Falling rocks: Brent Spence's cry for help?

Call it a sign from above.

And mix in chunks of concrete and some impeccable timing.

Concrete falling from the Brent Spence Bridge Sunday smashed a car parked beneath the span – foot-wide pieces that happened to fall during the bridge's biennial inspection.

The plummeting concrete smashed the windshield of a 2008 Ford Fusion belonging to Jeff Brothers of Amelia. No one was hurt. Brothers was attending the Bengals' game at the time. The car had to be towed, but at least Brothers' team won.

Teams of inspectors from Ohio and Kentucky, the bridge's owner, conduct routine maintenance checkups on the bridge. "Lane closed" signs may appear on the bridge from time to time during this year's inspection through Sept. 21. But no plans exist to shut down the vital Interstate 75 link handling 175,000 vehicles a day, according to the 2012 National Bridge Inventory Database..

Still, a bridge that's shedding parts of its concrete skin is not to be taken lightly. The Brent Spence has been ruled functionally obsolete by the Federal Highway Administration, in part because it has no breakdown lanes. But is it becoming structurally obsolete? Is this a call for help from the bridge: It's falling and can't get up?

In a word: No. That's the short answer from Brian Cunningham, spokesman for Lebanon-based District 8 of Ohio's Department of Transportation.

"The bridge is still structurally sound," Cunningham said. "As with any structure, some areas could be undergoing degradation. That's why ongoing routine maintenance and inspections are important."

The concrete fell from the area near a pier known as 17D. "That pier supports the ramp that carries northbound traffic from the Brent Spence to north-bound Interstate 71 and Second Street," Cunningham noted.

The peeling pier 17D won't be inspected for about two weeks.

"We need to get a Snooper truck down there to take a look," Cunningham said. That type of truck boasts a flexible crane that can inspect bridges from below and above. The truck's crane hangs over the edge of the top of a span and then goes under the bridge.

Why the two-week delay?

The truck, Cunningham explained, "is a shared vehicle. It's not like we keep one in our backyard. It's heavily scheduled throughout the warmer months. That's as soon as we can get it here."

So far, there are no plans to place netting under the bridge to restrain errant pieces of crumbling concrete. This type of netting, used when the grandstand at Chicago's Wrigley Field started to fall, earned the Windy City monikers "giant sports bra" and "concrete jock strap."

"We're not going to do anything like that until we take a look with that Snooper truck," Cunningham said.

In the meantime, the bridge is open for business. ■