Bridge Collapse

[lord_verminaard at yahoo.com (Brendan Doyle)]

I don't know why it always takes some sort of tragedy for anyone to realize there is a problem with something.  I love how a day after it happened, all over the news there are headlines: "Highways in the USA in dire need of repair!"  Well DUUUUUUHHHHHHH!  Ever drive on the fuckin roads?  A 4-year old in the back seat of a car could tell you that.  :P

It all goes back to Eisenhower!  He saw how well the German autobahn worked and how well built it was.  So of course the USA needs our own version, but it needs to be cheaper and built quicker.  But instead of building it with a minimum concrete thickness of 27 inches like the Germans, it would be less than half of that standard.  Why not!  Now there is not a stretch of road anywhere that is not under some sort of repair.  I'm not saying the autobahn is never under repair, but it NEEDS to be in better shape with the higher speed of travel and I'd be willing to bet they have far fewer road issues than we have.

I'm not really as fired up about this as it may seem.  It's just one of my little pet peeves.  

Brendan

----- Original Message ----
From: Spewey <spewey@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: scirocco-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, August 7, 2007 2:07:10 AM
Subject: Re: Bridge Collapse

Jesus H, people.  As someone who has had the term "Metallurgical" in 
their professional title before, I wanted to take a minute to have a 
look at what a crap job bridge inspection is.  All over the news are 
reports of "fatigue," "structurally deficient" and "50/120" as if the 
news pundits or the populace has any idea what that stuff means.  And 
then they go and attack them because they screwed up.  Colossal 
shittiness.

We won't know for a long time who screwed up.  And I know there are some 
people here who do Failure Analysis or FMEA on car parts who know how 
easy it is to look at a computer screen or even peer into a microscope 
to investigate corrosion or work hardening but the men and women who 
hang off bridges have a difficult job:  they can't take a bridge beam 
back to the lab.  They have to sign off on it in situ.

FDNY, blah blah, first responder, Navy divers, schoolbus full of 
precious loinfruit...once you're done feeling all red white and blue, 
please take a second to think about the poor inspectors before you throw 
a spark plug at them for making you late.

 From the news:

"It's nuts," said a second MnDOT expert who has inspected the bridge. 
"The first thing you notice is that the traffic is not giving you a 
break. And in MnDOT there is a real reluctance to close a lane of 
traffic because then you're impeding flow. Then there's the height over 
the water, the pigeons, bats and spiders. If you're a little squirrelly 
about those things, you shouldn't be in the business. It's nasty 
business down there."

http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1347900.html

Some Minnesota Department of Transportation employees have found 
themselves the target of "very...serious threats by email and phone calls"

http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1347187.html

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