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

And where did the retro-fit funds go?

[ttimes]

McSweeny's has a great article on this, broad reaching in its investigation of the many problems at hand. One thing that troubles me: I have seen many times in the California University and Transportation groups, failure to use earthquake retro-fit funds - they simply use them elsewhere. Its only when a problem like this arises that we learn they have not been used.

Welders are a scapegoat

[SethJohnson]

As a hobbyist welder, and someone who has worked with welders in an industrial setting, I strongly doubt that the welding is the culprit. "Faulty welding" doesn't happen on something of the scale of a bridge. If it's one welder working, maybe. But this bridge repair would have had dozens of welders working. No one person's welding could have broken a bridge. Sure, they were under a time crunch, but that doesn't result in shoddy welds. It means more welders are put on task. Those guys are trained and certified and their work is defined by specs that they follow and then is inspected by city or state engineers. If the welding is the problem, it means the original spec was faulty.

Seth