Orange Bridge in DB Could Be Faulty

The safety of the Orange (57) Freeway in Diamond Bar was being questioned today following the news that a Caltrans engineer who tested the bridge was disciplined in the past for faking safety results on other bridges.

Engineer Duane Wiles was accused by co-workers of either fabricating bridge safety measurements or using measurement tools that were not properly calibrated on bridges across the state.

Wiles is also accused of discarding raw measurement data about large bridges across the state. Top Caltrans officials, according to the Sacramento Bee, also failed to go back and check Wiles' work after whistleblowers first made their charges. A later state investigation found three structures where Wiles allegedly faked testing data, the Bee reported.

The newspaper's experts said Wiles failed to verify testing devices used on at least 25 structures, including bridges and large overhead freeway sign foundations in Anaheim, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Among the bridges with questionable foundation tests are the 405's diagonal bridge over Braddock Drive in Culver City, which was rebuilt recently. The curving flyover connector for median carpool lanes at the 57/60 interchange is another.

-City News Service contributed to this report