- #1
- 19,442
- 10,021
"A bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota has collapsed, sending cars into the water, The Associated Press reports" - CNN. Hope everyone here is ok! My sister and brother-in-law take it every day, but they phoned us ok.
Mallignamius said:There's a little more at Yahoo:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/minnesota_bridge_collapse
I hope no one was killed.
When I first heard it on the radio this morning, it sounded like an earthquake -- the people were saying it started shaking then they went into free-fall.Schrodinger's Dog said:No one mentioned an explosion before it collapsed, just that it suddenly gave way.
Terrorism has been ruled out, it said that just as I was typing this.
Just to put a little perspective on this, they could not have fallen at free fall velocities. It's a collapsing bridge, not a disappearing bridge.cyrusabdollahi said:Wow, those people were in their car and fell 64 feet into the water. Thats like driving into a brick wall at 100mph.
Yeah -- I don't know that part of the US very well (apart from the airport), but thought it stange.ranger said:Earthquake? Minneapolis? The shaking was probably just the bridge giving away.
They installed an automatic de-icing system a few years ago and that is corrosive material (no one mentioned this) and it's been quite hot, that could have placed unusual expansion stresses in the steel truss structure. The failure happened at one point and the rest of the collapse was cascade or chain reaction. It's clear it was on the west (south end) bank side and from my inexpert opinion looking at the wreckage from the TV videos, the down stream side failed first and the bridge torqued and collapsed.
ranger said:Are they suspecting terrorism? I mean, the bridge was given the OK about 3 years ago after an inspection. It just can't fall, right?
As we know from debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, structural failure is generally an all-or nothing thing. When the structural members fail, the bridge would have essentially dropped in freefall. Even when the failure is buckling instead of breaking (this one probably had both), the ability of the members to hold up the weight/resist the fall drops by many orders of magnitude.DaveC426913 said:Just to put a little perspective on this, they could not have fallen at free fall velocities. It's a collapsing bridge, not a disappearing bridge.
Not a cheery throught, but this bridge was on a federal list of "structurally deficient" bridges...a long list:ranger said:Are they suspecting terrorism? I mean, the bridge was given the OK about 3 years ago after an inspection. It just can't fall, right?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/08/expert-points-t.htmlHe says investigators are sure to look into whether work crews or passing trains caused excessive vibrations on the steel-truss span, which was deemed "structurally deficient" on a federal list of bridges.
"A structurally deficient bridge might be one not adequate for the traffic it takes, but not necessarily dangerous," Burnett tells the paper. "But a lot of structurally deficient bridges are dangerous."
The feds have information about deficient bridges. So does the group that represents civil engineers. It says: As of 2005, 156,335 of the nation's 595,363 bridges, or 26.3%, were structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, as compared to 34.6% of all bridges in 1992.
Schrodinger's Dog said:Terrorism has been ruled out, it said that just as I was typing this.
russ_watters said:As we know from debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories, structural failure is generally an all-or nothing thing. When the structural members fail, the bridge would have essentially dropped in freefall. Even when the failure is buckling instead of breaking (this one probably had both), the ability of the members to hold up the weight/resist the fall drops by many orders of magnitude.
cyrusabdollahi said:...Probably a bridge falling expert to comment on it. ...[/rant]
cyrusabdollahi said:This is nothing but more of the same, media hype. A bridge fell. Report it correctly. Tell me what happened, how many people died and then move on. Then follow up a month later with a report explaining why it fell. But when you have all day news programs with nothing to talk about, they report the same crap for 12 straight hours on how the bridge fell. Yes, there was a school bus on the bridge......and? So what? Did everyone in the bus die? No. Is this good news reporting? No.
cyrusabdollahi said:Quick, make an animation of the bridge falling, because were too stupid to think in our minds how a bridge falls. They even put all the cars on the bridge (bus included) as it fell in the animation.