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Engineering Experts Knew Italian Bridge Had Corrosion Problems Before It Collapsed, Report Says (apnews.com)
McGruber shares a report: Engineering experts determined in February that corrosion of the metal cables supporting the Genoa highway bridge had reduced the bridge's strength by 20 percent -- a finding that came months before it collapsed last week, Italian media reported Monday. Despite the findings, newsmagazine Espresso wrote that "neither the ministry, nor the highway company, ever considered it necessary to limit traffic, divert heavy trucks, reduce the roadway from two to one lanes or reduce the speed" of vehicles on the key artery for the northern port city. A large section of the Morandi Bridge collapsed Aug. 14 during a heavy downpour, killing 43 people and forcing the evacuation of more than 600 people living in apartment buildings beneath another section of the bridge.
AvE posted a great video on this bridge. The designer of the bridge didn't like adding extra reinforcing. This was probably for aesthetics. This made maintenance of the bridge difficult as structural components couldn't be repaired while the bridge was in service.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Itâ(TM)s not just that, the bridge was hopelessly overloaded by traffic.
Have you ever driven in New York City? Every bridge is totally full of traffic nearly 24x7, during rush hour basically parked (it took me an hour once to cross George Washington bridge leaving NYC near rush hour). That happens every day, including in driving rainstorms... bridges are usually built assuming the bridge is packed with trucks, during the worst storm imaginable (including many feet of snow, far worse than rain), then use safety margins well beyond that. It seems the designers of this bridge cut some corners.
I’ve driven in all kinds of places. However, the real question is: Have you ever observed the dysfunctional cocktail of corruption, populism and incompetence otherwise known as Italian politics at work? In this case you have a steadily deteriorating bridge whose load carrying capacity is rapidly decreasing, that may not have been built to specs in the first place due to corruption and that was being subjected to traffic loads and thereby vibrations that its decayed structure could not handle. And the whole time there is a political cat fight going on with a bunch of populists wingnuts who are blocking the replacement bypass project, staging protests against any repair work and ridiculing anybody who spoke out about the danger of the situation. The bottom line is that this bridge should have been replaced and decommissioned at least ten years ago.