LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY)- According to a Public Works release, the Surrey Street bridge in “will be closed indefinitely until further notice for emergency repairs.” The bridge cross over the Vermilion River and must be repaired because of corrosion issues.

The Surrey Street bridge has been closed indefinitely for repairs. A routine state inspection performed last month showed one of eight bearings that help support the bridge had completely failed and another one is in danger of failing.

“That puts the bridge at an extreme risk of failure of collapse to some degree. With that collapse would be, would it be a total failure where crashes into the river? We don’t know. But it was extremely unsafe to continue traffic on the bridge,” says Public Works Director Mark Dubroc.

Coury Moss with Moss Motors says, “It’s somewhat of a problem. Some of our customers are complaining the in-service just takes a little bit of time to get over here.”

Even though these repairs are causing problems for local businesses it is a necessary safety precaution.

For Taylor Rhodes who works on Evangeline Thruway the traffic has become a personal problem. She says it takes much longer to pick up her daughter from school since the bridge closed.

“It has gotten so much worse. It used to be a 10-minute drive over there to go get her and come back and it takes like an hour and a half now,” says Rhodes.

Rhodes says she is most annoyed that public works didn’t give business and residents the proper warning before the bridge closed.

She says,”We had no idea. We just looked out the window one day and were like me and that’s a lot of traffic. And then I got an alert on my phone from you guys that said the bridge was closed.”

according to the Public Works Director For the next 8 months, an estimated five hundred thousand dollars will be spent to fix the bridge.

“If you work here every day you find shortcuts. Some of our customers as they come in we are telling them the quickest ways to get here or get there. It’s really not that bad if you know what to do,” says Moss.