35W Bridge collapse

rocky8179 · Post by **rocky8179** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:39 am

Did anyone else hear about the 35W bridge collapse in MN?? It happened last night at about 6:00pm. Its crazy. Especially since I've used that bridge before.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/02/bridge.collapse.irpt/

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=12441036

http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3438334&page=1

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:34 am

What a tragedy. Being a civil engineer, I'm following it pretty closely. I'm very curious to here what the cause was.

unriggable · Post by **unriggable** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:11 am

Bridges are blown to pieces in Iraq constantly, where are the links?

In real news, its a shame. Piece of shit bridge.

rocky8179 · Post by **rocky8179** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:21 am

unriggable wrote:Bridges are blown to pieces in Iraq constantly, where are the links?

In real news, its a shame. Piece of shit bridge.

True. But when bridges do collapse usually only one part of the structure collapses not the whole thing. Especially not the whole thing at once. That is what makes this case unique.

Serbia · Post by **Serbia** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:09 pm

unriggable wrote:Bridges are blown to pieces in Iraq constantly, where are the links?

In real news, its a shame. Piece of shit bridge.

Idiot.

unriggable · Post by **unriggable** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:11 pm

Serbia wrote:
unriggable wrote:Bridges are blown to pieces in Iraq constantly, where are the links?

In real news, its a shame. Piece of shit bridge.

Idiot.

?

I'm saying that the bridge built there is a peice of shit.

UCAbears · Post by **UCAbears** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:44 pm

They said it was under construction at the time. Over 200,000 cars go over it a day. And it was planned to be rebuilt in 2020. This is terrible.

cawck mongler · Post by **cawck mongler** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:59 pm

God that story pisses me off, its played no less then 5 times every hour on every news station FOR CHRIST SAKES ITS A GODDAMNED BRIDGE!

Nevermind the innocent people being shot in Darfur.....

dcowboys055 · Post by **dcowboys055** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:05 pm

wicked wrote:What a tragedy. Being a civil engineer, I'm following it pretty closely. I'm very curious to here what the cause was.

here? Do you mean hear? Stoopid.

But anyways, there was some construction being done on it at the time.

Gold Knight · Post by **Gold Knight** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:06 pm

cawck mongler wrote:God that story pisses me off, its played no less then 5 times every hour on every news station FOR CHRIST SAKES ITS A GODDAMNED BRIDGE!

Nevermind the innocent people being shot in Darfur.....

So the innocent people being shot are more important than the innocent people driving home from work? I dont understand...

Serbia · Post by **Serbia** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:07 pm

cawck mongler wrote:God that story pisses me off, its played no less then 5 times every hour on every news station FOR CHRIST SAKES ITS A GODDAMNED BRIDGE!

Nevermind the innocent people being shot in Darfur.....

And again, IDIOT.

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:25 am

dcowboys055 wrote:
wicked wrote:What a tragedy. Being a civil engineer, I'm following it pretty closely. I'm very curious to here what the cause was.

here? Do you mean hear? Stoopid.

But anyways, there was some construction being done on it at the time.

It was pavement rehab work, nothing structural.

EvilPurpleMonkey · Post by **EvilPurpleMonkey** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:23 am

dcowboys055 wrote:
wicked wrote:What a tragedy. Being a civil engineer, I'm following it pretty closely. I'm very curious to here what the cause was.

here? Do you mean hear? Stoopid.

But anyways, there was some construction being done on it at the time.

Stoopid? Do you mean stupid? Stupid.

Wow, I just heard about this a few minutes ago when I went to wikinews. One person severely injured and 8 possibly dead. Someone should have known the bridge was going to collapse, you'd think it would be noticable if a bridge was about to collapse.

hecter · Post by **hecter** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:32 am

EvilPurpleMonkey wrote:Someone should have known the bridge was going to collapse, you'd think it would be noticable if a bridge was about to collapse.

I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong wicked, but much of a concrete bridges support would come from the steel re-enforcement bars buried in the concrete. These bars are essential to the bridges structural integrity. As the bridge ages, cracks may form and water seep in. If this water gets to the re-enforcement bars and corrodes them enough, then the bridge could just collapse. So it's hard to see that a bridge may collapse if it's all in the inside. The odd part, as previously stated, is the fact that the whole bridge fell at once, instead of just a section of the bridge.

Then again, that's just from my stoopid and unedjemacated self. I imagine we'll have wicked in here telling me how dumb I am any minute now...

*sits and waits to be yelled at by wicked*

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:08 am

hecter wrote:I don't think so. Correct me if I'm wrong wicked, but much of a concrete bridges support would come from the steel re-enforcement bars buried in the concrete. These bars are essential to the bridges structural integrity. As the bridge ages, cracks may form and water seep in. If this water gets to the re-enforcement bars and corrodes them enough, then the bridge could just collapse. So it's hard to see that a bridge may collapse if it's all in the inside. The odd part, as previously stated, is the fact that the whole bridge fell at once, instead of just a section of the bridge.

Then again, that's just from my stoopid and unedjemacated self. I imagine we'll have wicked in here telling me how dumb I am any minute now...

*sits and waits to be yelled at by wicked*

*YELL*
ok now that that's out of the way...

Concrete is only strong in one direction (when compressed), hence the addition of steel rebar to support it under tension. Yes, cracks can occur and weaken the rebar.... exposed rebar is baaaad since steel exposed to water and air = rust. This would be evident on an inspection however. I believe that bridge was inspected yearly, but not sure of the date of last inspection. Normally bridges are inspected every two years, bad bridges and/or bridges that carry a lot of traffic may be instected every year, REALLY bad bridges, e.g. the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, are inspected every 6 months. If a center column collapsed, which is what I'm *guessing* happened here, it would explain the multiple sections of bridge collapsing at once.

The1exile · Post by **The1exile** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:11 am

Serbia wrote:
cawck mongler wrote:God that story pisses me off, its played no less then 5 times every hour on every news station FOR CHRIST SAKES ITS A GODDAMNED BRIDGE!

Nevermind the innocent people being shot in Darfur.....

And again, IDIOT.

Why?

Just replying to posts say typing (in caps) to the effect that the person who's post you are replying to is lacking in the brain department doesn't help the view that you are any better off.

Coleman · Post by **Coleman** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:20 am

The1exile wrote:
Serbia wrote:
cawck mongler wrote:God that story pisses me off, its played no less then 5 times every hour on every news station FOR CHRIST SAKES ITS A GODDAMNED BRIDGE!

Nevermind the innocent people being shot in Darfur.....

And again, IDIOT.

Why?

Just replying to posts say typing (in caps) to the effect that the person who's post you are replying to is lacking in the brain department doesn't help the view that you are any better off.

Plus that original post was from cawck mongler so we already know he's an idiot without your help. Although I think he kind of had a point, although his execution of it was... lacking...

Anyway, I'm finding the frequency of these 'accidents' a bit disconcerting. But in this case I'm mostly annoyed because this seems like a repeat of the bad levy situation, something that should have been fixed earlier and was neglected for too long.

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:22 am

and what does any of this have to do with the bridge collapsing? we all know cawk's an insensitive idiot, no need to discuss it here though.

hecter · Post by **hecter** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:51 am

wicked wrote:Concrete is only strong in one direction (when compressed), hence the addition of steel rebar to support it under tension. Yes, cracks can occur and weaken the rebar.... exposed rebar is baaaad since steel exposed to water and air = rust. This would be evident on an inspection however. I believe that bridge was inspected yearly, but not sure of the date of last inspection. Normally bridges are inspected every two years, bad bridges and/or bridges that carry a lot of traffic may be instected every year, REALLY bad bridges, e.g. the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, are inspected every 6 months. If a center column collapsed, which is what I'm *guessing* happened here, it would explain the multiple sections of bridge collapsing at once.

A center column collapsing would explain that, but why would a center column just fall like that? Or is that what you're waiting to hear, as you obviously don't have all the information to be able to know what happened.

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:00 pm

NTSB & FHWA haven't completed their investigations yet, so anything right now would be pure speculation. Luckily, a security camera captured the collapse on tape, so that'll greatly reduce the time it takes to reconstruct the accident.

One guess is that the extra load of the contruction equipment and the number of vehicles on the bridge during rush hour overloaded the weight capacity of the bridge to the point of failure.

Gold Knight · Post by **Gold Knight** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:05 pm

wicked wrote:NTSB & FHWA haven't completed their investigations yet, so anything right now would be pure speculation. Luckily, a security camera captured the collapse on tape, so that'll greatly reduce the time it takes to reconstruct the accident.

One guess is that the extra load of the contruction equipment and the number of vehicles on the bridge during rush hour overloaded the weight capacity of the bridge to the point of failure.

Comon Wicked, i expect the sophisticated engineering words out of an engineer, as in rupture.

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:13 pm

lol it's actually called failure in the engineering world... sorry to disappoint, but most engineers suck as writers, but are often tasked with writing many reports, which is ironic. Luckily there's a few of us engineers who can write decently enough to get our point across. ;-)

that was actually one of the reasons I was hired in my current job, to translate geekspeak for the general stupid public. :lol:

Gold Knight · Post by **Gold Knight** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:23 pm

Sorry, i just been taking engineering classes and all that rediculous vocab got stuck in my head.

wicked · Post by **wicked** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:30 pm

Cool. What kind of engineering? Depending on the type of material that fails, it may very well be called rupture. :wink:

rocky8179 · Post by **rocky8179** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:19 pm

wicked wrote:NTSB & FHWA haven't completed their investigations yet, so anything right now would be pure speculation. Luckily, a security camera captured the collapse on tape, so that'll greatly reduce the time it takes to reconstruct the accident.

One guess is that the extra load of the contruction equipment and the number of vehicles on the bridge during rush hour overloaded the weight capacity of the bridge to the point of failure.

I've seen that clip your talking about on tv. It looked like one bridge section went and then everything else was just kinda dragged down along with it. It was crazy how you could see the cars falling down with the bridge as well.