[Cincinatus' Wife]

It's a longer article with a lot more concerns.

[Irenic]

Chung said he couldn’t understand how the oversight group, its consultants, and even a review team from the Federal Highway Administration missed such an obvious conclusion:

[Mr Ramsbotham]

I think I recall there being a big to-do about this bridge having been pre-fabricated in China.

[taildragger]

Corrosion introduced too much hydrogen into the steel at those locations.

FR-er Metallurgical wonks please respond, is this a form of "Hydrogen Embrittlement"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

[T-Bird45]

At first glance, Chung said about the July report, he saw obvious errors – some typographical, others that confused basic terminology.

Yet, every day, on web forums just like this one, the outcry against grammar and spelling "Nazis" continues afresh. It all "counts," despite the cries from the tablet- and smartphone-enhanced thumbtypists, just like that stick-in-the-mud, behind-the-times teacher tried to tell many of us when swimming against the technology tide.

[Fzob]

Not a comment on the concerns or article, but I used to work a lot with metallurgists, and once one told me if you want three opinions on on why something failed or corroded just hire two metallurgists. In short often failure is not always derived exactly.

[lump in the melting pot]

There was another article in the SacBee regarding potential problems with testing & inspection of the foundation piles:

Questions raised on Bay Bridge structural tests

Altogether, it does not paint a rosy picture. That bridge has potential issues both above and below the waterline.

[BudgieRamone]

The company I work for profitted handsomely off the band aid “fix” for this project. Seems we put in a bid and were turned down for some of the original work, So when Caltrans discovered their lowest “Chinese” bidder gave them junk they came back to us for the fix. Rumour has it the owner broke it off in their backside.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The use of such large rods is unprecedented, Chung and Thomas wrote, so academic literature offers no way to assess their vulnerability to cracking. The rods “might be more susceptible to (hydrogen-embrittlement) cracking than any other anchor rods on the new Bay Bridge,” Chung said, including some of those being replaced.

Me thinks this is more of a design problem....why did this design require "unprecedented" large rods.....smells like brute force engineering was at play. The Gallopin' Gertie

[minnesota_bound]

Chinese steel in Chinese warships.
Throw a rock at em and watch the crack start to grow.