Fire Protection and the Covered Bridges of Madison County

One day last month, we got out of the house and went on a road trip to Winterset, IA to visit Clark Tower, hike in several parks, and see the Covered Bridges of Madison County. What I wasn’t expecting was an interesting use of fire protection.

I won’t go into detail about the history of the bridges, which you can read here and here. What’s interesting about historical preservation is the need to be very concerned about the threat of fire, caused by work being done on a site (and lack of an effective hot work program) or arson. In the case of the Covered Bridges, it was was the later that brought about the addition of technology and fire protection to help increase the probability that they are available for future generations to enjoy. 

The Cedar Covered Bridge is the more famous of the bridges (thanks to the movie) and was originally built in 1883. It was burned by arson in 2002, rebuilt to the original specifications, and burned again by arson in 2017. It was rebuilt and opened in 2019 and to help deter future attempts, cameras have now been installed as well as fire protection to reduce the probability of a total loss should fire occur again. 

The fire suppression system installed at the Cedar bridge consists of dry chemical units from Cease Fire (CFP 6750). You can see how they’re installed in the rafters throughout the length of the bridge.

The Cutler-Donahue Bridge is the other bridge with fire protection and is located at Winterset City Park. With it being smaller (foot traffic only), it doesn’t need the same amount of canisters but they are the same type as the ones at the Cedar Bridge.

It was an interesting use case and pretty cool to see risk management in action while out on our excursion (and explain it to the kiddos). Hopefully this solution keeps the bridges around for another 100+ years.