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SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Jerry Brown recently stepped in it when a reporter asked him about the Bay Bridge. In March, 32 of 96 key rods in the under-construction eastern span cracked after they were tightened. Dao Guv -- who, as Oakland's mayor, helped delay construction of the new span to win a tony, world-class design -- gave the wrong answer: "(Scatological stuff) happens." The state Senate Transportation and Housing Committee held a hearing Tuesday to find out how such stuff happens. State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, wants to know. As a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in 1998,...

The rods connect steel earthquake safety devices to the deck of the bridge and a large concrete cap. They snapped while being tightened in March.

Brown says public still confident in Bay BridgeGov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that he believes the public still has confidence in the safety of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge despite concerns about construction of the $6.4 billion span that is scheduled to open later this year. State transportation officials recently disclosed that nearly three dozen seismic safety bolts on the eastern span of the bridge had broken. But Brown says people generally understand there will be construction problems on major infrastructure projects. "Don't know if it's a setback. I mean, look, sh&# happens. That's all I can say,'' Brown...

OAKLAND — Strategically positioned high above the water, in a narrow crawl space between the new Bay Bridge deck and the top of its big pier east of the tower, instruments are listening for the sounds of cracking inside steel anchor rods. Caltrans placed 10 acoustic emission sensors on select rods in early April after some of the massive bolts -- 3 inches in diameter and 17 to 24 feet long -- snapped and triggered widespread worry about the replacement eastern span's seismic safety. The instrument records the energy produced when a crack initiates, spreads or moves within the rod,...

SAN FRANCISCO --The most expensive public works project in California history just got a little more so. At least 32 massive seismic stabilizing bolts on San Francisco’s newly redesigned eastern span of the Bay Bridge failed during a stress test earlier this month, imperiling the structure’s Labor Day weekend grand opening. Of the span’s 96 bolts, which range in length from 9 to 17 feet, 32 snapped when stress meant to simulate the lateral motion of a large earthquake was introduced, the Sacramento Bee reported

At least 30 of the giant bolts that hold together the new, $6.4 billion eastern span of the Bay Bridge have snapped. As a result, Caltrans is considering replacing all 288 of the bolts on the new bridge before it opens, The Chronicle has learned. Caltrans insists the new span is safe and that plans to open it the day after Labor Day are still on track. However, officials say it's too early to determine how long it will take to fix the problem - or the cost. Toll Bridge Program Manager Tony Anziano said engineers are "pretty confident" the...

Bay Area bridge commuters will be ponying up $37 for each of the 150,000 people expected to walk across the new Bay Bridge span during the big Labor Day opening celebration. That's the breakdown on the math for the $5.6 million in toll money going toward the public side of the public-private celebration marking completion of the new eastern span.

SKIERNIEWICE, Poland -- Chinese companies have wowed the world with superhighways, high-speed trains and snazzy airports, all built seemingly overnight. Yet a modest highway through Polish potato fields proved to be too much for one of China's biggest builders. The A2 highway between Warsaw and Berlin was supposed to be an opportunity for Chinese construction to shine on a European stage after years of megaprojects at home and in the developing world. Poland badly wanted the project completed before the European soccer championships starting June 8, which Poland is hosting for the first time with Ukraine. Instead, a key 30-mile...

Oakland -- For the first time since the design of the new east span of the Bay Bridge was selected in 1998, it no longer takes a healthy imagination or a look at artist renderings or models to visualize what it will look like. On Monday night, catwalk lights were switched on at 7:45, giving the Bay Area a preview of the bridge's after-dark appearance when it opens in 2013. A little more than a week ago, construction crews finished hanging orange catwalks that trace the path that the single-tower suspension span's mile-long main cable will follow. Construction of the...

MDTA Hurricane Update -- Saturday, Aug. 27 -- 7:45 p.m. BAY BRIDGE CLOSED; Nice/Key/Hatem/Tydings bridges in Wind Warnings The Bay Bridge (US 50/301) was closed at approximately 7:35 p.m. today as a result of severe winds and unsafe driving conditions due to Hurricane Irene. The bridge is experiencing sustained winds of more than 62 mph and wind gusts of 72-80 mph and will remain closed until conditions are deemed safe for vehicles to cross. MDTA's four additional bridges including the Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge (US 301), the Francis Scott Key Bridge (I-695), the Tydings Memorial Bridge (I-95) and the...

Wow!Same photo here. It takes a short to load the above page. http://imgs.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/inberkeley/2011/03/11/Tsunami600x336.jpg

A man who claims to have pipe bombs is threatening to jump off the Bay Bridge. A female got out of the car and said there are five bombs in the vehicle. All westbound traffic is being stopped at the toll plaza.

President Kennedy made one of his greatest speeches in Berlin. Some debate whether his German intonation was perfect -- "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- but the speech's venue certainly was perfect. Kennedy wanted a side-by-side comparison of limited government versus authoritarian government, and there was no better place to do that than in the artificially divided German city. The speech also employed powerful repetition: "Let them come to Berlin!" Today, there are those who say that America has become more like the dysfunctional, oppressed East Berlin of 1963 than its efficient, free contemporary to the West. New York Times columnist...

With much fanfare and celebration - by Chinese steelworkers and Caltrans officials alike - the first steel pieces of the new Bay Bridge suspension span were prepared to ship out of Shanghai on Tuesday - more than a year late but in time to meet a Dec. 31 deadline that officials hope will keep construction on schedule for a 2013 opening. "It's momentous," said Ken Terpstra, Caltrans' project manager for the Bay Bridge, from Shanghai where workers staged a ceremony complete with daytime fireworks. "It was a hard, challenging road, but they're ready to go." The first shipment, delayed by...

OAKLAND -- KTVU News has learned a key section of that bridge has been delayed again and Caltrans now is bracing for a new cost over-run in the tens of millions of dollars. The history of the new Bay Bridge has been a troubled one from the time the state decided to replace the old eastern span after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The original price tag of a little more than $1 billion has exploded into more than $6 billion along with numerous delays. Now Channel 2 News has learned that next Wednesday, state and local transportation officials are...

<p>A truck driver died early today after losing control on the Bay Bridge S-curve at high speed and plummeting 200 feet below to Yerba Buena Island, the most serious collision yet since the new detour was installed, the California Highway Patrol said.</p>

The Bay Bridge reopened just after 9 a.m. today, six days after a repair job on a cracked structural beam on the eastern span fell apart and plunged onto the upper deck. Tests conducted overnight and this morning on an altered version of that repair job showed that the fix was holding, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said. At 9:01 a.m., a fleet of five California Highway Patrol cars escorted the first private vehicles allowed onto the westbound upper deck since the span was shut down Tuesday evening. About 10 minutes later, the lower deck reopened for traffic heading to the...

And They Want to Be Our Health Care Providers http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com In 2002, Caltrans (California Department of Transportation ) began the construction of a new eastern span of the Bay Bridge. The estimated cost was $1.3 billion dollars. The plan? To rebuild rather than retrofit the span after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 caused a section of the bridge to collapse. After a series of delays and cost overruns the bridge is now expected to be complete in 2013 at a total cost to taxpayers of $6.3 billion. Just $5 billion or 384% over budget. That was before the break...

Authorities said they are shutting down the Bay Bridge in both directions after pieces of the cantilever section fell during the late-afternoon commute, striking three vehicles on the upper deck, the California Highway Patrol said. Caltrans officials said the parts that fell were two high-strength rods and a saddle that were part of the emergency repair that delayed the opening of the bridge on Labor Day weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of Bay Area commuters remain in limbo today as crews scramble to complete an emergency repair to the workhorse Bay Bridge. The 73-year-old bridge, crossed by more than 260,000 cars and trucks a day, was shut down for a larger, unrelated seismic upgrade project. Now, crews are working to fix a cracked steel link, called an eyebar, that helps hold up the east span. Inspectors discovered the problem Saturday afternoon, setting in motion a dash to fix a problem that - by itself - would have forced officials to shut down the bridge. "There's a lot of...

The speed and size of the tractor-trailer involved in the fatal, weekend crash on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge caused a jersey wall to break and allow the truck to plunge into the shallow water below, Maryland officials said Monday. Geoffrey Kolberg, chief engineer for the Maryland Transportation Authority (MTA), said the eastbound span of the bridge, on which the accident took place, is safe despite damage to 8 feet of wall along the right lane and that no structural damage occurred. Mr. Kolberg also said that the Mountaire Farms truck, which was carrying frozen chicken, was traveling westbound when an...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A 920-foot container ship, heading out of the San Francisco Bay from the Port Of Oakland, collided with a supporting tower of the fog-shrouded Bay Bridge early Wednesday, damaging its hull but it was not known if it caused any damage to the vital traffic artery. The collision happened at about 8:15 a.m. during the morning commute but did not disrupt traffic on the bridge.

Conspiracy: Unless the feds had something to do with it, the theory held by Rosie and others that the Twin Towers were brought down by the Bush administration just crashed and burned on a California freeway. In recent discussions on the jaundiced "View" and her Web site, conspiracy theorist Rosie O'Donnell opined that the 9/11 collapse of the Twin Towers, as well as 7 World Trade Center, marked "the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel." This, she said, is "physically impossible." Well, not exactly. Fire only has to weaken a structure already weakened by, say, a...

IF YOU'VE turned on your TV or radio this week, you've heard the question: How could a man with James Mosqueda's criminal record possibly have been approved to haul 8,600 gallons of explosive gasoline? There ought to be a law, some say, to ensure that never again will there be a gasoline-fueled fire that melts down part of the MacArthur Maze -- and, they suggest, this never would have happened if the "hazmat driver" did not have a criminal record. In Mosqueda's case, he has a serious criminal history. The tanker truck driver was convicted of a number of crimes,...

California Highway Patrol investigators are looking into whether a vehicle fire in the Macarthur Maze just before midnight Saturday was in any way connected to the disastrous gasoline tanker wreck that happened at the same spot just four hours later, destroying part of the interchange. The tanker truck crashed at 3:41 a.m. Sunday on the raised, two-lane connector from westbound Interstate 80 to southbound Interstate 880. Authorities have said the driver, who appears to have been moving at an unsafe speed in a 50 mph zone, hit the right guard rail, causing his fully loaded truck to overturn and burst...

SAN FRANCISCO - The experts paid to worry about disasters and terrorism have for years warned of collapsing highway bridges and exploding tanker trucks. They just never foresaw one event that would encompass both. Nonsense Local, state and federal government officials have "war gamed" a failed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge again and again, most recently in November, when a statewide exercise envisioned a 7.9-magnitude earthquake bringing down part of the span. The drills proved useful in responding to Sunday's wreck in which a tanker truck struck a guardrail, overturned and burst into flames, taking down a critical overpass. To some...

The driver who crashed a tanker loaded with gasoline and brought down a heavily trafficked highway overpass was given a commercial trucker's license despite a history of criminal convictions, including drug and burglary arrests. James Mosqueda, 51, of Woodland also got a special hazardous materials endorsement last year from the federal Transportation Security Administration. To get it, he had to undergo an FBI criminal history check and an intelligence background check. "It's reprehensible," said Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, who chairs both the Assembly Transportation Committee and the Joint Committee on Emergency Services and Homeland Security. "Someone with that record...

A section of highway lies burned and crumbled in Emeryville, Calif. MSNBC video •Tanker explodes April 30: One of the West's most-traveled sections of freeway isn't there anymore. NBC's Stephanie Stanton reports. OAKLAND, Calif. - The threat of a nightmarish morning commute led many Bay Area residents to use public transportation Monday, one day after a fiery tanker crash caused a heavily trafficked section of freeway to collapse.

ROSIE: OAKLAND BRIDGE COLLAPSE "INSIDE JOB" - Fiery Crash Collapses Bay Area Freeway (AP) . . . Heat exceeded 2,750 degrees and caused the steel beams holding up the interchange from eastbound I-80 to eastbound Interstate 580 above to buckle and bolts holding the structure together to melt, leading to the collapse, California Department of Transportation director Will Kempton said. ---Ann Coulter, April 29, 2007

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency following the collapse of one of the San Francisco Bay area's most traveled sections of freeway, as workers began clearing debris from a fiery accident that destroyed an important commuter link.A freeway interchange that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed onto another highway ramp in Oakland, Calif., Sunday, April 29, 2007, after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire.

The driver whose truck sparked a spectacular freeway fire in Oakland early Sunday escaped with his life -- a miracle, police say -- but there will be no escaping the Bay Area traffic nightmare his accident has unleashed... At the heart of the traffic knot is the MacArthur Maze, a tangle of freeways at the east end of the Bay Bridge and the site of Sunday's crash and fire. At 3:45 a.m., a truck carrying 8,600 gallons of unleaded gasoline overturned on a freeway transition road, creating an inferno with flames leaping 200 feet high and temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees....

OAKLAND, Calif. - A stretch of highway near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed Sunday after a gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames, leaving one of the nation's busiest spans in a state of near paralysis. Officials said traffic could be disrupted for months. ADVERTISEMENT Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco Bay Area is bracing for what promises to be a traffic nightmare for weeks or months to come. A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday. The fire created such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed. The truck's driver walked away with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported. Authorities say the damage will cause the worst disruption for commuters since the 1989 earthquake that damaged a section of the Bay Bridge itself. Transportation officials say they've already had added trains...

James Mosqueda, the driver in Sunday's fiery fuel-tanker crash, climbed out of the cab of his truck just moments before an explosion so powerful and hot that it melted steel and brought down a freeway, witnesses and law enforcement officials said. Mosqueda, a 51-year-old father of three from Woodland (Yolo County), walked away from the wreck -- and kept on walking. He walked for a mile and a half in all -- first along the overpass where he crashed and then for at least 13 blocks through the desolate streets of West Oakland -- to an Arco gas station, where...

Burning down a freeway is not easy. But set off enough high-octane fuel at the wrong place and even multiton supporting steel girders turn wobbly as a chocolate bar in the sun. That is what a speeding gasoline trucker managed to do before dawn Sunday to the busiest interchange in Northern California. Authorities still are piecing together how one of the 18-wheelers traversing the Bay daily crashed and erupted into a fireball that collapsed one freeway onto another at untold disruption to regional traffic. Miraculously, no one plunged into the inferno, the void it left behind or the debris below....

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday, creating such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed. Officials predicted a traffic nightmare for Bay Area commuters for weeks or months to come. Flames shot 200 feet in the air, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported in the 3:45 a.m. crash, which officials said could have been deadly had it occurred at a busier time. "I've never seen anything like it," Officer Trent Cross of...

What strikes me as strange is a gasoline truck fire can melt and collasp a freeway and ther are no conspiracy nuts hollering. But, when the government said jet fuel weakened the steel in the Twin Towers everyone said it was impossible. So, it must be George Bush;s fault.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A heavily traveled section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames, authorities said. Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.

OAKLAND, Calif. — A section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and caught fire, authorities said.

Tanker truck explosion caused part of the upperdeck of the maze approaching the Bay Bridge to collapse. Watch live coverage starting at 7 a.m. on NBC11 What was initially reported to the California Highway Patrol as a fire at around 3:42 a.m. Sunday quickly escalated to an explosion and roadway collapse on roadway that connects eastbound Interstate Highway 80 to eastbound Interstate Highway 580, according to a California Highway Patrol dispatcher. WATCH LIVE VIDEO According to the dispatcher, the roadway was destroyed after a tanker caught on fire and exploded, causing the driver to suffer second degree burns. The tanker...

Fiery crash collapses Bay Area freeway By MARCUS WOHLSEN, Associated Press Writer 57 minutes ago OAKLAND, Calif. - A gasoline tanker crashed and burst into flames near the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on Sunday, creating such intense heat that a stretch of highway melted and collapsed. Officials predicted a traffic nightmare for Bay Area commuters for weeks or months to come. ADVERTISEMENT Flames shot 200 feet in the air, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported in the 3:45 a.m. crash, which officials said could have been deadly had it...

Building a new bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland will cost $140 million more than originally planned, state and local transportation officials said. The additional expense is due to rising construction and material costs and changes in plans for work on Yerba Buena Island, officials said Wednesday. The changes include efforts to reduce the time a temporary detour will be used and the decision to rebuild, rather than retrofit, the elevated roadway just east of the tunnels on the island. The move to rebuild will also mean that the Bay Bridge will have to close down sometime this year, but...

Ricardo Ramirez seemed an unlikely success story: At 57, the former Marine Corps judo instructor had spent more than 20 years as a paving contractor and had little to show for it but a long string of lawsuits, business failures and bankruptcies. Then, in 1998, the struggling businessman appeared to hit upon a way to make it in a new venture. Taking advantage of city and state programs designed to help minority-owned businesses, Ramirez started turning out low-priced, locally produced concrete for projects that included earthquake retrofit work on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. By 2003, his...

OAKLAND -- A federal study now under way finds the cost of building the new Bay Bridge -- specifically the signature 525-foot suspension tower -- could explode again, this time by almost half a billion dollars. Almost ten years ago, Caltrans estimated it would cost $1.3 billion dollars to replace the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. Five years ago, the state said it would in fact cost almost twice that much -- $2.5 billion -- for a new bridge. Last year, Caltrans had still another projected cost: almost $5.3 billion dollars. Wednesday night, Caltrans spokesman Jeff Weiss acknowledged the...

The FBI has closed an eight-month probe into allegations that the new $6.3 billion Bay Bridge rests on faulty support piles -- an investigation that stalled construction on some parts of the bridge and cast a shadow over the state's largest ever seismic safety project. "For all intents and purposes, the case is closed," said LaRae Quy, spokeswoman for the FBI's San Francisco office. "We did not have the forensic evidence to prove the allegations." The inquiry began in February when an unnamed bridge worker called the FBI's public corruption hotline to claim that the bridge's contractor -- a joint...

Wednesday opens a new chapter in the 16-year Bay Bridge saga, when regional politicians take the reins to oversee the project amid unanswered questions about why the public will pay twice — at unknown cost — for the same work. Specifically, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission will be asked to approve freshly repackaged bids to build the bridge's tower. Caltrans is expected to advertise the project the next day but has not released an official cost estimate. MTC's new role results from lengthy negotiations in the Capitol this year and the new law they produced. It means the Bay Area will...

OAKLAND, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Monday authorizing the completion of a new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, ending a months-long stalemate over how to pay the spiraling costs of the project. The law protects the popular, but costly suspension design originally selected for the bridge, which the Republican governor once advocated ditching for a less expensive approach. It also finances most construction cost overruns by raising tolls on nearly every other bridge in the San Francisco Bay area. Schwarzenegger praised the bipartisan cooperation that produced the bridge plan and called for a similar approach...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A bill that would increase tolls on Bay Area bridges to pay for earthquake safety upgrades passed the California Assembly Wednesday and now goes to the governor for his approval. The Assembly voted 58-6 for the measure, which would result in toll increases of at least $1 on most Bay Area bridges. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders came to an agreement on the plan last month, ending a dispute between the Republican governor and San Francisco area legislators over how to cover $3.6 billion in cost overruns, mainly from the Bay Bridge project. The bill would...

SACRAMENTO - The Bay Bridge will get a fancy design after all, but the region's motorists will pay most of the span's $3.7 billion in cost overruns under a legislative deal reached Thursday night. The accord calls for tolls on all state-owned Bay Area spans to jump from $3 to $4 beginning Jan. 1, 2007, and fund about two-thirds of the bridge's higher costs. The state will kick in $630 million toward the project, which has been saddled with delays and escalating prices since its inception seven years ago. No further toll increases are planned. Rather, the balance of cost...