http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/west-miami-dade/article205316174.html

 

It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse of a structure that had been touted as an

innovative “instant” bridge because of how quickly it could be constructed.

 

Oh yes, nothing can go wrong with rushing something like this!

 

Gimenez added that the bridge had undergone testing before the collapse.

 

Kemp declined to identify the source of the information, but said he had conversations about workers “possibly adjusting tension lines on the bridge” before the accident.

 

I get this was a busy area, but you're stress testing an "INSTANT BRIDGE" that was constructed quickly, and testing the tension lines. Was public safety not considered at all?  It's funny how we always say "this could've been avoided", but nothing ever changes.  We say it over and over again, but never take the steps to avoid it.

 

The university’s engineering school has an “accelerated bridge” program that develops techniques to speed up bridge construction. The program consulted with builders, designers and engineers early in the process, but was not closely involved in the pedestrian bridge program, a spokeswoman said last week.

 

I get it, people are impatient fucks and will cry if they have to take a detour or be a little late getting somewhere, but you cannot try and rush something like this.  The area I live in has construction every single year around various parts of the city, either fixing roads, or putting up new bridges.  A new bridge was put up a few years back, and it took a long, long time to do, but hey, it's flawless and zero issues!

 

There definitely was a need for a pedestrian bridge, but they should've taken better precautions.  This entire situation could've been avoided had they closed the road.  Then, at the very least, we'd only have one or two people injured/

31 minutes ago, Giordano said:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/west-miami-dade/article205316174.html

 

Oh yes, nothing can go wrong with rushing something like this!

 

I get this was a busy area, but you're stress testing an "INSTANT BRIDGE" that was constructed quickly, and testing the tension lines. Was public safety not considered at all?  It's funny how we always say "this could've been avoided", but nothing ever changes.  We say it over and over again, but never take the steps to avoid it.

 

I get it, people are impatient fucks and will cry if they have to take a detour or be a little late getting somewhere, but you cannot try and rush something like this.  The area I live in has construction every single year around various parts of the city, either fixing roads, or putting up new bridges.  A new bridge was put up a few years back, and it took a long, long time to do, but hey, it's flawless and zero issues!

 

There definitely was a need for a pedestrian bridge, but they should've taken better precautions.  This entire situation could've been avoided had they closed the road.  Then, at the very least, we'd only have one or two people injured/

 

 

Actually, you definitely can speed up this kind of thing in a perfectly safe way. The key is to do as much work as possible before putting the bridge over the road -- in this case, the span was apparently fabricated alongside the road before being lifted. There's nothing less safe about that, and I think it's unlikely that this will turn out to be related to the collapse (it's more likely that the failure is a result of a problem with the engineering of the span itself). As for stress tests, it would be very unusual to run those with the street open (especially because it can be closed at night for tests). I'd wait before taking early reports as gospel; it's quite possible that "we did stress tests this morning" (meaning 2 AM) or "we were doing stress tests" (meaning "the project is in the stress test phase") turned into "they were doing stress tests that day" turned into "they were actively doing stress tests when the collapse happened."

God how I hate those pedestrian bridges or tunnels, and there's absolutely no reason for building them in a city (except Dubai which is a city for cars).

 

Anyway, stress testing when the street is open? That's unusual to me.

7 hours ago, Hastings said:

God how I hate those pedestrian bridges or tunnels, and there's absolutely no reason for building them in a city (except Dubai which is a city for cars).

 

Anyway, stress testing when the street is open? That's unusual to me.

 

In this particular instance, it was for a college, so students could safely cross back and forth.  I recall in the article it mentioned a few students had been killed trying to cross.

 

Agreed, any structure that is "fast erecting" should have the area closed down when testing.

19 hours ago, Giordano said:

 

In this particular instance, it was for a college, so students could safely cross back and forth.  I recall in the article it mentioned a few students had been killed trying to cross.

 

 

Back in the day (three years ago) I took part in a research for the municipality to assess the safety of a crossing near a school. There used to be a bridge, but it had been closed for maintenance for a long time (as usually happens here) so they made regular crosswalk with traffic light, speed bumps and speed limit at 30 kmh (road had two lanes in each direction). We found out that for 5 months were were only 2 accidents involving pedestrians, minor injuries and only reported because there's a patrol car there. For the same 5 months when the bridge was open there was a gravely injured once and several accidents monthly -- kids were running across the road, because no one wanted to waste time on that bridge (too hot in summer and too slippery in winter), and cars were going full speed, 60-70 kmh. 

 

Sure, kids were at fault for running across the road, but the regular crossing with lights proved to be safer (yeah, the period probably wasn't sufficiently long, but if I remember right there's a lot of research on this topic in the Internet, better than ours).

 

Sorry for going off topic, just wanted to share. 

6 hours ago, Hastings said:

Back in the day (three years ago) I took part in a research for the municipality to assess the safety of a crossing near a school. There used to be a bridge, but it had been closed for maintenance for a long time (as usually happens here) so they made regular crosswalk with traffic light, speed bumps and speed limit at 30 kmh (road had two lanes in each direction). We found out that for 5 months were were only 2 accidents involving pedestrians, minor injuries and only reported because there's a patrol car there. For the same 5 months when the bridge was open there was a gravely injured once and several accidents monthly -- kids were running across the road, because no one wanted to waste time on that bridge (too hot in summer and too slippery in winter), and cars were going full speed, 60-70 kmh. 

 

Sure, kids were at fault for running across the road, but the regular crossing with lights proved to be safer (yeah, the period probably wasn't sufficiently long, but if I remember right there's a lot of research on this topic in the Internet, better than ours).

 

Sorry for going off topic, just wanted to share. 

 

You have a point.  It pretty much comes down to human stupidity and being impatient.  All these people have to do is slow down and wait.  They were all young once and trying to get to school.  It's almost as if once you become an adult, you forget all the struggles you previously had and focus on the here and now.  Kids trying to cross the street for college?  Nope, my life is too important to stop and wait!

 

If only people were decent, we wouldn't need these pedestrian bridges at all.

1 minute ago, Giordano said:

 

If only people were decent, we wouldn't need these pedestrian bridges at all.

Oh... If people were decent, we could focus on a ton of other wonderful things instead!

Update

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/florida-bridge-collapse-crack.html

 

Quote

The engineering company, Figg Bridge Engineers, delivered a technical presentation on the crack, and “concluded there were no safety concerns and the crack did not compromise the structural integrity of the bridge,” the statement said.

 

Quote

Two days earlier, Mr. Pate left a voice mail message for the Transportation Department about “some cracking that’s been observed on the north end” of the bridge, according to a recording from the department released Friday. At both the meeting and in his message, Mr. Pate said the cracking did not present any safety issues.

 

Clearly something did present a safety concern.  I find it interesting none of these professionals took notice of it.

 

Quote

 

Around the same time the meeting was starting, about 9 a.m., Jorge Mesa, a 31-year-old university employee, said he was in his car near the bridge when he heard “a cracking-whip kind of sound.” He looked to his right and saw one of the construction workers on the street.

The worker’s face, Mr. Mesa said, seemed to say, “Um, that’s not normal.”
 

 

 

At that point, drive away as fast as possible. If someone doing the job has a face of confusion or panic, you know shit has gone wrong.

 

Edit: Dashcam of the bridge collapse.

 

 

A school... Bus... In that line. Oh dear Lord. 

This gets better and better.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-crane-operator-working-on-the-fiu-bridge-left-the-deadly-scene-—-in-his-crane/ar-AAxg9LZ?ocid=spartandhp

 

I could understand him wanting to get his crane out of the way, but he was part of the scene.  He was there when it happened, there's no "I'm just gonna leave now".  If you want to move your crane out of the way for first responders, fine, but you damn well better stand there, waiting for them, and say "I was on scene working when this happened".

Wait so they were testing if that bridge was capable of holding a certain load? Best way to test if a bridge is gonna collapse is by LETTING PEOPLE GO UNDER IT 🙄

 

 

On 3/16/2018 at 12:52 AM, Giordano said:

I get this was a busy area, but you're stress testing an "INSTANT BRIDGE" that was constructed quickly, and testing the tension lines. Was public safety not considered at all?  It's funny how we always say "this could've been avoided", but nothing ever changes.  We say it over and over again, but never take the steps to avoid it.

Hmmm, in this particular case I agree that deaths could have been avoided, but not in all cases I think it's bad. In last century/decades mentality has changed to 'every death is one too many'. We are going in a state of too much security and too much safety. Every little threat to safety has to be eliminated. Not necessarily bad, but in some cases this should not be a thing at all. Especially when it comes to innovations, you can accept some deaths. Best example is the self-driving cars. Every time a self-driving car kills someone or even 'just injures' someone, I see the company responsible putting a halt to testing. I think we are limiting ourselves in innovating ourselves. We should accept that someone got hit by a car, and just move on developing it. What if during the industrial revolutions, the developers of innovations for that time stopped developing it after a death? We would be nowhere near where we are right now.