That video is pretty phenomenal. I wonder was it taken from the North or from the South? The North side fell first, right?

I heard from my friend. He is ok! He actually went over the bridge just 1 HOUR before the collapse!!!

Glad to hear that.....


And DeltAlum...tried to quote part of your post, zapped it away.
This is a small world getting smaller. Re: Gallipolis, Point Pleasant.
My mom and aunt are heading for a cruise (which sounds good in this stupid heat). Will ask when they get back. My dad was from a big family, but he died awhile back, and after my parents divorced when I was pre teen, the connection with his side of the family was lost. I hear that many in his family are now in Cleveland and (??) newark.

I spent a summer with my grandparents, also deceased, before going into high school. Their house faced a park in town. It is ridiculous how lacking in family history I am.

This is a complete misrepresentation of what those words mean to actual civil engineers.

Just saying.

"State transportation officials were warned as early as 1990 that the 40-year-old bridge was "structurally deficient" and in need of major repair or even replacement.

Federal inspectors gave the same forecast in 2005, but state engineers say the span was not slated for replacement until 2020.




I don't know what they might mean to a civil engineer, but I'll bet a lot of judges and juries are going to hear them in the not too distant future.

What is sad, is the state of roads and bridges in this country!:mad:

The first Inter-State was under DDE as Presidents Adm.

It was started for Military situations and was begun in Ks. I-70.

So, it was expanded to what We know as the Super Highways of today that We all enjoy!

But, they are going to crap and who pays for it?

Either We do or there are deaths such as these and it will not be the last!

States raise taxes and miss use them, period! Oh don't forget about poor contractors and shoddy construction such as the Big Did in Boston!:mad:

Scarry isn't it?

How many Bridges or shitty Highways do you drive on?:mad:

Am I the only one who thinks about this?

As I have traveled across the country, I have wondered how much our infrastructure cost to build, and how much it would be to replace it.

It was really brought home to me when I was living in New York City and considering how old everything looks.

The collapse of the steam tunnel there, and now this bridge episode in Minnesota have really brought those thoughts home.

The overall situation is really scary.

How in the world can we ever replace this stuff as it just simply wears out?

I was under the impression that they WERE fixing it when it collapsed. It seems to me that the blame here lies with the company who was orchestrating the update/repair of the bridge. I find it very suspicious that this bridge collapsed after being worked on and was scheduled to have more work done, when it has stayed up and running for years. Someone dropped the ball on this one...

I'll leave it to the engineering folks to figure that out.

I'm talking about replacing the stuff -- not sticking on a band-aid.

Sooner or later, band-aids don't help anymore.

Well, unfortunately, people have to travel on those roads, so it is difficult to simply replace bridges and roads altogether. I am picturing city/state government attempting to replace roads and bridges, and people flipping out...

That's another piece of the equation.

It sure is--and how about people debating raising taxes in order to replace all of the bridges and roads? It's hard enough to get people to accept the taxes they already have. I personally wouldn't mind paying higher taxes for these things, but a lot of people would have a HUGE problem with it. I don't even want to think about how people would react if their government started redoing every bridge, overpass, or highway in their area... I have construction on the road where I live, and they are ripping apart people's yards, having to pay police to direct traffic, and real estate isn't selling because no one wants to live by the construction. Just thinking about a project that massive makes me cringe... :eek:

CBS-Radio had a report the other day that put the cost at $5,500.00 per person in the US. Not sure if that was everyone or "taxpaying Adults".
It was over a Trillion dollars.
As someone else posted, states have used monies that were "dedicated" to road/highway/bridge repair for everything else.

As we as voters have been "taught" over the past several years to think that no tax raises or lower taxes would be good for us all.

Search "Tappan Zee Bridge" under both news and web for insight.

I live in the tri-state area. Which article, exactly, are you referring to?

Just about any of them in the past few years.
Has been in the papers everyday since Minneapolis.
Many stories about: the need to replace it.
The hows and whys.
Those for and against every how and why.
The hows and whys of just repairing it to keep
it in one piece until it is replaced.

Bottom line: The bridge was made on the cheap, has out lasted
its life expectancy, and falling apart everyday.

True--but like I said earlier, who is going to pay for this? Will budgets be re-adjusted in order to do so? We'll see what happens. I have no idea, I just know that the situation in Minneapolis has sparked a lot of energy on the topic.

Random thoughts here...

When they replaced the Rouge River Bridge in Detroit (part of I-75), from what I can remember, they built the bridge and rebuilt part of the freeway and then connected those to the old freeway. You can still see a draw bridge next to the original. I think they did this with the big Zilwaukee bridge over the Saginaw River up north. This can lead to minimal traffic disruption. It's not like the old bridge was out of commission the whole time the new one was being built. That was happening on either I-75 or 280 in Toledo also.

I saw a poll on some news channel yesterday "Should we pay for health care or fixing infrastructure like bridges?" My answer would be BOTH, instead of some of the other junk we pay for. Maybe that bridge to nowhere shoulda been somewhere else.

Infrastructure, if done right, seems like it should last a very long time. Pyramids? Isn't the basic infrastructure in Europe much older than ours? It seems like if it is maintained properly, it could last.

I agree that structurally deficient probably means something very different to civil engineers than it sounds to us. In my experience with inspections in health care, it is their job to find deficiencies and they will find some deficiency no matter what. The level of deficiency will vary and the number will vary, but every hospital in the country gets Type I and Type II recommendations from JCAHO. (Type I being more major than Type II). If a bad thing happened at any given hospital and those accreditation inspection reports were pulled, it would sound bad to lay people, I think.

There's been an ongoing project near AGDee and I that has closed a stretch of I75. They've been replacing all the overpasses.... actually tearing them all down and replacing them. They did the same on our Southfield Expressway. While it is an inconvenience between taking different routes, and dealing with traffic in our neighborhoods, you really appreciate it when you see stories like this.

So it's either people flipping out, or people dying. I'd rather people flip out.

St. Louis decided that they were going to completely redo 64/40 because of its age. While I can't remembr if they decided for sure, the options were 3-4 years if they did it in pieces, and 2 years if they just shut the whole thing down. Either way traffic was going to suck, so you might as well go all out. Yeah, people are going to get upset but usually you tell them "we do this or you will die" and they go along with it. Interestingly they'd just worked on all the overpasses on 40 before announcing this. I'm willing to bet they found a few they didn't like.

Also when it comes to bridges, you're not always suck rebuilding a bridge in the same place. Hannibal, MO built a new bridge across the Mississippi some distance away from the old one. That was easier than trying to renovate the old one or completely shut down travel across the river.

They just finished what was supposed to be a seven year project widening I-25 (the Valley Highway) from the Denver Tech Center to Downtown. They did a really good job, I think. The contract called for at least three lanes to be open each way most of the day (there were a few overnights -- like midnight to 5:00 AM when it was down to two lanes -- and a couple of short distance total closures overnight) and replaced ALL of the bridges going over the highway along with most of the on and off ramps. They also added Light Rail the entire length of the project. It was called T-Rex which might give some idea of what was expected.

They managed to finish it more than a year early, and under budget.

It's not that there weren't hassles, nor was the job without problems, but given how screwed up it could have made things, I was pretty impressed.

I think this was the same company that re-built a lot of the freeways in Salt Lake City prior to the Olympics, which I hear was a headache of gigantic proportions.

They must have learned from their mistakes.

Because of this, K C metro area is re upping bridge inspectiions!

@ 10 have been targeted and I know them all very well. Some are really scarry!

Talked with a friend who is a KsDot engineer and project coordinater and what he tells me makes me worry even more! All of these have been patched over for years and years. All of these bridges are over either the Kansas or Missouri Rivers.

Talk about patch work on highways, I-70 and I-435 are continually being worked on for the simple reason some moron decided re-bar was not needed! A new concept! What a disaster. Re-bar helps the concrete stay more stable.

St. Louis Bridges have been in terrible shape for years. The one over the Mississippi River that carries I-70, wow does it need help!

Was it the Eads Street Bridge that was closed so many years open up yet?

States just are not putting money in to infrastructure and the Federal Govt. is running out of money for their big fund also.

Amazing that Pork barreling is still big but for some funky things. Oh, to be PC, they are called ear marks now!

I didn't say that I wanted people to die, or that I'd flip out, I just said government will have a hard time getting all of this stuff passed, since people will flip out, and make it hard to do... There wasn't really a need to give the ultimatum of people "flipping out, or people dying."

Clearly and understatement.

We seem to want everything..but don't want to pay for any of it.

It just doesn't work that way.

I agree. I do not see everyone opening up their check books to write a $5,500.00 check to the government anytime soon.

But we do have to realize that what "we have been trained to think" just maybe wrong. How many years have gone by that we have been told that taxes are evil, that taxes will not be raised, that taxes will be lowered et al.

Yet we still want and need our services. We still have to pay for government operations et al.

Perhaps it is time to review tax laws and codes and how they are used and mis-used.

Perhaps it is time to ask official and politicians, at all levels, why monies from dedicated highway funds are either not being used or if used mis-used.

Again, as I said earlier, I have no problems with raising taxes to pay for repairs to our highways and bridges. As I said earlier, other people, who you yourself have cited, WILL have a problem with taxes being raised. Perhaps it is time for society to re-assess how they view taxes and their purpose--I completely agree, and have for a long time...

Agreed--people do want everything and don't want to pay for it. As I said earlier--several times--I would be willing to pay higher taxes for services like repairs to highways and bridges; however, others may not feel the same way. It seems those of us posting in this thread are all coming from the same place and are on the same page.

I wonder.

Let's take a real infomal, unscientific poll.

How many who read this thread would approve of a fairly substantial tax increase in order to replace decaying infrastructure?

I would.

Put it up as a poll, see what happens...;)

Anybody know how to do that without starting a new thread? I don't.

I vote for us to pull the hell out of Iraq, stop spending money on this bullshit, and use that money to pay for the decaying infrastructure. I vote to worry about our own country.

Ok, I have to admit, that construction caused me bunches of stress. So much so, that I changed my hours to reduce the amount of traffic rage that I have to deal with on a daily basis. On top of that, every week.. every single week, some semi gets in an accident in this zone and the whole freeway has to shut down for hours and hours and, in most of the cases, someone was killed. There's got to be a safer way to go about that construction! But, I decided to stop griping about the whole thing after the bridge collapse. I just think that particular construction zone, the way it was set up, should have been CLOSED TO TRUCK TRAFFIC.

I also think that we are paying for a heck of a lot of stuff that I consider less important than the basic infrastructure. I'm not opposed to some tax increases to cover this, if I were convinced that the waste was cut from the budget first. It's not as if all of it has to be replaced immediately so the $5500 per person could be stretched out over say.. 10 years. $550 a person a year isn't that much.

There's almost no chance, according to structural engineers, that a 4-inch gap in the roadway caused the bridge to fail. This was the work performed by the construction crew, according to reports.

The roadway construction really has nothing to do with the integrity of the structure, which is based on force elements of the truss and it's connection with the roadway on each side of the river and via the infamous "ten pins" across the span.

The very existence of the roadway crew on the bridge is likely an unfortunate strawman that will cause debate like this (and even the civil cases Delt mentioned), instead of discovery of the actual cause and problems that likely exist in other, similar bridges.

I believe it was a bit more complicated than a "4-inch gap" as you so gingerly put it. Both of these stories cite numerous problems with the bridge, most likely aggravated by the construction on the bridge:

http://wcco.com/local/local_story_217151047.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation..._bridge03.html

In the second article, an expert states,
"I would be stunned if this didn't have something to do with the construction project," said David Schulz, director of the Infrastructure Technology Institute at Northwestern University. "I think it's a major factor."

Although there is evidence for both sides of this argument, your assertion that the viewpoint I offered is completely unfounded is ridiculous. Experts, including "engineers," as you stated, are still not sure what caused the collapse. I was simply stating my own suspicions... :rolleyes:

OK - I should have been more specific, and I meant to point out a larger issue rather than acting like your suspicions were "unfounded" (everyone's are, at this point, honestly - nothing wrong with that). My bad - I really didn't mean for it to be that 'pointed' or specific to your views.

The construction itself was moderately superficial - however, there was a lot of equipment on the scene, much of it very heavy equipment, and the work went on around the clock. Could the excess weight have contributed? Surely - that's one current avenue of exploration.

Did the construction exacerbate an existing problem? This seems intuitively likely. However, we've all seen construction on bridges where part of the roadbed has been removed, altered or worked on - it's clear this doesn't usually cause the bridge to fail (which is what I meant before).

I really meant my point as more of a diatribe against news sources like CNN and FOX, which have ran wild with speculation rather than news reporting. FOX particularly ran with several "eye witness" interviews and speculation about the road construction, which should have been 'routine' (obviously), that seemed to blame the construction workers for making some catastrophic error . . . likely the problem was much more insidious than a simple worker error, though. It's just bizarre, to me.

I guess this might be something where I have deeper concerns - does the state (or the construction contractor) really check the interactions between roadway equipment, actual work and traffic with the existing structure? Do we go into a panic mode and alter every bridge with "structurally deficient" ratings (even though these are supposedly traversable)? Don't these two issues intersect in a potentially harmful way?

Again, sorry to sound like I wanted to single you out - but yeah, around here people are panicking every time a construction crew removes part of a roadbed. It just seems like it's a symptom of a larger problem, and I should have been more transparent with that thought.

Similarly, the shock-value headlines decrying the bridge's condition as "structurally deficient" really seem set to cause an uproar - and, granted, it sucks that such harsh terms are used, because it kind of invites these sort of reactions, but no one thought anything of this until a bunch of people died/got hurt. It's kind of sick, really.

Agreed--it seems that it takes a travesty these days for most people to pay attention to obvious dangers... It really is sick.

AMEN!!!

I have to admit that even after many years working in TV, I have to just shake my head in wonder when reporters and media outlets feel like they must assign blame within hours after an event happens.

When will we learn that investigations, especially ones as complex as this or a plane crash or whatever, take time? This kind of desire for instant analysis leads to some really bad reporting.

Linda Ellerby tells the story of a local reporter at a news conference only hours after an airplane crash pushing the medical examiner again and again for a "cause of death." Finally, in frustration, the doctor said, "Lady, the airplane stopped and the people didn't."

As KSig has pointed out, maintenance (It's really maintenance rather than "construction" isn't it?) is carried out daily on bridges all over the world without catastrophic results. If the maintenance really had anything to do with this collapse, it seems to me that it would more likely due to exascerbatie a serious problem that was already existing -- possibly for a long time -- than being the "reason" for the failure.

One thing I have noticed is that the "obvious" is very often not the culprit when the results of the investigation are finally released. The NTSB and other agencies will take the time necessary to try to find a cause for this tragedy, and nothing we say or do will speed up the investigative process.

Many of these Op-Ed observations are both touching and pointed.
http://cagle.com/news/BridgeCollapse/main.asp

Two more bodies found today.