35W Bridge Collapses in Minneapolis - 8 Lanes, 4 in use

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I wonder if this is a case of concrete corrosion. Before you jump in and yell it's not the concrete, there are too many MEs and CEs that don't even study microstructural effects of corrosion. All of you talk about forces left and right. That's easy to explain. When you design structures like these, there's almost always a safety factor. I'm sure 40 years ago they would've checked a LOT of many conditions the bridge would be going through. This is MN. Even if traffic is bumper to bumper, I'm sure they account for snow too. We're in summer. If you assume a snowstorm the load would be a lot greater. Furthermore, considering lanes were closed for construction, the load shouldn't have been that heavy.

It's simple to say that the concrete and steel were insufficient for the load that day, but it's a lot harder to explain the cause.

I remember when the MacArthur maze collapsed and everyone started talking about melted steel =)

 

[PELarson]

Originally posted by: Joemonkey

Originally posted by: PELarson
a little humor in a time of tragedy.

KARE11 just ran a interview with a lady that decided not to take the bridge at the last moment because her bladder was full. :thumbsup:

its the little things isn't it? I got home from a 7ish hour drive (no where near where the incident happened, but it was 95% interstate driving which by itself is dangerous in it's own right) at 6:05pm here, and my wife worries constantly about me when I'm traveling. Wasn't a good time to say "hey at least I didn't have to go to minneapolis...."

Robert Frosts poem The Road Not Taken seems to sum it up the best. At least it always has for me.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Originally posted by: RedArmy
This sounds completely retarded but regarding the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed under a type of aeroelastic flutter, is it possible that the downfall of the I-35W had anything to do with a forced resonance of sorts?

I know that Mythbusters debunked Tesla's claim about his earthquake machine saying that it could destroy a bridge if it matched the natural frequency of the bridge and was given enough time, but they said specifically that modern bridges were built with this taken into account. I'm not sure about the guidelines for building a bridge in the 1960's though.

I used to live near the (new, obviously) Tacoma Narrows bridge, so I was always intrigued by that video, and, conveniently enough, I live near the 35W bridge that collapsed today, and take it at least 8 times a week. I do not believe this was a similar collapse in any sense. The 35W bridge was pretty solid (at least from what you would perceive driving over it), and so wide you really didn't have the perception of being on a bridge.

 

[RedArmy]

Originally posted by: DonVito

Originally posted by: RedArmy
This sounds completely retarded but regarding the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed under a type of aeroelastic flutter, is it possible that the downfall of the I-35W had anything to do with a forced resonance of sorts?

I know that Mythbusters debunked Tesla's claim about his earthquake machine saying that it could destroy a bridge if it matched the natural frequency of the bridge and was given enough time, but they said specifically that modern bridges were built with this taken into account. I'm not sure about the guidelines for building a bridge in the 1960's though.

I used to live near the (new, obviously) Tacoma Narrows bridge, so I was always intrigued by that video, and, conveniently enough, I live near the 35W bridge that collapsed today, and take it at least 8 times a week. I do not believe this was a similar collapse in any sense. The 35W bridge was pretty solid (at least from what you would perceive driving over it), and so wide you really didn't have the perception of being on a bridge.

Yeah, I don't really think it could be that either, but it was the first thing I thought of. I kinda said forced resonance since the only way a bridge like that could be affected would be from the movement of cars/machines or anything else on top of it that may vibrate. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was all about the wind though.

In any case, the bridge was old and something failed. There's a more likely guess...

 

[shortylickens]

Scary.
I grew up in Minneapolis and almost took a job there when I got out of the Navy.

As a native I can honestly say this isnt too suprising. They've been letting many roads and bridges go to crap for MANY years. This was inevitable.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

How big of a hit is this to the transportation in the city?

I remember when the MacArthur maze collapsed in the Bay Area it was a huge deal since ~300,000 cars pass through. I can't imagine what life would be like if the Bay Bridge did collapse right now. I drive to The City at least once a week and there are so many people who go through everyday that something like this would be insane.

 

[indamixx99]

On CNN they were saying that erosion of the foundation possibly could've caused the collapse. There's so many speculations on how this thing collapsed we might never know the real cause. Good thing they only had 2 lanes open in each direction instead of all 4.

 

[jinduy]

i'm pretty certain this isn't the last time something like this would happen here in the US

 

[indamixx99]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
How big of a hit is this to the transportation in the city?

It's a major artery into/out of downtown, so at least 100,000+ cars/day.

 

[alphatarget1]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
How big of a hit is this to the transportation in the city?

I remember when the MacArthur maze collapsed in the Bay Area it was a huge deal since ~300,000 cars pass through. I can't imagine what life would be like if the Bay Bridge did collapse right now. I drive to The City at least once a week and there are so many people who go through everyday that something like this would be insane.

SF Bay has an excellent public transportation system.

 

[pyonir]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
How big of a hit is this to the transportation in the city?

I remember when the MacArthur maze collapsed in the Bay Area it was a huge deal since ~300,000 cars pass through. I can't imagine what life would be like if the Bay Bridge did collapse right now. I drive to The City at least once a week and there are so many people who go through everyday that something like this would be insane.

It's going to be a pretty big deal. That was the main way to get into Minneapolis from the north. I heard them mention on the news coverage that like 200,000 cars pass over that bridge a day on average. It has a tremendous impact on traffic.

 

[Doctor Nyse]

Mental.

 

[Gilligansdingy]

I am very sorry to those who lost loved ones today.


I was watching a rebroadcast of fox news and noticed that the Twins will be delaying the ground breaking of thier new stadium tommorrow. So it made me think.... If the state had directed that $392 million dollars from the new stadium and maybe devided that surplus cash among many good causes.... lets say public transportation.... Would this have happened? Things happen for a reason. Maybe a wake up call. Some people are lining thier pockets with money that is better suited for public safety and maybe just maybe education. Oh link to info on stadium costs..

Text

Sorry for the rant.




For the spelling nazi's... Yea I needed more public education... I know.

 

[randym431]

Has terrorism been totally 100% rules out? Large interstate bridge, rush hour, hummmm.
I think how it works is states get fed road grants. They have to use it all up, or their next year funding is cut. So it pays to use it up.

 

[Xstatic1]

pics of this horrible tragedy.

to those who died...RIP

 

[Auryg]

Text

My sister's ex-bf's mom was on the bridge- I believe that's her white car in this picture.

She's shook up, but not hurt.

 

[KrillBee]

I drove out to Hopkins after work, I normally don't take 35w but tonight I was on it at 5pm. I'm glad I was able to get off work earlier than usual, I can't imagine how horrifying it would have been to get stuck on that bridge.

Originally posted by: DLeRium
How big of a hit is this to the transportation in the city?

It will cripple it severely. 35w is the main drag through minneapolis for going north and south, heck it's the main north/south drag for the entire west metro.

i honestly don't even know what routes ill take now to go out to Hopkings, Richfield, or places on the other side of the city.

 

[Darwin333]

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: alphatarget1

Originally posted by: Electric Mayhem

A better example of what wind can do is perhaps the collapse of the Kinzua railroad bridge in NE Pennsylvania in 2003.

Although that's a tornado, I wouldn't call that "wind".

A lot of civil engineering has to do with probability. What's the probability that an earthquake of a certain magnitude can hit this area in the next 100, 200 500 years? What's the probability that the river level can exceed this limit in the next 100 years? etc.. If engineers would design structures, dams, roadways, for extreme wind, snow, hydrostatic, live loads, etc. we would have very expensive, "ugly", albeit robust structures.

The design strength goes up as the importance of the structure goes up. Hospitals and schools are probably some of the safest building structures.

Holland's flood protection is designed to withstand 1,000 year floods, or so I've heard.

An interstate span that has 200,000 ADT (average daily traffic) should be pretty important... anyway.

There has been a lot of shameful engineering disasters lately, first New Orleans and now this

New Orleans was hit by a hurricane. it was not built to withstand one the size that hit it.

so far this does look like a engineering disaster. New Orleans was not.

New Orleans was hit by a Cat 3 hurricane. The levees where supposedly built to withstand a Cat 3 with a safety factor on top of that. Shoddy construction and design changes supervised by the COE caused the levees to fail.

New Orleans was very much an engineering failure.

 

[yuppiejr]

Originally posted by: alphatarget1

Originally posted by: DLeRium
How big of a hit is this to the transportation in the city?

I remember when the MacArthur maze collapsed in the Bay Area it was a huge deal since ~300,000 cars pass through. I can't imagine what life would be like if the Bay Bridge did collapse right now. I drive to The City at least once a week and there are so many people who go through everyday that something like this would be insane.

SF Bay has an excellent public transportation system.

It's a huge hit to the city from a transportation standpoint; 200,000 cars a day is a huge number to have to reroute considering the size of Minneapolis and it's already over-capacity roadways. The problem with a spread out metro area like ours as opposed to the densely populated Bay area is lack of cost effectiveness in certain popular mass transit options like light rail/subway/etc... Roads are really the only cost effective way to move people in busses/cars/trucks in and out of the city since so much of the population is located in outlying suburbs.

Unfortunately MN continues to squander it's public transportation dollars on a light rail system that has yet to prove a net positive gain of any sort on traffic, cost nearly a billion dollars to build and costs 15-20 million a year in perpetuity to subsidize. (Riders pay $2 for a ticket, it costs $20 per head to run.) It's well known that our road system is in dire need of updates and repair, yet we are looking to spend another 1-2 billion dollars on an expansion to the light rail system that so far, has only benefited the contractors that build it and the public entity that manages it. The only positive I can see from this tragedy is an increase in public awareness of the mismanagement of our transportation funds. Hopefully enough calls to local representatives will help prevent future tragedies like this by putting transportation money where it belongs, in maintaining our roadways.

 

[brandonb]

brandonb checking in. Was just getting home about 20 miles away at the time of collapse. I guess that explains why the phone system was acting so strange the entire evening (I don't watch the news or turn on TV, so I didn't even hear about it until 10pm when I started getting voicemails appearing on my phone asking if I was ok)

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: RedArmy
This sounds completely retarded but regarding the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed under a type of aeroelastic flutter, is it possible that the downfall of the I-35W had anything to do with a forced resonance of sorts?

I know that Mythbusters debunked Tesla's claim about his earthquake machine saying that it could destroy a bridge if it matched the natural frequency of the bridge and was given enough time, but they said specifically that modern bridges were built with this taken into account. I'm not sure about the guidelines for building a bridge in the 1960's though.

I already see what was the downfall of this bridge.

Look at the cement base supports.

They moved.

I don't care how much the metal frame flexes, the cement bases should've never moved.

That means they were not deep enough.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: yuppiejr

Originally posted by: Electric Mayhem
I'm a structural engineer, but I work on railroad bridges, old (100 years +) and new.

It's not a secret that our country is in severe need of funding for thousands of bridge repairs and replacements, large and small, across the country, both railroad and traffic. I'm sad to say that a tragedy like this may be what's needed to get our citizens' and lawmakers' eyes to open up.

It's very shocking to see something like this. From what I read it sounds like fatigue cracks were present that ma have been a main factor. But it's too early to tell....there appear to be different types of structures and multiple spans collapsed.

Well, luckily Minnesota is gearing up to spend 1 billion + on a new light-rail road line which will do nothing to alleviate traffic while our road system continues to deteriorate...

Yeah that light rail system, what a wonderful use of public money on our traffic system.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Darwin333

New Orleans was hit by a Cat 3 hurricane.

The levees where supposedly built to withstand a Cat 3 with a safety factor on top of that. Shoddy construction and design changes supervised by the COE caused the levees to fail.

New Orleans was very much an engineering failure.

I was there and had been through many Hurricanes before Katrina as I lived on the East Coast before New Orelans.

That was no CAT 3, do not believe Government lies.

 

[Tarrant64]

:brokenheart:

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

That was no CAT 3, do not believe Government lies.

The Saffir-Simpson scale is based upon surface wind speeds and in fact is a dated metric on determining what kind of damage a hurricane will do. It can generally be agreed that the relationship between storm surge and wind speed is relative however this storm was much stronger at an earlier point. It had time to push much more water into a confined area before landfall. So even if at landfall the wind speeds were indeed CAT3 strength the storm surge and duration were probably much closer to a strong CAT4 storm.

Florida residents that remember Wilma in 2005 will also tell you that it seemed much worse than a strong CAT2. This storm was historic in terms of central pressure and wind speed. (Cozumel is still rebuilding from that one)

The point is if Katrina was only a CAT3 at its strongest and made landfall as a CAT3 the damage would not have been as widespread and the storm surge not nearly as destructive.

Newer software is in testing stages that will take all this into account and produce a factor that will be translated into a newly devised warning system (hopefully) - providing funding for it does not get cut.