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To: Eye of Unk
"I am not sure but I think I saw two front discharge concrete mixers on one of the fallen roadways, "

That shouldn't be a problem, even if they were off to the side, because that would be where 18 wheelers of the same weight would pass in line regularly.

"Looking at the videos its just a bit strange how it fell, more like a controlled demolition. I would ask some of those demolition experts if it could be done without using explosives.

One of the truss members, or connection, around the SE pier failed. That caused the roadbed to tilt down, drop, pop at all the bearing points, and drop straight down. The rest of the road bed followed as a rigid sheet (road bed + superstructure, straight down). I can't find the SE king post in the rubble. The SW one tiddly winked out and off it's pile intact. You could ID different truss members, or supports on the SE side which are critical. What's important though was for someone to do that before this happened and recognize that something was wrong in that area. The steel there was already failing and had strained to a point, that the bearings in the expansion joint were taking up unnatural stress. That's why a normal load triggered a catastrophe.

As far as a man made "crack" goes, the investigators that have the broken pieces in hand and can see how it all fell, could spot that right away. They probably already know why the bridge fell. They won't release that until they reconstruct the whole thing on paper, instead of envelopes and go over it a few times.

2,346 posted on 08/02/2007 7:54:59 PM PDT by spunkets ("Freedom is about authority", Rudy Giuliani, gun grabber)
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To: Eye of Unk; concretebob; Lady Jag; jeffers; wagglebee; Milwaukee_Guy
This is all I can make out of that SE king post. The rest of the beams from the SE truss from that point are just in a pile and I can't see where they go from these pics. The bottom chord seems to have broke, or the the rivets/plate holding it gave. I think that was the beginning of the catastrophic event that brought the thing down. The king post buckled once that occurred. The truss section containing the SW king post is intact and popped off the post. That road bed was just under a lot of tension when the bottom cord popped loose at that resting pad. The top chord would have gone from compression to tension very quickly at the top of the SE king post.

Once the king post buckled a little, that expansion joint above would tear loose, popping pins across the joint, from SE to SE very fast. That would result in the fall seen in the video and reported as "the center falling, or dropping out". So the fatigue was in the bottom chord, or the elements of the chord attachment at the SE pad.

Here's the before for ref.


2,464 posted on 08/02/2007 10:23:08 PM PDT by spunkets ("Freedom is about authority", Rudy Giuliani, gun grabber)
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