Bridge Collapse

[spewey at comcast.net (Spewey)]

Jesus H, people.  As someone who has had the term "Metallurgical" in 
their professional title before, I wanted to take a minute to have a 
look at what a crap job bridge inspection is.  All over the news are 
reports of "fatigue," "structurally deficient" and "50/120" as if the 
news pundits or the populace has any idea what that stuff means.  And 
then they go and attack them because they screwed up.  Colossal 
shittiness.

We won't know for a long time who screwed up.  And I know there are some 
people here who do Failure Analysis or FMEA on car parts who know how 
easy it is to look at a computer screen or even peer into a microscope 
to investigate corrosion or work hardening but the men and women who 
hang off bridges have a difficult job:  they can't take a bridge beam 
back to the lab.  They have to sign off on it in situ.

FDNY, blah blah, first responder, Navy divers, schoolbus full of 
precious loinfruit...once you're done feeling all red white and blue, 
please take a second to think about the poor inspectors before you throw 
a spark plug at them for making you late.

 From the news:

"It's nuts," said a second MnDOT expert who has inspected the bridge. 
"The first thing you notice is that the traffic is not giving you a 
break. And in MnDOT there is a real reluctance to close a lane of 
traffic because then you're impeding flow. Then there's the height over 
the water, the pigeons, bats and spiders. If you're a little squirrelly 
about those things, you shouldn't be in the business. It's nasty 
business down there."

http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1347900.html

Some Minnesota Department of Transportation employees have found 
themselves the target of "very...serious threats by email and phone calls"

http://www.startribune.com/10204/story/1347187.html