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.......
Very interesting that he had this:
“The National Bridge Inventory contains a report on this bridge from 2003. It reports the following items:
Deck Condition: Fair.
Superstructure Condition: Poor.
Substructure Condition: Satisfactory.
Scour: Foundations determined to be stable.
Bridge Railings: Meets currently acceptable standards.
Structural Evaluation: Meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as-is.
Water Adequacy Evaluation: Superior to present desirable criteria.
Bridge Sufficiency Rating: 50%
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.”
It looked to me that this is exactly what happened. Only time will tell for sure.
You Tube has a lot of coverage I missed.
Ignorance followed by hand waiving. I think in this case they'll use a song and dance routine too.
"I went to engineering school, and I remember cracks being a veeeery bad thing."
They are. As long as you revere and follow the almighty code book though, the lobbying is effective and insurance is paid up, you're fine. If you're quizzed about it you can hand waive about things under your control, otherwise obfuscate about irrelevant things, then get back to the meat of lobbying for more project money.
Nothing much on the video other than it probably wasn’t C-4 or terrorists.
My WAG (and right now everyone who says what made it happen is guessing) is that there was a fatigue crack in a non-redundant tension member. It may have been covered up by a facia, bird crap, or soemthing else. Or, it may have been where it was difficult for the “snooper truck” to reach and the inspectors just eyeballed it from a distance. Or maybe someone just falsified the records, saying they looked but didn’t. In any case, the crack finally got large enough that it could not hold the load with rush-hour traffic and it broke. When it broke, the entire rest of the bridge came down.
I’m only speculating, but I doubt it. I’m afraid most are under the mess. They wouldn’t be able to move. And the more “topical” 1s are probably too clamped in place by all the jagged debris.
THANKS for the warning - it’s gotta be 5 o’cock SOMEWHERE
I agree, those pilings are in the water, and it has been stated that the water level is low at this time, so they are usually even more in the water.
It sounds to me that scouring, is the same thing that would be called shoaling along the coast. The support washes away.
They are. As long as you revere and follow the almighty code book though, the lobbying is effective and insurance is paid up, you're fine. If you're quizzed about it you can hand waive about things under your control, otherwise obfuscate about irrelevant things, then get back to the meat of lobbying for more project money.
Hopefully this will come out in the wash.
Preferably, George Bush.
http://www.news.navy.mil/management/photodb/webphoto/web_050923-N-4913K-006.jpg
050923-N-4913K-006 Ingleside, Texas (Sept. 23, 2005) - In preparation of Hurricane Rita, mine warfare ships home ported at Naval Station Ingleside nest in a modified mooring. U.S. Navy photo by Fifi Kieschnick (RELEASED)
haven’t found the picture of him in Louisiana, but I will continue to search later.
Gotta go work on my custom truck.
I will do what I can as an individal, but it may taks FReepers or the like to demand release of the MnDOT footage...
Same here - I throttled up and got the heck off that bridge as fast as traffic would let me.
Except that only works if the light rail is going to take people where they would normally use their cars to cross the bridges anyway. The MN light rail project doesn’t go anywhere near this bridge, so the comparison is not a fallacy.
I was hoping that by your suggestion, you had some pull.
What the heck kind of “compassionate” leadership is that?
I agree with you that his statement lacked compassion. But that still doesn't show respect for the Commander and Chief of our country. Polly
The light rail goes to the Mall of America and the airport, which are prime drivers in that economy, and has increased ridership every year.
Like I posted earlier, 60% of the funding came from the Federal government under mass transit grants, that wouldnt have gone toward any retrofitting of bridges anyway...it would have gone to Phoenix or Tacoma or another light rail project.
In fact, the standards for highway funding now are awarded to projects that encourage carpooling or mass transit use...
clamped in place by all the jagged debris.
This is what is soooo frightening for the divers!!!!!
That’s not a Jaguar, taillights and trunk is wrong.
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