Posted on 08/01/2007 4:28:27 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis.....
Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars......
Just now breaking.......
Isn’t Minnesota where one of the 9/11 wannabes was found and tried for terrorism? Can’t recall his name.
The video says he didn't.
Try the Atchafalaya Swamp Freeway in Louisiana. 18.2 miles over swampy, scary terrain. I HATE that bridge.
Yes you are. We’re doing things cheaply now - haven’t you noticed how strictly utilitarian bridges are now, instead of pretty? (Only recently have some places made beautification efforts in upgrades.)
That means they want to save money.
For which I don’t blame them. However....
a) income tax. Makes it impossible for anyone to accumulate enough wealth to personally finance public projects.
b) welfare state. Sucks money away from things for which government actually HAS the right to do - and the obligation.
And I’m sure there are many more facets to our overweening government which make many infrastructure issues worse.
OMG!
And in Minnesota they spent $800 million for a Light Rail system while their bridges are literally collapsing.
The Mayor and Governor should resign or risk impeachment.
Not to mention that it’s a heck of a lot easier to bring down an office building or shopping mall than it would be to rig a bridge.
Like I was trying to say before, I really don’t think this was anything more than a horrible case of structural damage.
My thought...if one part of the deck was removed for replacement, the sun would shine directly on the steel beams, and the heat would be higher than normal on the steel, causing greater than normal expansion of the steel.
That, combined with the South pier now being canted toward the river (see pictures on other comments) consistent with erosion under the river side of the pier just below the lock,to me means that they need to examine multiple causes joining together in a “perfect flaw” to cause it to fail.
For the most part I agree with your other comments except these. Do you really need demolition experts or just a terrorist training camp, the internet or the local mosque supplying the instruction on how best to blow up a bridge? We seemed to figure it out quite well during WWII after teaching boys pulled from the farm fields and just out of high schools of America and sending them off did we actually have the original plans for every bridge we came across and demolished in WWII because that is not how I read the history.
Give them the basics of how to bring a bridge down and most likely they can.
How did this bridge come down could not tell you until there is an investigation, and given past events like this we will not be told if it was brought down by explosives only that there was structure failure.
And I promise you that there WILL BE exposives experts there because the insurance companies will need to know (from their viewpoint, they would be better off if it were terrorism) on account of the lawsuits that will filed probably starting today.
(((Hugs)))I will pray.
Jackv - Thank you for the update. God is good!
Ever go over the Mackinac Bridge.
No way!
I don’t think it was terrorism, even though the absence of evidence of terrorism is not evidence of the absence of terrorism.
The main focus of many terrorism attacks is to affect the economy of the West, and to cause the greatest economic damage possible. A bridge of this importance would fit the criteria, and may be a viable option beause the more highly important targets are being guarded more closely.
IMHO, it was a combination of structural defects that will take a while to doucment. I think the prime suspects are the undermining of the South Pier from water flow through the nearby lock (shown be pictures on this thread from normsrevenge, combined with a weakening and excessive expansion of the steel from the removal of the concrete on the deck. This exposed the steel to increased heat from direct sunlight (otheriwise the deck shades the steel), and this caused the steel to expand more than normal in the hot weather.
We are all entitled to our groundless speculation, aye?
ML - I’m praying that you hear from your loved ones very soon. Please keep us updated.
Bizarre.
Most of the bridges that we blew up in WWII were built in the 19th century or before. They were often built out of stone and mortar or in many cases wood. They were built prior to modern advances in structural steel, concrete and the ability to make concrete denser. We didn’t need plans because we KNEW that there weren’t piles driven 100 feet into the ground, everything structural was visible and we could use as much explosive as we wanted and we could put it everywhere because we weren’t trying to hide anything. AND when we blew them up, stuff flew everywhere, it didn’t just collapse down like this bridge did.
I found this interesting page based on a report of the bridge's condition in 2003
http://www.visi.com/~jweeks/bridges/pages/ms16.html
The National Bridge Inventory contains a report on this bridge from 2003. It reports the following items:
A University of Minnesota Civil Engineer in a report to MN-DOT recently noted that this bridge is considered to be a non-redundant structure. That is, if any one member fails, the entire bridge can collapse. A key factor is that there are only four pylons holding up the arch. Any damage to any one pylon would be catastropic. The textbook example of a non-redundant bridge is the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River. It failed shortly before Christmas in 1967 resulting in 46 deaths. A single piece of hardware failed due to a tiny manufacturing defect. But that piece was non-redundant, and the entire bridge collapsed into the icy river. Today, bridge engineers design bridges so that any single piece of the bridge can fail without causing the entire bridge to collapse. It is tragic that the I-35W bridge was built a few years too early to benefit from that lesson.
Someone last night mentioned that a nearby dam failed about fifteen years ago. This could have caused weakening of the piles that wouldn’t have been a problem UNTIL the expansion joint was weakened. When a critical load is damaged, portions that were not previously critical can become critical.
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