Posted on 01/15/2008 10:21:06 AM PST by jdm
The collapse of the St. Anthony Bridge in Minneapolis started with a design flaw in the gusset plates, confirming suspicions that arose in the first week of the investigation. A source familiar with the conclusion told CNN earlier this morning that the NTSB will announce that finding later today, ending speculation that poor maintenance caused the deaths of 13 people last August:
Federal investigators have identified a design flaw as the cause of last year's Interstate 35W Minneapolis bridge collapse that killed 13 people, a congressional official said Tuesday.
The official, who was briefed by the National Transportation Safety Board, said that investigators found a design flaw in the bridge's gusset plates, which are the steel plates that tie steel beams together.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt an update being provided later Tuesday by the NTSB chairman, Mark V. Rosenker.
The findings are consistent with what the NTSB said about a week after the August 1 collapse, in which the bridge plunged into the Mississippi River.
Within hours of the collapse, some critics here and nationwide pointed to the collapse as the end result of underfunded infrastructure. One local crank blamed the head of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota for turning bridges into deathtraps six hours after the bridge failed. Others demanded a gas-tax increase to bolster the $2.2 billion annual budget for MnDOT, the agency which spends three times more than the budget for public safety every year.
Instead, we find out that the bridge design doomed it from the start. The bridge was built in a post-war period where streamlining and efficiency created a lot of questionable bridge designs; a few years later, architects returned to the more robust pre-war concepts. This collapse showed why that was necessary, and it serves as a warning to those who skimp on redundancy as unnecessarily costly in building infrastructure.
Minnesota has already begun building the replacement bridge, which we hope will be complete by the end of the year. Everyone can learn lessons about this bridge collapse, especially those who attempted to exploit it for their own political agendas.
UPDATE: USA Today has more:
In the wreckage of the I-35W bridge, investigators found 16 gusset plates that were fractured, said one of the officials. Eight of the plates were in the location on the south side of the bridge where the collapse began, according to that official.
The fractures prompted engineers to calculate whether the plates were adequate to hold the bridge together. What they found was that the half-inch thick plates should have been an inch thick — double the size.
And without a redundant support structure, once the first gusset plate fractured, the rest would have failed as the weight of the bridge shifted and generated momentum.
between this and declining violence in Iraq, leftists have less and less to be happy about. of course, they can keep pulling for a recession.
“Others demanded a gas-tax increase to bolster the $2.2 billion annual budget for MnDOT, the agency which spends three times more than the budget for public safety every year.”
Yeah, let’s increase taxes to give more to Leviathan to take care of us. Great idea.
Time to privatize.
This is total BS. It is an attempt to sweep the entire thing under the rug.
It has been long known that the bridges built during the original Interstate building program had flaws. I have no doubt that the bridge (indlucing the gussets) fully met design standards WHEN IT WAS BUILT. Since then we have learned a LOT more and the design standards have changed.
The problem is that there are still a lot of those bridges out there. They need to be replaced, but until there is money to do so, they need to be INSPECTED. This one was inspected regularly (the last time just 6 months or so before it collapsed) and found a mirad of problems. SOMEONE high up in the MNDOT decided to keep the bridge in service in spite of the problems. They are totally ignoring that here.
I only hope that the inevitable lawsuits will allow outside inspection of the documents that they are trying to keep hidden here.
Impossible. The 9-11 Truthers and Experts assure me that steel must become molten before it loses its tensile strength and collapses.
</sarcasm>
The pigeons are vindicated!
(For those who don’t recall, one of theories proposed by engineers, shortly after the collapse, was that it had been caused by damage to structural components by corrosive pigeon poop.)
The Liberal prescription for everything is always the same: Raise Taxes.
A bridge falls down, raise taxes. A bridge stays up, raise taxes. It’s warm outside, raise taxes. It’s cold outside, raise taxes. Schools are failing, raise taxes. Schools are doing the job (as if!), raise taxes. The price of gas is down, raise taxes. The price of gas is up, raise taxes...
Whatever it is, we gotta raise taxes!
What! No way! Steel doesn’t melt!
The bridge was completed in 1967 ... that's pretty danged "post-war."
I heard the official say that the collapse originated at U-10. Anyone have a photo of the bridge?
Just so everyone understands...
It’s still Bush’s fault!
Notice - Bridge Collapses. Can we blame it on Bush?
Yes - page A1, above the fold
No - page D14
They said the calculations were wrong. The error may have been in one of several stages—design, drafting, etc., I can’t remember exactly. The calculations were not reviewed after the point at which the error occured.
Yet amazingly, this flawed bridge stood for what? 50yrs?
“Yet amazingly, this flawed bridge stood for what? 50yrs?”
So what, Hellary has been standing for 60, but she has a thicker buttress.
Maybe someone could post relevant pics and diagrams that show where U-10 is on the bridge? From here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884493/posts
It appears that the high level of inspection and maintenance needed for bridges of this era in question will be known to the industry and governmental bodies but be tooooooo tooooo inflamatory to discuss in the public media.
See post #38 at that link above.
The Engineer attended all pass/fail classes, and was given diversity points.
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