Kayaker says he photographed crack in I-40 bridge in 2016

A Mississippi River kayaker said photos he took about five years before a crack was found in the Interstate 40 bridge linking Tennessee and Arkansas appear to show the fracture that led transportation officials to close the span indefinitely last week.

Arkansas transportation officials said they cannot confirm or refute what's shown in the kayaker's photos, which raise questions about how early the crack appeared. An Associated Press photo editor inspected metadata from one of the photos and determined it was shot on August 6, 2016. The I-40 bridge connecting Memphis and the Arkansas city of West Memphis was shut down on May 11 after inspectors found a crack in one of two 900-foot horizontal steel beams that are critical for the bridge's structural integrity. River barge traffic under the span was closed that day but reopened three days later. Road traffic has been rerouted to the nearby Interstate 55 bridge.