Bridge Collapse in Pittsburgh

The Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed on 28 January 2022 at roughly 6:40 a.m. eastern standard time. It happened just prior to Joe Biden showing up in Pittsburgh to talk about infrastructure. Go figure.

The details: 10 injured in Pittsburgh bridge collapse just before Biden’s visit on infrastructure.

Ten people were hurt in the collapse, with rescuers forming a human chain to get to them.

At least four people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries following the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge just before 7 a.m., the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The bridge, part of Forbes Ave., traverses Fern Hollow Creek in Frick Park. The collapse also led to a large gas leak.

The area around the bridge had to be evacuated. It took the gas company about 30 minutes to shut off gas to the line that ruptured.

There are no shortages of articles on the collapse. The initial reports. The fact that since it happened so early, there were no fatalities. The lawsuits. Yes, those are already in the works. Pete Buttigieg making pronouncements. Biden promising to fix 'every bridge.' Et cetera, ad nauseam.

One story did catch my eye... The impact of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse goes far beyond the disruption to a heavily traveled route.

The bridge was a respite. I took a mental health day after the Tree of Life shooting and walked through Frick Park, shadowed under the wings of the bridge just blocks away from the shooting. Although the bridge provided solace, I looked up to see its beams bending precariously.

Here is a hint: If you see a bridge, and you notice deformation, report it to someone. Keep reporting it until they take you seriously. Take a couple of photos with your phone so they cannot blow you off as being alarmist. Bridges often DEFORM before the fail. "Beams bending precariously" constitute a WARNING SIGN. At the very least, the bridge could have been closed, and no one would have been injured.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released something that they call a "preliminary report." It basically says "A bridge collapsed; we are looking into it." Though it takes 2 pages of government-speak to say that. They do provide some interesting video footage.

This is the video of NTSB B-Roll: Pittsburgh, PA Bridge Collapse (1/30/2022). There are some good views of the aftermath.

The Anniversary of A Disaster: Morandi Bridge Collapse

14 August 2018 at about 11:30 AM Genoa, Italy time, the Morandi Bridge collapsed, killing 43 people. What follows has been shamelessly stolen from myself, with some edits, from around the time the replacement bridge was completed.

Everything Needs Maintenance. What caused the Genoa bridge collapse – and the end of an Italian national myth? The image is of the bridge, before the collapse. (Click the image, for a larger view, and background info. Image by Davide Papalini)

Construction was from 1963 through 1967. It collapsed on August 14th, 2018.

43 people died. 600 people were made homeless.

The day in question was a stormy, summer day.

By 11.30am, the rain was so heavy that visibility had fallen dramatically. Videos captured by security cameras show vehicles slowing down as they crossed Morandi Bridge, which grew progressively more enveloped in a grey mist.

A few minutes later, a 200-metre section of the bridge collapsed, including one of its three supporting towers.

Click the link at the top of this post for an image of the bridge after the collapse.

Reinforced concrete deck, and prestressed concrete wrapping the cables of what otherwise looked like a typical suspension bridge. (Think Brooklyn Bridge.) But maintenance of the bridge wasn’t a high priority thing.

A documentary found problems in the 1990s. Riccardo Morandi, the designer, created a list of things to-do to prolong the life of the bridge. Nothing was done.

Aside from the lack of maintenance, there was an increase in the load on the bridge, which is probably a message for engineers, that things should be overbuilt, because you don’t know what the future will bring.

Little, however, was done, and by 1992 the trademark concrete cables were heavily corroded. The company that managed the bridge, Autostrade per l’Italia – then owned by the state – decided to add extra new cables around the corroded ones, rather than replace them. It also neglected to retrofit the remaining two sets.

That led to the collapse on the stormy August morning.

About a year later, the remains of the bridge were demolished. See Genoa’s Morandi Bridge demolished in dramatic explosion. (Explosive demolition is always a fascinating video!)

So why did the bridge collapse?

Instead, it was probably simple neglect that felled the bridge. In April 2018, Autostrade – now a private company – finally decided there was no more time to waste, and issued a tender offer to retrofit the bridge. The repairs were supposed to start last autumn.

“They waited 25 years and then the bridge collapsed. This is how things go in Italy – you start something and you never finish it,” says Saggio.

A replacement bridge was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. It was finished in 2 years by construction crews working 24/7. They only stopped for Christmas and bad weather. (The bridge deck is about 45 meters above the ground.) Here is a link to a short video on the construction of the new bridge. I know it is basically an advert for the construction company involved, but my favorite video of the construction is no longer on YT, and most of the videos are in Italian.

Math Is Racist Again (According to The Left)

Or maybe that is "still racist." This is from someone planing how we should teach math in schools. Or not, as the case may be. Math Is Racist? Curriculum Writer Says It Upholds White Supremacy - Liberty Affair

Michael Lolkus— who holds a Ph.D. from Purdue University — made a number of concerning claims in his recent paper, which he published in the last issue of the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, the same journal I was assigned to read when I studied at Barnard College.

In his essay, Lolkus begins by arguing that “educational spaces, particularly those centered on mathematics, uphold and promote whiteness,” and that efforts to fix this are still marred by “white liberal ideas” of what mathematics should be.

Mathematics doesn't care what "you think it should be." You are free to say that 2+2=5, or that there are no right answers, if you're an artist or a dreamer or a politician, but if you don't get the math right when you are building bridges, they will fall down.

Here's an example from 2018, from the National Transportation Safety Board on the collapse of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge in Miama. Pedestrian Bridge Collapse Over SW 8th Street, Miami, Florida

We determined that the probable cause of the Florida International University (FIU) pedestrian bridge collapse was the load and capacity calculation errors made by FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc., (FIGG) in its design of the main span truss member 11/12 nodal region and connection to the bridge deck. Contributing to the collapse was the inadequate peer review performed by Louis Berger, which failed to detect the calculation errors in the bridge design. [my emphasis. Z-Deb]

Six people were killed and ten were injured when the FIU bridge collapsed, and it collapsed because the math was wrong. And yes, the engineering firm in question was hired because they were "diverse." FIGG was removed from several projects, and at least one bridge under construction had to be redesigned for similar issues.

The law of gravity, and the rules of engineering for bridges (like Müller-Breslau) don't care about who you're attracted to, your pronouns, or anything else about YOU. Get the math right, or you will kill people. There are plenty of examples.

• Dashcam Video of the FIU Bridge Collapse in Miami.
• The I-35W Bridge Collapse in 2007 in Minneapolis.

  13 people died, 145 were injured. This was a combination of design issues, construction issues, and a maintenance crew parking a load 4 times the designed load on the bridge before resurfacing the roadway. (Staging the equipment and the material on LAND would have been "inconvenient.") There was probably also an opportunity to fix one of the problems from the construction issue, but that would mean spending money on a bridge that "looked fine" and had stood for 50 years.

• The Collapse of the Silver Bridge – December 15th, 1967. A bridge between Ohio and West Virginia.

  This was caused, in part, because the conditions changed, and no one revisited the load calculations under those new conditions. 46 people died. There were also some issues with the design, and probably with maintenance.

That doesn't include the bridges that have killed people because politicians don't want to spend money on maintenance, even in the face of impending collapse. There are even more examples that fall into that category.

Italian Bureaucrats Convicted Over Infrastructure Collapse

The Morandi Bridge, which was located in Genoa, Italy, collapsed in 2018, resulting in the deaths of 43 people. Former Italian motorway boss among 32 convicted over Genoa bridge tragedy

The former head of Italian motorway operator ‌Autostrade per l'Italia was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Thursday for his role in a disaster that killed 43 people when a bridge collapsed near the city of Genoa in 2018.

Giovanni Castellucci was among 32 people convicted over the collapse of the Morandi bridge which sent vehicles plunging onto warehouses and a riverbed beneath the flyover during a summer storm.

At least some of the convictions are under appeal.

There isn't a lot of info, but the two sides of the debate seem to be that the collapse was either caused by the initial design, or the lack of maintenance. From my point of view, both can be true at the same time.

Here is a post from the 357 Magnum Archive: Everything Needs Maintenance – The Morandi Bridge Collapse. That post includes a link to a video of the explosive demolition of the remaining bridge structure, in preparation for new construction, and some info on the design of the new bridge.

This post contains more information on the replacement bridge. 357 Magnum Archive: Genova San Giorgio Viaduct Replaces Collapsed Bridge In Genoa, Italy

Some infrastructure collapse is clearly the result of negligence. The Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh, which collapsed on 28 January 2022, had received numerous warnings in the form of reports, photos, etc. before it collapsed. The bureaucrats and politicians ignored all the warnings, because maintaining infrastructure isn't sexy. It doesn't lend itself to ceremonies, and news stories. But it does keep people safe, and allow modern life to continue.

Some infrastructure can collapse as the result of a fire, such as the I-85 Bridge Collapse in Atlanta, or other external cause.

Maintenance you can plan for. Random acts of the universe, you cannot.

I'm not sure if these convictions in Italy represent Justice, or just the desire of the public to hold someone accountable, even if they aren't really the right person. I would like to see an incentive to make maintaining this stuff more likely, or we will continue to see bridges collapse, and dams collapse, and more types of infrastructure failure.

Bridge Collapse in India

A bridge collapse by itself, is perhaps not that newsworthy, unless it impacts your daily commute. A news search on "bridge collapse" restricted to the past seven days (or so) returns many pages of data: The info on the collapse of the Irang Bridge in India is returned; details are below. A bridge collapsed in China, killing 8. Another collapsed in Virginia dumping 22 train cars and 2000 tons of coal into the Roanoke River. A bridge under construction in India collapsed. And many others.

What caught my eye about the bridge in question is that it is a Bailey Bridge, and described in at least one article as being "old." Bailey bridge over Barak river collapses in Manipur, one dies

The incident took place in Taobam village when the Irang bailey bridge caved in around 7 am, a senior officer said.

"The bridge collapsed when a 10-wheeler truck carrying sand from Dimapur in Nagaland was passing through it."

The Bailey Bridge was developed by Sir Donald Bailey in 1936. It was ignored until after the war started. They are made in prefabricated sections, small enough to be hauled to the field by available trucks, and assembled manually. They were instrumental in winning WWII, since it meant that the Germans could blow up bridges, but not stop the advance of the Allies. The ones used by the Allies were designed to carry our tanks, well the ones from that era, anyway. The Bailey Bridge: The Bridge That Defeated Hitler.

At least, that’s according to the testimony of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who, to put it bluntly, wrote:

“Bailey bridging made an immense contribution towards ending World War II… I could never have maintained the speed and tempo of the forward movement without large supplies of Bailey bridging… Without the Bailey Bridge, we should not have won the war. It was the best thing in that line that we ever had.”

As for the "old bridge" that collapsed in India, in one place I saw it listed as being under 10 years old. But it may have been newly constructed with old parts. That is the point of Bailey's design. The bridges can be redeployed. At least one article says that the bridge was showing signs of deformation before it snapped. Who is responsible for NH-37, asks TDC. Though the Transporters and Drivers Council is currently suing the people it deems responsible for the bridge on behalf of the dead driver's family, and the people currently stranded along the highway in question.

The previous article, and others, are full of criticisms of the National Highway Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited, which is the organization that is responsible for the bridge in question. It is either part of, or contracted to, The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, which is basically the Department of Transportation for all of India. It isn't clear, at least not to me. The information in the articles doesn't describe the Ministry, or the state of transportation in the India, in the best terms.

And then there is also a glimpse as to the state of law and order in India, or parts of it anyway.

Many companies are reluctant to take up the bridge construction work as they are aware of how militants abducted BIPL engineers and officials and demanded ransom.

A Bridge Collapse from 1980 with Similarities to Today

Unless you are living under a rock, you probably know that the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapasco River in Baltimore was struck by a cargo vessel and collapsed. It didn't take long for people who know nothing of ship operations, or civil engineering to trot out a series of conspiracy theories, which have little relation to reality. #BridgeCollapse.

The only thing really published at this point is that the vessel in question was the 948 foot container ship Dali, which was leaving the port of Baltimore when it lost power, and collided with one of the bridge pylons. This caused the entire span to collapse. From the photos it is clear that the vessel was loaded.

Fighting against the tide of conspiracy theories at this point is moot. As someone on Twitter/X noted, everyone is suddenly an expert in civil engineering and large vessel operations. Instead of wading into that swamp, I thought I would shamelessly steal a post from myself, about a similar bridge collapse from 44 years ago.

On Friday 9 May 1980, at 7:33 in the morning, the vessel MV Summit Venture, in fog and rain, struck one of the supports of the southbound lanes (the west span) of the Sunshine Skyway, causing about 1200 feet of the bridge to fall 150 feet into the water. 35 people died. Cars, trucks and a Greyhound bus fell into the water that day. Most died of blunt-force trauma. Some drowned. One man survived when his truck landed on the deck of the Summit Venture before falling into the water.

The principle difference between the collapse today, and the one from 44 years ago, is that the Sunshine Skyway was a double span, so that when the west span collapsed, the east span was still standing, and could carry half the traffic. There is also the fact that the MV Summit Venture, which struck the bridge in Florida, was not carrying cargo, but was "light," with only ballast, while the Dali appears to be fully loaded.

This video documents the official recording of the MAYDAY call between MV Summit Venture and the US Coast Guard base in St Petersburg. A few other ships are heard as well. Photos are of the aftermath.

This story is from 2020, in which the Tampa Bay Times marked the 40th anniversary of that collapse. The Skyway bridge collapsed 40 years ago. Here’s how we’re remembering the tragedy. That is a collection of links to things about the collapse. Interviews with people who worked search and rescue, information about the trial of the pilot, and a few other links.

Saturday marks 40 years since the 19,734-ton Summit Venture freighter slammed into the old Skyway bridge. Six cars, a truck and a Greyhound bus plummeted 150 feet into the choppy waters of Tampa Bay below. Thirty-five died.

In the case of The Sunshine Skyway, a two-lane bridge opened in 1954. A second structure, similar to the first opened in 1959 making the crossing 4 lanes, connecting the south end of Pinellas County with the north end of Manatee County.

The Key Bridge (as it is known in Baltimore) was built between 1972 and 1977, opening to traffic on March 23rd of that year.

In Florida a new bridge was built to replace both of the old spans. You can find some info on that new bridge at this link. The video shows what I consider to be a work of art.

The FIU Pedestrian Bridge Collapse: Math Is Hard Edition

Engineering is hard, and it isn't PC. Reality doesn't care about your victim creds, it only cares if you get the math right. Officials find probable cause in FIU pedestrian bridge collapse

The image to the right is from shortly after the collapse. It is from Wikimedia Commons, provided by the National Transportation Safety Board.

According to the report, errors in the designs and bridge plans by Tallahassee-based FIGG Bridge Engineers were not detected. A thorough independent peer review should have been done on the bridge, but it never happened.

Contributing to the collapse was the inadequate peer review performed by the firm Louis Berger U.S., Inc, which failed to detect the calculation errors in the bridge design.

It seems the firm hired to do the peer review was not licensed to do one. They fibbed when then applied for the contract.

So two engineering firms got the calculations wrong. The bridge collapsed killing six and injuring ten more. I guess it's true that Math Is Hard.

You can find my previous posts on the subject at this link. There you will find an engineering discussion of the bridge, dashcam video of the collapse, and more.

Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy Still in the News

The Morandi Bridge collapsed 14 August 2018. The replacement was complete last year. Poor Maintenance and Construction Flaws Are Cited in Italy Bridge Collapse - The New York Times

The 2018 collapse of a bridge in northwestern Italy that killed 43 people was a result of problems in the structure’s conception, design, construction and, more recently, maintenance that led to corrosion in some steel cables that ultimately snapped, according to an independent report that was made public on Monday.

The image is of the bridge, before the collapse. (Click the image, for a larger view, and background info. Image by Davide Papalini.) Click thru to the New York Times article to see a photo of the bridge shortly after the collapse. Somewhere there is video of the explosive demolition of the remainder of the bridge, but I don't have time to look for that, even though I love explosive demolition.

That report is 467 pages, I haven't even looked at it because I am sure it is in Italian, and I am fairly sure that Google Translate does a poor job with Italian. I may look at it eventually. In the meantime, we will rely on the reporters. (A problematic stance, I know.)

A trial is scheduled for this year to find someone to hold accountable, because 43 people died, and 600 people were made homeless by the collapse.

“If, in any of these phases, [conception, design, construction and maintenance] the proper checks were made, it was highly likely that they could have prevented the tragedy,” the report seen by The New York Times read. “The lack and/or the inadequacy of the checks are the weak link in the system.”

As I noted last year when the new bridge, which was under construction, caught my attention, Everything Needs Maintenance – The Morandi Bridge Collapse.

Neglect of Maintenance and a Bridge Collapse

On 28 January 2022 at 6:37 a.m. the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed. No one died, but several people were severely injured. It isn't fair to say that it collapsed without warning, because many years of bridge inspection reports described what was wrong, how it was getting worse, and what should have been done to fix it. Nothing was done.

Neglect? Maybe that should be criminal negligence. Though I doubt anyone who decided that "we have more important stuff to spend money on this year," like parades, and virtue signalling, will be held accountable in this life.

From 2005 onward, recommendations from inspection reports to repair parts of the bridge, didn't fall off the list, they just kept being repeated by each new inspection, year after year. Pittsburgh just didn't fix it.

17 years is a long time to ignore failing infrastructure. Every inspection report starting in 2007 specified the critical structural members of the bridge that were being corroded, and need to be repaired. The reports also called out drainage problems - clogged drain gates. These were also ignored, which accelerated the problems.

This is a good report on the collapse from Practical Engineering. This Bridge Should Have Been Closed Years Before It Collapsed.

Maintaining infrastructure is thankless work. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a really rewarding career. Inspections involve a lot of time out in the field seeing cool structures up close. And repair projects are often interesting challenges for contractors. But they’re not rewarding in the same way that designing and building new stuff can be. No one holds a press conference and cuts a big ribbon at the end of a bridge inspection or structural retrofit. Building a new structure is not just an achievement in its own right; it’s a commitment to take good care of it for its entire design life, and then to rehabilitate, or replace, or even close it when it’s no longer safe for the public.

This is the Practical Engineering video This Bridge Should Have Been Closed Years Before It Collapsed

The NTSB report on the collapse can be found at the following link. Collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge.

The report includes 3 videos. The 2nd video in the list, is partly an animation of the collapse of the bridge as recreated by the engineering forensics team. If you're interested in such things, it is only 8 minutes. It includes photos of the rusted portions of the bridge from prior years inspection reports.

Rust Never Sleeps is also the name of an album.

NTSB Preliminary Findings on the MV Dali Incident of March 2024

On 26 March 2024 the MV Dali lost power as it was leaving the Port of Baltimore. It lost both propulsion and steering. It allided with a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing a large portion of the bridge to collapse, and killing 6 highway workers on the bridge.

"Collision" involves 2 vessels in motion. "Allision" involves a vessel underway and an stationary object. While some dictionaries list allision and allide as "obsolete," they are still used in admiralty law, and in cases like this.

Aside from a grammar lesson/vocabulary review, we have the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on that incident from March of last year. Loose Wire on Containership Dali Leads to Blackouts and Contact with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Contact with extreme prejudice. Or something.

At Tuesday’s public meeting at NTSB headquarters, investigators said the loose wire in the ship’s electrical system caused a breaker to unexpectedly open -- beginning a sequence of events that led to two vessel blackouts and a loss of both propulsion and steering near the 2.37-mile-long Key Bridge on March 26, 2024. Investigators found that wire-label banding prevented the wire from being fully inserted into a terminal block spring-clamp gate, causing an inadequate connection.

The MV Dali is just shy of 300 meters long, and can carry 116,000 tons (or so) of cargo. It was traveling about 7 or 8 knots when it "contacted" the bridge.

Efforts to protect the bridge should probably have been taken, give the size of vessels on the ocean today.

Contributing to the collapse of the Key Bridge and the loss of life was the lack of countermeasures to reduce the bridge’s vulnerability to collapse due to impact by ocean-going vessels, which have only grown larger since the Key Bridge’s opening in 1977. When the Japan-flagged containership Blue Nagoya contacted the Key Bridge after losing propulsion in 1980, the 390-foot-long vessel caused only minor damage. The Dali, however, is 10 times the size of the Blue Nagoya.

There is a nice graphic at the link above showing the size difference in the 2 vessels between 1980 and 2024. And as big as MV Dali is, there are several classes of vessels that are much larger than that. Some carry more than twice as much cargo.

If you page down to the bottom of the page linked above, you will find a link to the full, 19-page report. OK, so it is not the "full report." 19 pages is not enough for that, it is a bit more than the Executive Summary, however.

A synopsis of actions taken Tuesday, including the probable cause, findings and recommendations, can be found on ntsb.gov. The complete investigation report will be released in the coming weeks.

The NTSB also has a page on their website dedicated to this incident. It has links to all of the documents from March of last year, and some links to YouTube videos, including aeral photographs of the bridge and ship post allision.

This is the What's Going on With Shipping? video NTSB Reports on the Cause of the MV Dali Hitting and Collapsing the Bridge in Baltimore. It is about a 30 minute video, and may or may not be of interest to people. It covers the meeting in which the report was presented. This was 30 minutes discussing what took place in about 4 minutes. I find Sal Mercagliano's videos fascinating. YMMV.

A Story of a Bridge That Didn't Collapse

Infrastructure is still interesting. Well, it is interesting to me anyway.

The Washington Bridge in Rhode Island crosses Seekonk River from Providence to East Providence. It carries Interstate-195. Due to the problems uncovered in an inspection, the westbound span of the bridge was closed on December 11, 2023. (That is not a typo; the bridge has been closed more than a year.) There is a "rush" effort to demolish the impacted portions and get a contract to replace the bridge.

As Grady points out in the first video, this is basically a win. Sure, it would have been nice to replace the bridge without it being under emergency conditions, but the bridge did not fall down. No one was injured or killed. Usually when I write about bridges, it is because something has failed catastrophically.

This first video is from Practical Engineering. This Bridge’s Bizarre Design Nearly Caused It To Collapse. This video goes into the design of the bridge (it was a 1950s bridge built to coexist with a historic bridge.) How the design decisions made inspections difficult, and what eventually happened. It is a 20 minute video.

This is a video from YouTube channel Casey Jones - Professional Engineer titled Broken for Years! - Washington Bridge in Rhode Island. Casey Jones has some issues with the folks in charge of bridge safety in Rhode Island. This is a video that covers some statements by RIDOT, as well as analysis of vibration and movement patterns in the bridge. Is RIDOT lying to people? You judge. It is a 19 minute video.

Melbourne's West Gate Bridge Is Sinking

50 years ago, a section of the bridge collapsed while it was being constructed. 35 workers died in that accident. Now this. The curse of one of Australia's biggest and busiest bridges: Site of infamous disaster and child murder is now 'sinking'

The eastern section of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne is experiencing 'downward movement' due to being built on Coode Island silt, according to The Herald Sun.

The image is by Thad Roan from Littleton, CO, USA, and is here by way of Wikimedia Commons. Click the image for more information. And a slightly larger view.

But don't worry; it's safe. Of course it is.

Bedrock? We don't need to worry about bedrock.

As for the collapse 50 years ago during construction... 'A gravitating force': How the West Gate Bridge collapse changed Melbourne

“It was 10 to 12, lunchtime. We were packing up to go for lunch when I heard an unbelievable crack and saw the bridge coming down and the concrete pylon was coming towards us. And then it hit the ground, like an almighty thud, like an earthquake."

The story of the sinking seems to be a typical, bureaucratic "Let's reassure the masses" piece. Probably they aren't lying much. The article on the collapse is horrific. So use your discretion about reading it.

Everything Needs Maintenance...

But maintenance needs to be handled correctly. Design limits have to be respected. Parapet collapse ‘may have been caused by weight of ballast’ as bridge repairs to take another three weeks

Railway ballast is the crushed rock that holds railroad ties in place. It needs to be cleaned and regraded from time to time, as dirt can interfere with drainage, and the track has to be kept level. Sometimes new ballast must be added, but you cannot ignore weight limits on bridges.

A portion of a parapet (side wall) of a 180-year-old railway bridge in Scotland collapsed, stopping freight and commuter traffic on the line. It is expected that the collapse was in part due to excess weight from added ballast. The line in question will be closed at least until February 22nd.

Industry commentator Philip Haigh, writing in RAIL magazine, he said: “Over the years, the track engineer had dropped more and more ballast to keep the track level.

"It might be that this increased burden of ballast has increased pressure on parapets not designed for such a load.

If it that turns out be the case, then the railway has a lot of work to do, as there are any number of similar bridges, probably also overloaded with ballast.

"After three or four passes of this type of maintenance, the ballast is supposed to be renewed and the track level reset to its original position.

There are a lot of fascinating videos of railway maintenance machines. It has to be done regularly. Down time for maintenance is expensive. And so there are a lot of fairly fascinating machines that pull up track, pull up ties, collect and clean ballast, reset ties, bury with ballast and tamp, etc. Here is one such video, though it is a bit long at 7 minutes.

Everything needs maintenance. But you cannot congratulate yourself for maintaining your infrastructure and ignore the engineering limits of that infrastructure while you do. Sadly, this kind of thing isn't completely unheard of. The I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007 was apparently caused (in part) when a construction company getting ready to do maintenance placed materials and machines on the bridge that exceeded the designed weight limit by four times.

Engineering is hard. But necessary.

I tried to find an image of the impacted causeway that's in the Public Domain without any luck. The stock aerial photo of the collapse isn't very good, but you can find it as the article linked at the top of this post.

Third Time's the Charm - Bridge Collapse Edition

I think they might want to find a better construction firm. A bridge under construction in India's Bihar state has collapsed -- for the second time | CNN

A four-lane concrete bridge being built across the River Ganges in the east Indian state of Bihar has collapsed for the second time in just over a year, once again raising questions about the quality of its construction. [SNIP]

The Sultanganj Bridge has collapsed twice since construction began in 2017, the first time in April last year before Sunday’s catastrophic failure. It’s not clear why the bridge collapsed last year or if those problems had been rectified.

The bridge was designed by a Canadian firm who issued a "statement" that says nothing.

The construction company has been strangely silent. (Unexpectedly?)

The video of the collapse at the CNN link above is beset with commercials. See the video at reddit: r/CatastrophicFailure - an under construction bridge collapsed in Bihar, 04 June 2023.

Real Benefit from the IoT

Usually I see IoT stories that are about hackers and mayhem. This reinforces the idea that there could be some benefit. Bridge In Distress Sends Warning Using IoT Sensors

There’s not much that can shake up Kjetil Sletten, a senior engineer who manages bridge maintenance for the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA). But when Sletten received an automated notification in April 2021 that movement sensors on a bridge in central Norway had gone off the scales, his instincts told him he needed to have a look with his own eyes.

It was an 80-year-old bridge, and one of the bridge had become separated from its support. (You can see movement in the video at the link above.) One end of the bridge was moving up and down with passing vehicles.

Sletten coolly blocked traffic in the northbound lane with his vehicle and called a road crew to manage traffic.

Which given that he didn't have an "official vehicle" was probably a bit of an issue, though maybe not the problem I would have envisioned in some places in America.

An interim repair was constructed to handle the traffic temporarily, and long-term replacement is under construction.

That 80-year-old bridge was part of a test of the IoT technology by the Norwegian transport agency.

“I don’t want to think about what might have happened if we didn’t have this instrumentation on the bridge,” said Trond Michael Andersen, director of Technology, division for Operation and Maintenance, NPRA.

In the video at the link above, it is noted that emergencies cost more than fixing things in a more proactive manner. Lack of time for planning, lack of time for a bidding process, and general stress all increase the cost.

The article mentions both the emergency closure of the Hernando De Soto Bridge in Memphis, and the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy.

Nature Doesn't Care about Woke. Get the Design Right, Or Else

We'll get to the Woke in a minute. Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To | The New Republic

One of the people working for OceanGate, the operator of the lost Titanic-tourist submarine, had concerns over safety. He was fired, and sued for "disclosing confidential information." He counter-sued claiming he was terminated for being a whistleblower.

The tourist submersible that went missing while exploring the Titanic wreck was previously the target of safety complaints from an employee of OceanGate, the parent company that owns the sub and runs tourist expeditions of the wreck. That employee complained specifically that the sub was not capable of descending to such extreme depths before he was fired.

As for the Woke: Did Wokeness Doom the Titanic Tourists?

OceanGate wasn't interested in hiring the best, most experienced people. That isn't Woke. They wanted youth and inspiration. They may have gotten youth, I'm not sure if anyone is inspired at this point.

“When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in the interview. “I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational, and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology. But, a 25-year-old, you know, who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational.”

As Pixy Misa (or Mixy Pisa) has noted, the universe doesn't care about how many diversity boxes you have checked.

When you build a bridge, it doesn't matter if you respect people's pronouns and their lived experience. It doesn't matter if you hate "fascists" and cheer "progress" and drink only sustainable organic fair-trade soy lattes.

You get the fucking math right or it falls down.

That applies to a lot of things: Bridges. Airplanes. Submarines.

Hat tip on the 2 articles goes to The Other McCain: As a Commentary on Our Decadent Elite, the Missing Luxury Sub Is Near Perfect

As a metaphor for the failures of our decadent elite, this story is almost perfect.

After thought: This story reminds me of the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. This sub had worked "several times" since 2019, so there was no reason - in their minds - to think it wouldn't work again. The I-35 bridge had stood for 50 years before it collapsed. There was no reason to think it would collapse on that day, or any day. Though a better example may have been the faults found with the I-40 bridge in Memphis, because in that case the faults were found and corrected before the bridge collapsed. In the case of the sub, the faults, whatever they were, were not detected, but in the I-35 case there were other problems than just normal, daily wear and tear.

More Bridges Will Fall Down Thanks to Woke Math

Just last week I had a story about how the inability to do math caused a bridge to collapse; Six people died, and 10 more were injured. Today we have a story about how there shouldn't be a "right answer." Adding wokeness: Oregon promotes teacher program to subtract ‘racism in mathematics’

Part of the toolkit includes a list of ways “white supremacy culture” allegedly “infiltrates math classrooms.” Those include “the focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer,” students being “required to ‘show their work,'” and other alleged manifestations.

Except for some problems you encounter in college, there is only one right answer. If you get the wrong answer in the real world, bridges will collapse, buildings will collapse, planes will fall out of the sky, and people will die.

But we will have a Woke society. At least those people who don't die in horrible accidents.

The story last week was The FIU Pedestrian Bridge Collapse: Math Is Hard Edition.

A Bridge That Didn't Collapse

Not yet anyway. Almost a miracle that they found the problem before it did fall down. Repairs to I-40 bridge in Memphis could take months

The six-lane bridge into Memphis was shut down Tuesday afternoon after inspectors found a “significant fracture” in one of two 900-foot horizontal steel beams that are crucial for the bridge’s integrity, said Lorie Tudor, director of the Arkansas Department of Transportation.

Hat tip the Small Dead Animals and Now Is The Time At SDA When We Juxtapose!

Biden Administration: “Teachers Unions are infrastructure.”
Infrastructure…

This is not a minor problem. Not only is there a crack, but the bridge seems to have begun to deform. Which is a problem unto itself.

If you live in Memphis, or know a truck driver who regularly drives over that bridge, do you want the math programs to assume "there is no correct answer." Just take a guess as to whether or not the bridge will fall down. Diversity is more important. At least according to the left. Personally I want engineers to get things right.

On a related note, river traffic has resumed. Mississippi River traffic resumes after I-40 bridge closure for fractured beam, which was a bigger problem than the bridge closure. (There are alternate routes for cars and trucks.)

Why Do People Think They Can Ignore Weight Limits on Bridges?

It isn't the first bridge to collapse because of overwieght trucks, and it won't be the last. 4 dead in collapse of highway flyover in central China

So an 11-year-old highway bridge collapsed in China last week, killing 4 people.

The accident occurred at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the city of Ezhou, with about 500 meters (1,640 feet) of the bridge built over an expressway collapsing onto the roadway below, according to transport and police authorities.

Early indications are that a truck weighing nearly 200 tons was on the bridge when it failed.

Preliminary investigations revealed that a truck weighing a total of 198 tons had broken into two pieces while falling off the structure. The newspaper Beijing News said the truck was four times over the allowable weight limit on the flyover.

Trucks in this country are usually limited to about 80,000 pounds. That truck in China weighed in at 396,000 pounds. Which is amazing. (Though I guess the weight limit in China is more like 100,000 pounds.)

I'll bet that it is not the first time a truck weighing significantly more than the limit has gone over that bridge. "Nothing failed the first time, so we can obviously ignore the limits. We can just keep piling on the load, right?" I will also bet that no one responsible for the decision to wildly overload trucks were one of the 4 people who died. They probably don't even know the people who died. Because there is very little Justice in the universe.

And it isn't just in China where people ignore the weight limits. Here is a case in France, and a case in Missouri.

The I-40 Bridge (The Hernando de Soto Bridge) Between Arkansas and Tennessee

On May 11th, a crack was found in a critical member of the I-40 bridge that connects Memphis, Tennessee with West Memphis, Arkansas. It was immediately closed to traffic, causing major problems for the region.

The video is pretty good at explaining why this is a critical issue, and

Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT) released a drone video from 2 years ago showing the initial stage of the crack forming. (The section of the video is at 8 minutes and 57 seconds in.)

My initial post on this incident is at the following link. A Bridge That Didn't Collapse. It has a couple of the images released when the crack in the bridge was initally discovered.

This is the video for "What Really Happened at the Hernando de Soto Bridge?" from Practical Engineering.