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Breaking: Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis
KSTP TV 5/ME | 8/1/07 | Me

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.......


TOPICS: Breaking News; News/Current Events; US: Minnesota
KEYWORDS: 35w; breaking; bridge; bridgecollapse; bridges; btld; collapse; corrosion; engineering; infrastructure; jihad; minneapolis; mosques; mothman; prayerforminnesotans; rust; slownewsday; terroristattack; transportation; twincitiescell
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To: All

Live presser being set-up on MSNBC

http://img.video.msn.com/s/us/i/vlbg_msnbc.gif


1,921 posted on 08/02/2007 7:28:29 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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To: Milwaukee_Guy

Try the main page for presser link,

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/


1,922 posted on 08/02/2007 7:30:15 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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To: JRochelle
Did the city & taxpayers shell out the bucks for the new stadium?

Wow, I thought that had gone by the wayside when ownership of the Giants built their own stadium. I remember that lots of teams were PO'd because their cities then refused to put up the big bucks.
1,923 posted on 08/02/2007 7:31:03 AM PDT by ninergold3 ("Normal" - Just a cycle on the washing machine - Naomi Judd)
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To: ButThreeLeftsDo

My wild a$$ theory.

There looked like there was a freight train that ran along the river and under the bridge at one point. The foundation that the piers stood on where constantly subject to vibration from the train and because these were not underwater they were not inspected as diligently.

The last train that was passing by cause the foundations to shake some more and finally let go.


1,924 posted on 08/02/2007 7:32:37 AM PDT by Raycpa
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To: All
The lady in the red car,
1,925 posted on 08/02/2007 7:33:03 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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To: All
Chaos,
1,926 posted on 08/02/2007 7:35:08 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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To: wagglebee
Thanks.

Though interestingly enough, out of the 2 bridges in the pictures everything structural was visible on this bridge when you look at the old pictures. I was thinking that even without training exactly where I would put explosives if I were a terrorist but then they would be out in the open for anybody to see so once again it does not make sense.

1,927 posted on 08/02/2007 7:35:40 AM PDT by Lady Heron
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To: RoseyT
Try the Atchafalaya Swamp Freeway in Louisiana. 18.2 miles over swampy, scary terrain. I HATE that bridge.

That's a mild experience compared with crossing the Mississippi a bit west and upriver of New Orleans via the Huey P. Long bridge. That old combo railroad/auto traffic bridge is probably overbuilt in some ways, but the narrow lanes and scary old vertical-bar guardrails really crank up the pucker factor.

I believe it's currently being modified to widen the lanes and add additional lanes, and it's about damned time. I just hope those engineers triple-checked their math.

1,928 posted on 08/02/2007 7:36:21 AM PDT by Charles Martel (The Tree of Liberty thirsts.)
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Comment #1,929 Removed by Moderator

To: Terriergal

You will be hearing these words a lot in the coming days.

Corrosion and Fatigue.


1,930 posted on 08/02/2007 7:37:15 AM PDT by se_ohio_young_conservative
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To: All
Hell On Earth!
1,931 posted on 08/02/2007 7:37:52 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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To: freepertoo
I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and work in D.C. I take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge twice a day.

Are you addicted to the Valium yet? ;^)

1,932 posted on 08/02/2007 7:38:49 AM PDT by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon))
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To: se_ohio_young_conservative

that describes Shep’s performance last night on Fox to a “T” LOL


1,933 posted on 08/02/2007 7:39:32 AM PDT by LadyBuzz
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To: All
Heroes searching!
1,934 posted on 08/02/2007 7:40:27 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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To: LadyBuzz

LOL, haha

I actully thought Shep did pretty good.


1,935 posted on 08/02/2007 7:41:30 AM PDT by se_ohio_young_conservative
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To: LiveFreeOrDie2001; harwood; jim_trent; Milwaukee_Guy; Petronski
"YES - I saw one of the 1st people interviewed that fell with the bridge and She said She "Saw Explosions going up in to the air".

When the superstructure supports, the steel that supports the road bed fails, the roadbed takes on significant stress. The stress will be distributed in that sheet as tension and compression.

The roadbed is a sheet of reenforced concrete. Where there's tension, and the stress rises to the breaking point, the concrete simply cracks and the rebar yeilds. Where there's compression, and the stress hits the failure limit, the concrete "explodes". It pulverizes and shoots out with all the energy that was contained in the concrete at that location, prior to the failure. IOWs, the static potential energy contained in those portions of the sheet that were under compression, was released as kinetic energy in the form of flying concrete dust and the shock wave created by that release. Those areas that failed in tension, simply crack, with the energy going into movement of the large broken sections and the shockwave created by the propagation of the crack.

In this case, the steel had yielded prior to the catastrophic failure. Regardless of what the rat politicos said in the various interviews. The engineering reports noted cracks in the steel. Cracks in the steel are never simply cosmetic. Cracks in the steel only occur when stress is applied. Cracks in mild steel, as is the case here, indicate fatigue, which is a microscopic rearrangement of atoms that aligns and separates grain boundaries in the steel "along the crack". That means the steel can not support what it originally could and the roadbed, the reenforced concrete sheet, now contains a considerable stress pattern that the sheet was never intended to contain.

The various interviews all say the roadwork was simply cosmetic resurfacing. That was not the case. The concrete sheet was being hammered and cut. That action caused the stress contained at those points to be redistributed to other intact areas of the sheet, so that those areas hit their failure limit. Once the sheet gave, it redistributed the forces on the fatigued steel of the superstructure, which was already stressed close to breaking(it had already began to crack), and the whole thing went down.

Neither the engineers that inspected the bridge, or the ones hired to do the repairs had any appreciation for what they were working on. The proof is in the water.

1,936 posted on 08/02/2007 7:42:04 AM PDT by spunkets ("Freedom is about authority", Rudy Giuliani, gun grabber)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia
Heard on the last radio newsbreak that the official death toll has been reduced to four.

There has to be more than that.

Heard this morning that 20 families are awaiting news of missing kin. There must be some vehicles that were carried downstream or are under the rubble in the water.

1,937 posted on 08/02/2007 7:42:22 AM PDT by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon))
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To: wagglebee

The only way to determine the cause is forensic analysis of the evidence. Everything else is pure speculation and deserves no emphasis.


1,938 posted on 08/02/2007 7:43:08 AM PDT by ClaireSolt (Have you have gotten mixed up in a mish-masher?)
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To: wagglebee
A University of Minnesota Civil Engineer in a report to MN-DOT recently noted that this bridge is considered to be a non-redundant structure. That is, if any one member fails, the entire bridge can collapse

Nevermind, maybe it does make sense. Only have to take out one pylon to take out the whole bridge post 1919. LOL, I won't tell where I though was the best place to put explosives with an untrained mind and he found this info on the internet.

Just like I thought no demolition expert needed.

1,939 posted on 08/02/2007 7:44:20 AM PDT by Lady Heron
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To: All
$800 Million spent on Light Rail. Damn the consequences of neglecting infrastructure.....
1,940 posted on 08/02/2007 7:44:31 AM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy (Don't hit them between the eyes. Hit them right -in- the eyes!)
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