What Happened To the Bay Bridge?

farnsworth writes "Tony Alfrey has put together a fascinating page with some history, analysis, and possible explanations for what ultimately went wrong with the recent emergency repair of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The bridge has been closed for days and is not scheduled to open for days to come, hugely inconveniencing more than 250,000 people a day. His analysis touches on possibly poor welding, a possibly flawed temporary fix, and the absence of a long-term fix or adequate follow-up by Caltrans, the agency responsible for the bridge. Slashdot is a great engineering community; what other insights do you have on the bridge situation?"

Comments

Re:There simply isn't anything "wrong".

[Blakey Rat]

Yeah, but there is also a big "shit happens" component to the whole thing. Sometimes, shit just happens-- even if everybody does their job to the best of their ability, even if everything works exactly as designed, sometimes shit just happens.

Of course, being an American, you have to instantly assign blame and sue somebody, God knows.

Re:And where did the retro-fit funds go?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never worked in government have you... Government are sheep, they're dumb, and have no thoughts of their own... If they don't have pretty pictures, and 'feel good' presentations, along with environmental, and doomsday studies, they don't approve anything. Politicians are dumb, in order to get anything approved you have to make them feel smart, but giving them pretty pictures, they feel smart, and are willing to dump money into them