Inspection was ‘deficient’: Teams failed to detect corrosion on Dig light

bostonherald.com ^ | 03/19/2011 | Hillary Chabot

[massmike]

State officials gave a clean bill of health to a 110-pound overhead light fixture just 10 months before it crashed onto a Big Dig tunnel roadway — but they failed to notice its aluminum casing was rusting away, the Herald has learned.

Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan yesterday defended the April 2010 report on the corroded light fixture that fell during a Feb. 8 morning commute — as well as the 23,000 other 2010 tunnel lights inspections — as “exhaustive,” but in the same breath he admitted the visual checks that he called for were “deficient.”

[massmike]

The Herald reported yesterday that Mullan could not immediately produce inspection reports — or even say for sure that inspections were done — even though the faulty light fixture crashed more than five weeks ago.

[usmcobra]

Aluminum doesn’t rust away, it corrodes.

Rust is by it’s very nature a product of corroding steel.

[Nervous Tick]

Union inspectors?

[mlocher]

Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Mullan yesterday defended the April 2010 report on the corroded light fixture that fell during a Feb. 8 morning commute — as well as the 23,000 other 2010 tunnel lights inspections — as “exhaustive,” but in the same breath he admitted the visual checks that he called for were “deficient.”

He said all of that in one breath? This guy has a pair of big ones

Lungs that is.

[golf lover]

Does anyone really believe that the inspectors are qualified do their jobs? That is, if they even do the inspections.
They probably got their hack jobs from connections with the hack politicians that run Taxachusetts. Probably sign holders at a traffic rotary during a campaign.

[MarineBrat]

...they failed to notice its aluminum casing was rusting away, the Herald has learned.

I'd be embarrassed to be tied to that statement. Oh wait... journalism degree. Every kid who ever took auto shop is aware that aluminum doesn't rust. In fact, you could almost say that every kid who didn't get a journalism degree knows that aluminum doesn't rust.

[expatpat]

Why should some poor public-union thug have to go up to the ceiling with all those cars and trucks whizzing by? That’s unreasonable....../sarc