Rhode Island has paused demolition of the I-195 Washington Bridge since Sept. 17 in an attempt to preserve evidence for a lawsuit against companies that worked on the bridge before its closure, according to a joint statement from Governor Dan McKee and Attorney General Peter Neronha.
“The engineers for RIDOT, in cooperation with the state’s legal team, have reached the point in the demolition of the Washington Bridge where work must be paused to preserve evidence for the legal case,” the statement reads. While the announcement gave no timeline for when demolition would resume, it expressed the goal of eventually continuing “demolition as swiftly as possible while ensuring important evidence is preserved.”
In March, RIDOT announced that the westbound side of the bridge, which had already been partially shut down since last December due to structural concerns, would now be demolished and rebuilt entirely.
After only two companies submitted bids to replace the section by RIDOT’s March 2025 deadline, the state awarded a $45.8 million contract to the Warwick-based Aetna Bridge Co., which began tearing down the westbound section of the bridge in late August.
The company is one of the 13 defendants in the lawsuit that the state alleges was responsible “for the near-miss catastrophic closure of the bridge,” according to a press release from Governor McKee and Neronha’s offices.
The other defendants in the lawsuit are also companies that worked on the bridge in some capacity for the state, whether through providing design feedback, routine inspections or constructing parts of the bridge.
In the lawsuit, the State alleges that the defendants “all knew or should have known the engineering features of the bridge,” and therefore should have flagged the bridge’s worsening structural issues that led to its eventual closure.
According to the lawsuit, five engineering companies inspected the bridge between 2015 and its closure in December 2023.
AECOM, an infrastructure consulting company, is highlighted in the complaint, since the analysis AECOM was hired to conduct beginning in 2013 served as a foundation that was used to solicit from contractors for future rehabilitation.
When AECOM provided RIDOT with its final technical evaluation in 2015, the state claims that the firm “failed to identify, analyze or recommend improvements” to “critical elements of the bridge’s structural safety and integrity.”
For Roger Williams University School of Law Professor Michael Yelnosky, the responsible parties behind the bridge’s failure are still unclear. The “lawsuit may help bring that to light,” he wrote in an email to The Herald, adding that the defendants have “every incentive to prove they were not responsible and that someone else was, including another defendant or a state employee.”
But Yelnosky also highlighted the limitations of lawsuits. “If public officials were responsible, law won’t get them out of office,” he wrote. “You need the political process for that.”
Engineers for both RIDOT and the litigation team have agreed that “contractors can continue preparatory work for further demolition on the Washington Bridge” while the lawsuit goes on, Charles St. Martin, RIDOT’s chief of Public Affairs, wrote in an email to The Herald.
The state’s initial goal was to complete the bridge’s reconstruction between spring and summer of 2026.
But now with the ongoing lawsuit, Governor McKee has not commented on an updated timeline on when the bridge may be completed.
Martin added that RIDOT and the legal team’s engineers are in the process of “finalizing the procedures for evidence preservation which will help determine when full demolition resumes.”
Sanai Rashid was raised in Brooklyn and now lives in Long Island, New York. As an English and History concentrator, she is always looking for a way to amplify stories and histories previously unheard. When she is not writing, you can find her trying new pizza places in Providence or buying another whale stuffed animal.
