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To: Petronski
I believe there are several factors at work here that could have contributed to a structural failure completely independent of nefarious behavior.

Absolutely! Remember the blackout of 2003? It wasn't any single event or failure that caused it, but instead, it was the combined effect of many "mini-failures". Many factors contributed to that event, and I'm pretty certain that this will be the case with this bridge failure as well.

886 posted on 08/01/2007 6:13:56 PM PDT by meyer (It's the entitlements, stupid!)
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To: meyer
It wasn't any single event or failure that caused it, but instead, it was the combined effect of many "mini-failures".

What engineers know and the public doesn't understand is that many (most?) man-made systems have small undetected defects in place that alone cannot cause failure, but in the right circumstances will contribute to catastrophic failure.

That's just the way of the world.

912 posted on 08/01/2007 6:17:28 PM PDT by Petronski (imwithfred.com)
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