Posted on 08/01/2007 4:28:27 PM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis.....
Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars......
Just now breaking.......
I hope he is pro America and does not have any supportive leadings for Islamic jihadists
Well, I don't know what his politics are, but he's not Arab, he sounded Indian. An Indian Engineer... Unheard of, absurd! ;~)
Well, it was only a matter of time before the “insinuations” started.
A local reporter (on the 10PM news) said that Minnesota has not raised its gas tax since 1988 and that has short-changed essential road and bridge work.
They also interviewed former state Transportation Commisioner (and Democrat) Elwyn Tinklenberg who said that this sort of thing was overdue because of our inability to properly fund our roads and bridges.
Be wary, Minnesota Freepers! It’s already started and will get worse.
Even more amazing to me, is how few people were actually killed in this disaster. The actual number will trickle in over the next few hours, but I would be amazed if it gets higher than 20 dead.
Think about it!
MN official: Sadly, seven now confirmed dead. More sadness, they expect that number to go up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I keep tryin’ to count how many folks are in the hospitals vs how many cars and two school buses that were reported
to have gone in the river...Prayers Up...
Just got in. My family and I were blessed enough to be dining out for a special occasion, so when we heard of this, we were all together in one place. But of all of us are wondering if any friends or acquaintances were involved in this collapse.
Unbelievable.
A fair point. Though, from other reports my present understanding is that the construction work happening on the bridge was limited to merely resurfacing the road and that there was no structural work happening under the bridge at the moment.
Way upthread there was somebody (sorry, don't remember who...) that posited the idea that maybe it was the breakup of the roadbed that was the final straw that broke the bridge. This is an interesting idea.
The ribbon of asphalt and concrete that spans the bridge as the roadbed isn't usually considered to be among the structural supports. But it makes sense that this ribbon might spread the forces on the bridge and that some other structural problems on the bridge might be masked by this peripheral support. Then... when this ribbon of material is broken, it then of course cascades to expose the other weaknesses and perhaps break them.
Sheer guesswork at this point. The investigation will figure it out.
That would be a point if it were a deck failure, but I didn't see anything that looked like a deck elongation happened.
Nah... it couldn't have been dollar diverted from the transportation bills into moronic things like "light rail" could it? Gotta be we aren't gouging the working folks at the pumps with higher taxes...
Yep...saw that, Perchant.
Typical of the moron-lefty-media......
Correct, you just put more 'badges' around them (which will indicate the level of threat), scare off the bad-guys and hand out free cans of Rustoleum.
Really looks like structural failure, and probably not unless they have good intel. Unless it’s a new style or group of terrorism, this doesn’t fit the MO. Bridges would have been blowing up or crashing all over the place already, and something would have been in place to kill the first responders to each incident.
Prayers for those in Minneapolis.
Check back when you know........
Shortly after the incident, Fox had someone talking who had been there -- they said (paraphrase, but pretty close to verbatim, and the key words are accurate) that they had to leave "because of the smell from the explosion...um...the trucks."
If there were emplaced explosives of the quantity required for demolition of this sort, it would immediately be detectable. In fact you could smell it anywhere in the vicinity, without any difficulty whatsoever. Even well placed shaped demolition charges would be easily sniffed out, and bystanders would be under no illusions about what they were smelling.
[...]
As I posted earlier, if there were even relatively small quantities of explosive used, everyone in the vicinity could smell it.
That struck me as very odd, and reminded me of something George Stephanopoulos and one or two other Clinton White House "insiders" said (independently of each other, in different venues), namely, something regarding "the bombing of Flight 800." (Key point being that the people who let slip that phrasing were people who were in a position to know whatever was actually known, even if "we the people" were kept cleanly out of the loop.)
The other thing I was reminded of was having watched CNN, live, the morning of the OKC attack. During the coverage, they reported that they were ordered to move back another block or so -- and, sure enough, the cameras showed the crowd suddenly running like heck to get away from the building. They said they had been informed that another bomb had been found inside the remains of the building -- unexploded. Shortly thereafter, they said that they could confirm it, that they had been told by the FBI that there was indeed another bomb inside the building -- unexploded.
That report was NEVER mentioned in any of the replays of the morning's coverage. Never. There was never even any mention of it. I found that to be quite remarkable. I mean, they didn't even say that the report was wrong. They just "unexisted" it out of the day's history, as if it had never happened. No acknowlegement, no discussion, no futher mention of it. The LACK of any further mention of something of that magnitude (whether it was accurate or inaccurate, the subject itself was of incredible magnitude) struck me as "conspicuous by its absence."
But, I digress.
You said that if there were explosives, people in the vicinity would be able to smell it -- and, it appears that people in the vicinity smelled it.
All of the steel is still there so we will know in time
I heard that emergency personnel were pulled back because the bridge started moving downstream.
I don’t think there were school buses in the river. They reported that 60 kids on the one bus on the bridge decking got out, and 12 of them went to the hospital.
Bumper to bumper traffic due to construction maximized the amount of traffic vehicles (weight) on the bridge.
Never ever had bumper to bumper traffic before? Weren't lanes closed, reducing the weight?
Construction crews and their personal vehicles added more weight.
Yeah, those fat contractors...
They were poring concrete and had numerous large concrete trucks (overly heavy loads concentrated in small areas).
Didn't see one concrete truck in any of the photos or videos.
They had many smaller liquid concrete vehicles moving and pouring concrete (bobcat size).
Those fat contractors driving Bobcats.
During this period, a train was passing by underneath, which caused a flexing (depression) of the ground support for the bridge, causing the girders to drop and flex.
Don't know if the train was passing below at the time, but the tracks are not below the steel span. The tracks are below the concrete structure portion. See here
This bridge has no center piers buried in the river bed like many others. It was supported only by the ends, and they couldn’t take all those forces at once.
Yeah, right. They designed the bridge with center spans but forgot to install them.
I wonder how slowly "slowly" is? 10 seconds? 20? 60?
Well, that is a fact! The Minnesota gas tax is a flat fee per gallon and not adjusted for inflation. It is not even a percentage of the price per gallon.
Each year, the costs for essential road and bridge work has increased because of inflation, but the gas tax has been fixed since 1988.
Now out of this very limited budget, remove another $1 billion to create a choo-choo train between Minneapolis and the Mega Mall.
Yes MplsSteve, I AM POINTING FINGERS!
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