Intruders-Alert

A short time ago a pedestrian bridge collapsed. It was reported to have just been swung into place a few days ago.

Right now there are a lot of people aside from victims with a sick feeling in their guts. Designers and architects. Engineers. City planners. Construction workers. Contractors.

It’s going to be a mind blower, I feel sure, when it becomes clear what exactly tragically went wrong. I have a solid background in construction and building and it is beyond belief to me that this has happened. A terrible flaw? Sabotage? Unbelievable.

What a tragedy. My guess is we'll likely discover contractor cost cutting measures and possibly people paid to look the other way. It won't be an engineer's miscalculation or poor architectural design, nor poor workmanship. The reason for the failure will revolve around money.

FIU bridge collapses; fatalities reported, Florida officials say


I've been watching the comments...

JFL Live wrote:FIU bridge collapses; fatalities reported, Florida officials say


I've been watching the comments...

COmment section full of stupid people

MadCow wrote:

JFL Live wrote:FIU bridge collapses; fatalities reported, Florida officials say


I've been watching the comments...

COmment section full of stupid people

I know, and entertaining...

Just heard construction workers were doing stress tests when the bridge collapsed. Guess the tests tragically failed. I’ve been through a lot in the building trades, and experience tells me this is totally unbelievable. The bridge was designed to survive for 100 years and withstand cat 5 hurricanes.

RoadKing wrote:Just heard construction workers were doing stress tests when the bridge collapsed. Guess the tests tragically failed. I’ve been through a lot in the building trades, and experience tells me this is totally unbelievable. The bridge was designed to survive for 100 years and withstand cat 5 hurricanes.

Unfortunately that family owned construction company is headed into very rough water....

[space]

Ya gotta check yer work boys!

Pre-fab. I had a strong hunch that would be so. So, origin of fabrication and material. That could open a can of worms.

SuzyRidr2 wrote:What a tragedy. My guess is we'll likely discover contractor cost cutting measures and possibly people paid to look the other way. It won't be an engineer's miscalculation or poor architectural design, nor poor workmanship. The reason for the failure will revolve around money.

That's it in a nutshell. Should have never happened. I say jail time for those responsible.

.

SuzyRidr2 wrote:What a tragedy. My guess is we'll likely discover contractor cost cutting measures and possibly people paid to look the other way. It won't be an engineer's miscalculation or poor architectural design, nor poor workmanship. The reason for the failure will revolve around money.

You were saying...

Companies behind Florida bridge collapse have history of fines, failures, lawsuits

JFL Live wrote:
You were saying...

Companies behind Florida bridge collapse have history of fines, failures, lawsuits

Yet they continue to get the contracts.

This bridge is hard for me to wrap my head around how it works. I understand principles of pre-stressed concrete structure and arched spans and how they transfer their loading, but this thing is a weird mix of that plus apparently some ideas I can't readily make out just from looking at it.

I see the upper part seems to be the main load carrying member, and the pre-stress cable channels are visible in the wrecked end, while the diagonal/vertical members are staggered and asymmetrical, I'm guessing this has something to do with how the whole thing bears on its vertical bases...oddly it looks like it sits on a notch in one, but is flush-tied to the other (the side that collapsed)...I can't even figure out how load is transferred to that side...not too well, apparently...

I saw the rough video of the collapse but it's too fuzzy and low frame rate to get a good feel for sequence of failure...at least to my untrained eye...

jeffcoslacker wrote:This bridge is hard for me to wrap my head around how it works..

And even if you did understand, that would only lead you to know that it works and that it has done so before. The main issue is failure and why. I’m saying from experience that the answer is in the prefab stage alongside the eight lane road. I’m betting that one or more of the construction workers (iron workers?) is looking back for answers and beginning to have doubts about the process as they review in their minds the various stages before the final product was swung into place. A whole lot of concrete and not enough steel. Like I said, this could open a real big can of worms.

Very interesting...makes perfect sense if correct. By not supporting it as intended during the move, they overstressed and fatally stretched the left side compression rods, which was exactly what the crew was working with at the time of the break, exactly at the point of failure.

Likely while trying to dial in the proper torque on the already compromised rod, it gave up and snapped. They'd been stressed beyond limit by unsupported concrete casting flex during positioning and were primed for sudden failure.