This week, after a year of use, a “Bailey bridge”, which was built in August 2019 by soldiers from Pioneer Battalion 2 in the municipality of Abtenau during the army’s assistance mission following the severe storms in Salzburg’s Tennengau region, will be dismantled.
Under the command of bridge officer Captain Andreas K., 64 soldiers from the Pionierkampfunterstützungskompanie ensure the professional dismantling and removal of the bridge sections. After inspection and maintenance, the individual bridge elements are made available at the Salzburg state disaster camp in the municipality of Hallein – they are quickly available for use if required. The deputy mayor of the municipality of Abtenau, Christian Eder, visited the soldiers of Pioneer Battalion 2 on Thursday during the bridge dismantling and thanked them once again on behalf of the municipality for their tireless efforts during the natural disasters of recent years.
The devastating storms at the end of July 2019 in the Tennengau district caused considerable damage to infrastructure such as federal roads and bridges in several sections. During a deployment by the Austrian Armed Forces, 45 soldiers from the Pioneer Construction Company of Salzburg Pioneer Battalion 2 built a “Bailey Bridge” on the site of the Kurhaus Bridge, which had been destroyed in the municipality of Abtenau. The construction meant that the Gschwand district of the market town of Abtenau, which was cut off from the outside world after the Kurhaus bridge was destroyed by the floods in July and August 2019, was once again accessible for emergency vehicles and residents. In the period from 19 to 23 August, the “Bailey Bridge” was erected over a length of 40 meters with a load-bearing capacity of 26 tons in order to restore traffic connections in the district. In a total of three pushing phases, the bridge was pushed over the obstacle, lowered and covered in accordance with the construction schedule on August 23 so that it could be handed over to the state of Salzburg on August 26.
