for something to be done and paid for it. They deserve to get what they paid for.''

In Orange County, however, Caltrans will spend $1.8 million to replace 700 welds with mechanical couplers at the ``Orange Crush'' interchange where the Santa Ana, Orange and Garden Grove freeways meet.

Seven of 56 welds removed from the interchange and tested failed to withstand the forces equal to a magnitude 6.5 quake. The welds were installed four years ago during a $71.3 million renovation.

Engineers are not certain how many faulty welds are buried in the interchange because X-rays taken by the contractors are either missing or of such a poor quality that they're unusable.

The state will pay for the work scheduled to start in December and last nine months. It has not been determined whether Caltrans will seek money from the contractors responsible for the welding and inspections, Drago said.

Meanwhile, engineers continue to assess the welding work on bridges supporting the Golden State-Antelope Valley freeway interchange in Newhall, quickly rebuilt after the towering bridges toppled in the 1994 quake. A decision on whether to redo any welding is pending, Drago said.

The legislative meeting was organized by Assemblyman Lou Correa, who said he was outraged to hear about the problems, especially given the lessons from freeway collapses during the Northridge and 1971 Sylmar quakes.

``We've got to make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen,'' the Anaheim Democrat said.