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<p>A truck driver died early today after losing control on the Bay Bridge S-curve at high speed and plummeting 200 feet below to Yerba Buena Island, the most serious collision yet since the new detour was installed, the California Highway Patrol said.</p>

The Bay Bridge reopened just after 9 a.m. today, six days after a repair job on a cracked structural beam on the eastern span fell apart and plunged onto the upper deck. Tests conducted overnight and this morning on an altered version of that repair job showed that the fix was holding, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said. At 9:01 a.m., a fleet of five California Highway Patrol cars escorted the first private vehicles allowed onto the westbound upper deck since the span was shut down Tuesday evening. About 10 minutes later, the lower deck reopened for traffic heading to the...

And They Want to Be Our Health Care Providers http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com In 2002, Caltrans (California Department of Transportation ) began the construction of a new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The estimated cost was $1.3 billion dollars. The plan? To rebuild rather than retrofit the span after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 caused a section of the bridge to collapse. After a series of delays and cost overruns the bridge is now expected to be complete in 2013 at a total cost to taxpayers of $6.3 billion. Just $5 billion or 384% over budget. That was before the break...

Authorities said they are shutting down the Bay Bridge in both directions after pieces of the cantilever section fell during the late-afternoon commute, striking three vehicles on the upper deck, the California Highway Patrol said. Caltrans officials said the parts that fell were two high-strength rods and a saddle that were part of the emergency repair that delayed the opening of the bridge on Labor Day weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of Bay Area commuters remain in limbo today as crews scramble to complete an emergency repair to the workhorse Bay Bridge. The 73-year-old bridge, crossed by more than 260,000 cars and trucks a day, was shut down for a larger, unrelated seismic upgrade project. Now, crews are working to fix a cracked steel link, called an eyebar, that helps hold up the east span. Inspectors discovered the problem Saturday afternoon, setting in motion a dash to fix a problem that - by itself - would have forced officials to shut down the bridge. "There's a lot of...

The speed and size of the tractor-trailer involved in the fatal, weekend crash on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge caused a jersey wall to break and allow the truck to plunge into the shallow water below, Maryland officials said Monday. Geoffrey Kolberg, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority (MTA), said the eastbound span of the bridge, on which the accident took place, is safe despite damage to 8 feet of wall along the right lane and that no structural damage occurred. Mr. Kolberg also said that the Mountaire Farms truck, which was carrying frozen chicken, was traveling westbound when an...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A 920-foot container ship, heading out of the San Francisco Bay from the Port Of Oakland, collided with a supporting tower of the fog-shrouded Bay Bridge early Wednesday, damaging its hull but it was not known if it caused any damage to the vital traffic artery. The collision happened at about 8:15 a.m. during the morning commute but did not disrupt traffic on the bridge.

Conspiracy: Unless the feds had something to do with it, the theory held by Rosie and others that the Twin Towers were brought down by the Bush administration just crashed and burned on a California freeway. In recent discussions on the jaundiced "View" and her Web site, conspiracy theorist Rosie O'Donnell opined that the 9/11 collapse of the Twin Towers, as well as 7 World Trade Center, marked "the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel." This, she said, is "physically impossible." Well, not exactly. Fire only has to weaken a structure already weakened by, say, a...

IF YOU'VE turned on your TV or radio this week, you've heard the question: How could a man with James Mosqueda's criminal record possibly have been approved to haul 8,600 gallons of explosive gasoline? There ought to be a law, some say, to ensure that never again will there be a gasoline-fueled fire that melts down part of the MacArthur Maze -- and, they suggest, this never would have happened if the "hazmat driver" did not have a criminal record. In Mosqueda's case, he has a serious criminal history. The tanker truck driver was convicted of a number of crimes,...

California Highway Patrol investigators are looking into whether a vehicle fire in the Macarthur Maze just before midnight Saturday was in any way connected to the disastrous gasoline tanker wreck that happened at the same spot just four hours later, destroying part of the interchange. The tanker truck crashed at 3:41 a.m. Sunday on the raised, two-lane connector from westbound Interstate 80 to southbound Interstate 880. Authorities have said the driver, who appears to have been moving at an unsafe speed in a 50 mph zone, hit the right guard rail, causing his fully loaded truck to overturn and burst...

SAN FRANCISCO - The experts paid to worry about disasters and terrorism have for years warned of collapsing highway bridges and exploding tanker trucks. They just never foresaw one event that would encompass both. Nonsense Local, state and federal government officials have "war gamed" a failed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge again and again, most recently in November, when a statewide exercise envisioned a 7.9-magnitude earthquake bringing down part of the span. The drills proved useful in responding to Sunday's wreck in which a tanker truck struck a guardrail, overturned and burst into flames, taking down a critical overpass. To some...

The driver who crashed a tanker loaded with gasoline and brought down a heavily trafficked highway overpass was given a commercial trucker's license despite a history of criminal convictions, including drug and burglary arrests. James Mosqueda, 51, of Woodland also got a special hazardous materials endorsement last year from the federal Transportation Security Administration. To get it, he had to undergo an FBI criminal history check and an intelligence background check. "It's reprehensible," said Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, who chairs both the Assembly Transportation Committee and the Joint Committee on Emergency Services and Homeland Security. "Someone with that record...

A section of highway lies burned and crumbled in Emeryville, Calif. MSNBC video •Tanker explodes April 30: One of the West's most-traveled sections of freeway isn't there anymore. NBC's Stephanie Stanton reports. OAKLAND, Calif. - The threat of a nightmarish morning commute led many Bay Area residents to use public transportation Monday, one day after a fiery tanker crash caused a heavily trafficked section of freeway to collapse.

ROSIE: OAKLAND BRIDGE COLLAPSE "INSIDE JOB" - Fiery Crash Collapses Bay Area Freeway (AP) . . . Heat exceeded 2,750 degrees and caused the steel beams holding up the interchange from eastbound I-80 to eastbound Interstate 580 above to buckle and bolts holding the structure together to melt, leading to the collapse, California Department of Transportation director Will Kempton said. ---Ann Coulter, April 29, 2007

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency following the collapse of one of the San Francisco Bay area's most traveled sections of freeway, as workers began clearing debris from a fiery accident that destroyed an important commuter link.A freeway interchange that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed onto another highway ramp in Oakland, Calif., Sunday, April 29, 2007, after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire.

The driver whose truck sparked a spectacular freeway fire in Oakland early Sunday escaped with his life -- a miracle, police say -- but there will be no escaping the Bay Area traffic nightmare his accident has unleashed... At the heart of the traffic knot is the MacArthur Maze, a tangle of freeways at the east end of the Bay Bridge and the site of Sunday's crash and fire. At 3:45 a.m., a truck carrying 8,600 gallons of unleaded gasoline overturned on a freeway transition road, creating an inferno with flames leaping 200 feet high and temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees....

OAKLAND, Calif. - A stretch of highway near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed Sunday after a gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames, leaving one of the nation's busiest spans in a state of near paralysis. Officials said traffic could be disrupted for months. ADVERTISEMENT Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco Bay Area is bracing for what promises to be a traffic nightmare for weeks or months to come. A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday. The fire created such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed. The truck's driver walked away with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported. Authorities say the damage will cause the worst disruption for commuters since the 1989 earthquake that damaged a section of the Bay Bridge itself. Transportation officials say they've already had added trains...

James Mosqueda, the driver in Sunday's fiery fuel-tanker crash, climbed out of the cab of his truck just moments before an explosion so powerful and hot that it melted steel and brought down a freeway, witnesses and law enforcement officials said. Mosqueda, a 51-year-old father of three from Woodland (Yolo County), walked away from the wreck -- and kept on walking. He walked for a mile and a half in all -- first along the overpass where he crashed and then for at least 13 blocks through the desolate streets of West Oakland -- to an Arco gas station, where...

Burning down a freeway is not easy. But set off enough high-octane fuel at the wrong place and even multiton supporting steel girders turn wobbly as a chocolate bar in the sun. That is what a speeding gasoline trucker managed to do before dawn Sunday to the busiest interchange in Northern California. Authorities still are piecing together how one of the 18-wheelers traversing the Bay daily crashed and erupted into a fireball that collapsed one freeway onto another at untold disruption to regional traffic. Miraculously, no one plunged into the inferno, the void it left behind or the debris below....

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday, creating such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed. Officials predicted a traffic nightmare for Bay Area commuters for weeks or months to come. Flames shot 200 feet in the air, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported in the 3:45 a.m. crash, which officials said could have been deadly had it occurred at a busier time. "I've never seen anything like it," Officer Trent Cross of...

What strikes me as strange is a gasoline truck fire can melt and collasp a freeway and ther are no conspiracy nuts hollering. But, when the government said jet fuel weakened the steel in the Twin Towers everyone said it was impossible. So, it must be George Bush;s fault.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A heavily traveled section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames, authorities said. Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.

OAKLAND, Calif. — A section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire, authorities said.

Tanker truck explosion caused part of the upperdeck of the maze approaching the Bay Bridge to collapse. Watch live coverage starting at 7 a.m. on NBC11 What was initially reported to the California Highway Patrol as a fire at around 3:42 a.m. Sunday quickly escalated to an explosion and roadway collapse on roadway that connects eastbound Interstate Highway 80 to eastbound Interstate Highway 580, according to a California Highway Patrol dispatcher. WATCH LIVE VIDEO According to the dispatcher, the roadway was destroyed after a tanker caught on fire and exploded, causing the driver to suffer second degree burns. The tanker...

Fiery crash collapses Bay Area freeway By MARCUS WOHLSEN, Associated Press Writer 57 minutes ago OAKLAND, Calif. - A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday, creating such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed. Officials predicted a traffic nightmare for Bay Area commuters for weeks or months to come. ADVERTISEMENT Flames shot 200 feet in the air, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported in the 3:45 a.m. crash, which officials said could have been deadly had it...

Building a new bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland will cost $140 million more than originally planned, state and local transportation officials said. The additional expense is due to rising construction and material costs and changes in plans for work on Yerba Buena Island, officials said Wednesday. The changes include efforts to reduce the time a temporary detour will be used and the decision to rebuild, rather than retrofit, the elevated roadway just east of the tunnels on the island. The move to rebuild will also mean that the Bay Bridge will have to close down sometime this year, but...

Ricardo Ramirez seemed an unlikely success story: At 57, the former Marine Corps judo instructor had spent more than 20 years as a paving contractor and had little to show for it but a long string of lawsuits, business failures and bankruptcies. Then, in 1998, the struggling businessman appeared to hit upon a way to make it in a new venture. Taking advantage of city and state programs designed to help minority-owned businesses, Ramirez started turning out low-priced, locally produced concrete for projects that included earthquake retrofit work on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. By 2003, his...

OAKLAND -- A federal study now under way finds the cost of building the new Bay Bridge -- specifically the signature 525-foot suspension tower -- could explode again, this time by almost half a billion dollars. Almost ten years ago, Caltrans estimated it would cost $1.3 billion dollars to replace the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Five years ago, the state said it would in fact cost almost twice that much -- $2.5 billion -- for a new bridge. Last year, Caltrans had still another projected cost: almost $5.3 billion dollars. Wednesday night, Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss acknowledged the...

The FBI has closed an eight-month probe into allegations that the new $6.3 billion Bay Bridge rests on faulty support piles -- an investigation that stalled construction on some parts of the bridge and cast a shadow over the state's largest ever seismic safety project. "For all intents and purposes, the case is closed," said LaRae Quy, spokeswoman for the FBI's San Francisco office. "We did not have the forensic evidence to prove the allegations." The inquiry began in February when an unnamed bridge worker called the FBI's public corruption hotline to claim that the bridge's contractor -- a joint...

Wednesday opens a new chapter in the 16-year Bay Bridge saga, when regional politicians take the reins to oversee the project amid unanswered questions about why the public will pay twice — at unknown cost — for the same work. Specifically, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission will be asked to approve freshly repackaged bids to build the bridge's tower. Caltrans is expected to advertise the project the next day but has not released an official cost estimate. MTC's new role results from lengthy negotiations in the Capitol this year and the new law they produced. It means the Bay Area will...

OAKLAND, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Monday authorizing the completion of a new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, ending a months-long stalemate over how to pay the spiraling costs of the project. The law protects the popular, but costly suspension design originally selected for the bridge, which the Republican governor once advocated ditching for a less expensive approach. It also finances most construction cost overruns by raising tolls on nearly every other bridge in the San Francisco Bay area. Schwarzenegger praised the bipartisan cooperation that produced the bridge plan and called for a similar approach...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A bill that would increase tolls on Bay Area bridges to pay for earthquake safety upgrades passed the California Assembly Wednesday and now goes to the governor for his approval. The Assembly voted 58-6 for the measure, which would result in toll increases of at least $1 on most Bay Area bridges. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders came to an agreement on the plan last month, ending a dispute between the Republican governor and San Francisco area legislators over how to cover $3.6 billion in cost overruns, mainly from the Bay Bridge project. The bill would...

SACRAMENTO - The Bay Bridge will get a fancy design after all, but the region's motorists will pay most of the span's $3.7 billion in cost overruns under a legislative deal reached Thursday night. The accord calls for tolls on all state-owned Bay Area spans to jump from $3 to $4 beginning Jan. 1, 2007, and fund about two-thirds of the bridge's higher costs. The state will kick in $630 million toward the project, which has been saddled with delays and escalating prices since its inception seven years ago. No further toll increases are planned. Rather, the balance of cost...

SACRAMENTO - The Bay Bridge will get a fancy design after all, but the region's motorists will get stuck with paying most of the span's $3.7 billion in cost overruns, under a legislative deal reached Thursday night. The accord calls for bridge tolls on all state-owned Bay Area spans to jump from $3 to $4 beginning Jan. 1, 2007 and the state to kick in $630 million for the project, which has been saddled with delays and escalating prices since its inception seven years ago. No further toll increases are planned. Rather, the balance of the $6.3 billion estimated tab...

SACRAMENTO - California's capital is packed with more than 1,000 lobbyists, but when people want to make something happen in Sacramento, they often turn instead to Bob White, a genial Republican maestro who helped elect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. White has an advantage lobbyists don't. While registered influence peddlers must reveal whom they work for, White calls himself a strategist who doesn't directly push for changes in state policy. That legal distinction allows White to conceal who his corporate clients are, even though he and members of his consulting firm, California Strategies, go to bat for them by exploiting a loophole...

The investigation into allegations of faulty welds on the Bay Bridge came up empty -- but the resulting construction delays and consulting bills from the probe have cost taxpayers millions. For starters, there's the nearly $1.7 million that the bridge's joint- venture contractor, KFM, says it lost when it stopped pouring concrete for three weeks while the feds investigated workers' allegations that their bosses had ordered them to cover up bad welds on the new eastern span. That bill may well go to the state. And that's just for openers. The Federal Highway Administration hired no fewer than three independent...

Sacramento -- A state Senate committee approved a $7.7 billion bond proposal Tuesday that would help pay for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, along with a variety of transportation, port and levee projects throughout the state. "This is basically a savings plan," said Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, the bill's sponsor. "We are going to save California's economy by doing this."

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - Welds on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge are not faulty as had been alleged by former welders who claimed the work was dangerously unsafe, the Federal Highway Administration said Wednesday. Private inspectors hired by the Federal Highway Administration have been cutting out sections of steel foundation work in the Bay Bridge to test for the allegedly faulty welding. The agency reported Wednesday it found no evidence of shoddy, unsafe welds. The FBI, the Federal Highway Administration and state attorney general's office began several weeks ago investigating allegations by former project welders that they...

Squeezed inside an enclosed box , a welder works in scorching conditions to join two steel legs that support the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. A supervisor working for the contractor checks the crucial first weld, followed by an independent inspector required to test the weld within 30 minutes. Another inspector hired by Caltrans reviews the initial inspector's paperwork to make sure everything is OK. The Caltrans-hired inspector also randomly checks about 10 percent of the welds. If substandard welds exist on the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, the work would have slipped by a chain...

Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration hired independent welding inspectors Monday to examine claims of shoddy and unsafe work on the eastern span of the new Bay Bridge. Mike Mayes, president of Mayes Testing Engineers of Everett, Wash., and metals consultant Roy Teal of Albany, N.Y., visited the site Tuesday for "confined space training" to access welding locations deep inside bridge foundations. The two, along with state and federal inspectors, were scheduled to examine some welds to determine what resources would be needed for a more thorough review, according to Caltrans. The state Department of Transportation has declined to offer...

The Bay Bridge retrofit contractor's new spokesman is a political public-relations heavy hitter with a national reputation for digging up dirt on embattled clients' critics. Chris Lehane, 37, helped the Clinton White House spin the Whitewater investigation, spoke for Vice President Al Gore on the 2000 presidential campaign trail and advised former Gov. Gray Davis during the 2001 energy crisis and 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Now he's working for KFM Joint Venture, the contractor building the Bay Bridge's new eastern span. The Oakland Tribune has reported welders' accusations that many of the project's welds are defective and that unsafe working conditions...

The state Attorney General's Office announced Friday it is investigating allegations of faulty welds on the new Bay Bridge's skyway section, adding another layer of controversy to a project already under the glare of an FBI inquiry. "What we're investigating is whether the contractor or others made misrepresentations or engaged in other deception to obtain taxpayer money," said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Although the FBI has begun a criminal investigation into allegations that welders were told by contractor KFM to conceal defects to speed up construction, Lockyer's office has opened a civil probe to win back...

Federal and state inspectors found no problems in the first tests of Bay Bridge welds checked in response to allegations last week that welders working on the new span routinely covered up faulty work under pressure from their bosses to get the job done quickly, officials said Wednesday. Using sophisticated magnetic particle testing, inspectors from the Federal Highway Administration and contractors hired by the California Department of Transportation checked five welds in one pier at the base of a column that will support a portion of the elevated skyway, Caltrans said. "It was one box that is still accessible," said...

While outside experts said faulty welds could cost billions of dollars to repair, Caltrans chief Will Kempton on Friday stood solidly behind the department's quality control system for welding work on the new Bay Bridge. "We are confident the bridge is safe," Kempton said at the new span's construction nerve center in Oakland a day after he halted all concrete work to examine the suspect welding following allegations of inferior work on the new eastern span. Kempton didn't offer a time frame or cost estimates for new inspections, saying only Caltrans and federal highway engineers would quickly investigate, X-ray and...

On paper, the new Bay Bridge construction project boasts one of the best safety records in the country for such a massive and typically dangerous undertaking. In fact, according to those records, building the new eastern span is five times safer than the average heavy construction project - even safer than working in your average flower shop. The agency enforcing state safety standards on the bridge work site sees no problem with those numbers. Health and safety experts, however, say they may be too good to be true and warrant examination. Allegations from past and current workers on the project...

With the FBI investigating allegations of faulty welds on the new Bay Bridge span, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office ordered crews Thursday to stop pouring concrete on the last four foundations under construction until state and federal inspectors re-examine some of the work in question. At the same time, Sunne McPeak, the governor's secretary of business, housing and transportation, called in the Federal Highway Administration to start its own safety review -- a process that could take months. "It's not lost on us that we have to move quickly on a review of the welds,'' said Mark DeSio, spokesman for both...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger became the highest-level official to call for investigations of Bay Bridge construction as Caltrans ordered a halt to a welding operation that is part of an FBI fraud probe that widened Thursday. Caltrans Director Will Kempton ordered Bay Bridge construction team KFM Joint Venture to cancel a concrete pour over four of the remaining footings where workers allege shoddy welds are being done. Kempton also called for a reinspection of all the welds that would have been buried by the pour, even as the state agency and KFM insist that the nearly 5,000 welds were done properly...

The new Bay Bridge is riddled with defective welds, 15 welders told the Oakland Tribune in a nine-month investigation - allegations that could lead to criminal fraud charges. The welders' claims have prompted an FBI investigation. In the worst case, the federal probe could lead to tearing apart the bridge to see if it is structurally sound or needs to be rebuilt. The FBI began investigating allegations in February that welders were "encouraged or instructed to save time by producing substandard welds," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Mark Mershon of the bureau's San Francisco division. The bureau is investigating...