A bridge on Hill Road near Covelo gave way Friday as a vehicle crossed it, dropping the car onto its roof beside the Eel River and leaving the driver with minor injuries, the California Highway Patrol said.
The collapse occurred Friday before roughly 9 p.m., when the CHP posted its alert.
Officers from CHP’s Ukiah office responded to the solo-vehicle scene at Hill Road and Eel River Ranch Road, where the bridge collapsed completely as the vehicle was crossing it, the agency said.
The car overturned and came to rest on its roof near the river. The driver suffered only minor injuries. The CHP told drivers to avoid the area and find another way around.
The span failed during low water flow. A U.S. Geological Survey gauge on the Middle Fork Eel River near Dos Rios, downstream of Covelo, ran between about 117 and 150 cubic feet per second this week — near its summer low and far from flood stage.
Hill Road is a rural route in Round Valley, the remote valley that is home to Covelo and the Round Valley Indian Tribes. The bridge is on a local road, not state Highway 162, the main route into and out of the valley.
How long the crossing stays closed, and what detour the people who depend on it now face, wasn’t known Friday. The CHP did not say whether the bridge can be repaired or has to be rebuilt.
It is not the first time this year the Eel River near Covelo has figured in a serious vehicle wreck. In February, an elderly Covelo couple went missing when their car left Highway 162 and plunged into the river west of town; their vehicle was pulled from the water after a four-day search by dive crews working swift, cold currents. That crash and Friday’s collapse are unrelated. But both are reminders of how much Covelo leans on a short list of roads and bridges, and how hard things get when one of them goes out.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.