Gone but not forgotten

Erik Eckholm has an article in The New York Times about the smashed bridges of New England, thanks to Irene:

As the country watched scenes of devastation from Hurricane Irene, thousands of history and engineering buffs were on edge for another reason, waiting to hear the fate of hundreds of antique covered bridges that dot the Eastern Seaboard and that are especially concentrated and beloved in the unexpectedly ravaged state of Vermont. Covered-bridge enthusiasts and others shuddered as they watched an amateur video of the Bartonsville bridge in Vermont sliding almost intact into the Williams River.
Vermont officials have found several other covered bridges, among the hundred or so statewide, that have been seriously damaged, but the loss of the Bartonsville bridge, built in 1871, with a wooden lattice spanning 158 feet, was considered the greatest historical blow. (Another badly damaged bridge, in Quechee, was covered, but built of concrete in the 1970s.)
Preservationists were also upset to learn that the Blenheim bridge on Schoharie Creek in upstate New York was totaled on Sunday. The bridge, built in 1855, was said to have the longest span of any covered bridge in the world, an astounding 210 feet, and was one of only six in the world to have two separated lanes. “New York lost a very prestigious covered bridge,” said Trish Kane, who is collections curator of the Theodore Burr Covered Bridge Resource Center in Oxford, New York. “It was an engineering marvel.” Kane has been busy this week keeping the unofficial tally of the storm’s damage to covered bridges, with information sent in by a network of bridge fans and officials throughout the East.
The Bartonsville and Blenheim bridges were on the National Register of Historic Places. To devotees, even the limited number of bridge casualties discovered so far— engineers will have to inspect many more to ensure their safety— is “devastating”, said Wendy Nicholas, northeast director for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “These are wonderful landmarks that everyone loves,” she said, “and they are major connections for communities.”
Mostly built in the nineteenth century, the bridges were covered not to make wintertime passage more comfortable for travelers but to protect their wooden skeletons, the hefty trusses that hold them together and bear the weight. In harsher climates, similar bridges without roofs lasted only about a decade, bridge historians say; protected by a roof and sidings that can be replaced as necessary, the original wooden trusses can last more than a century.
Only bridges with more than half of their original trusses intact are labeled as historic, said Joe Nelson, vice president of the Vermont Covered Bridge Society. If more than half the timber has been replaced, preservationists call the bridge a Number Two, Nelson said. “The trusses are the antique part." Sometimes destroyed or failing bridges are rebuilt using original methods, resulting in fine replicas, he said, but they are not historic structures.
At least two other covered bridges in Vermont were reported to have been damaged particularly severely. Raging waters thrust a tree up from the bottom and through the roof of a bridge spanning Cox Brook, in Northfield Falls. Debris smashed the much-photographed bridge in Taftsville, near Woodstock.
Most of Vermont’s covered bridges are still in use, and they are carefully tended by the state transportation department. Repairs can cost anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than a million. They are performed by a select list of contractors who know the original methods for splicing timber together to make strong, lengthy beams and can follow the original engineering design.
The Blenheim bridge in New York was not in use, and its trusses were shattered by the flood, leaving bridge buffs with little hope that it would be restored. In Vermont, the Bartonsville bridge was heavily used, and the state is expected to replace it, presumably with a skillful replica.
Or is a miracle in the making? Nelson said that he had just heard from a woman who saw the Bartonsville bridge lying upside down, and fairly intact, about a quarter-mile downstream of its proper site. “We’ll have to see what shape the trusses are in,” he said, trying not to let hope get ahead of the facts. “This raises the chance that it might be rebuilt.”

Rico says it's amazing that people will spend millions to fix an antique bridge...