Another Engineer warning turned down... and people dies.

[Kjelt]

It is just speculation. We're not civil engineers here. And noone should correlate just 2 data and reach a conclusion.
Even without a degree in civil engineering it's clear that picture did not take in consideration many tecnical aspects:
- the size of the bridges
- the type of the bridges (girder, cantilever, suspended, arch, cable-stayed etc.)
- the construction material of the bridges (steel, concrete etc.)
- how many earthquakes have occurred over the years where the bridges are placed and how much energy the bridges received
- the year of construction of the involved bridges (to relate the badly manteinance to aging)
- how many bridges we have in the country that are still in place (to understand if there is huge issue or just single events)
- who is responsible for maintenance of the bridges (to understand if there is a common cause, not all bridges are inspected by government representatives)
- how much bridges collapse in the rest of the world (to compare accidents)
- and probably many other things that, without at least a degree in civil engineering, we are not considering.
So journalists and newspapers should just tell what happened and not provide any data to force people to reach a conclusion, which should be left only to the experts in the field.

Well here are your engineering experts at word and I have dozens other articles that come to the same conclusion, but lets wait on the official report.

In Italië moeten honderden, zo niet duizenden bruggen, viaducten en tunnels dringend worden gecontroleerd omdat ze ouder zijn dan veertig jaar en tot nog toe, vaak door geldgebrek, niet naar behoren zijn onderhouden.

Dat is de conclusie van ingenieurs en architecten die in Italiaanse media hun licht laten schijnen op de ramp in Genua, waar dinsdag tientallen doden vielen toen een meer dan vijftig jaar oude brug over een autostrada instortte.

Genua was geen incident. „We zijn het enige moderne land waar in de afgelopen drie, vier jaar een tiental bruggen is ingestort zonder dat er sprake was van catastrofale gebeurtenissen”, zei geoloog Mario Tozzi tegen de Huffington Post. „Dat is geen goed teken.”

In Italy hundreds, if not thousands, of bridges, viaducts and tunnels must be urgently checked because they are older than forty years and until now, often due to a lack of money, have not been properly maintained.

That is the conclusion of engineers and architects in Italian media that shed their light on the Genua disaster, where dozens of people died on Tuesday when a more than fifty-year-old bridge collapsed on an autostrada.

Genoa was not an incident. "We are the only modern country where over the last three, four years a dozen bridges have collapsed without a catastrophic event" said geologist Mario Tozzi to the Huffington Post. "That is not a good sign."

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/08/15/ingenieurs-italie-moet-honderden-bruggen-en-tunnels-vervangen-a1613174

[mcinque]

Well here are your engineering experts at word and I have dozens other articles that come to the same conclusion

-"I have dozens other articles": newspapers copy news from each other and spread it all over the world. Many times they doesn't even check the veracity of the news because they trust each other. It may seems dozen of different opinions but it's only one news.

-"engineering experts": after every tragedy, you find many "experts" coming out ready to tell what's gone wrong just without an investigation or just by looking at google maps pictures (and this let you understand what kind of "experts" they are). I don't think you can do a diagnose without even an investigation.

- "That is the conclusion of engineers and architects". They are NOT our engineer experts. European newspapers simply listened our local news where two jackals in search of visibility have exposed their opinions and after that they reached a conclusion and posted it; here I have not heard anyone so fool to declare that he reached a conclusion, even before the technical investigation begins. Also because "Autostrade per l'Italia" company would certainly sue him because is deliberately accusing them.

- geologist Mario Tozzi is a gelogist but is mostly a TV host and for me it's only looking for visibility. I can confidently say this because he declared that he prefer cunnilingus to fellatio to a local radio news. These are things that are said only to catch attention. These are not things that a man of science declares publicly.

but lets wait on the official report.

I agree.

To make you understand my point of view, suppose a serious electronic failure on a control panel occurred in the subway and because of this many people lost their lives. What would you say here if some "experts" without any electronic degree or training would confidently state what caused the problem, mostly without even having the advice in hand and the tools to be able to inspect it? Or what would you think of a real expert who just declares what happened without even having inspected the board?

[raptor1956]

If you drive over and around the bridge using Google Maps you can see that most of the north side of the bridge was being worked on or looked like it.  Also interesting is the fact that the cable stays were boxed with a rectangular covering but on one section of the bridge the box is removed and the cables visible.  Also noteworthy is that I did not see a single worker working on it.

That is not a removed covering, but these are additional cables that were added during a renovation in the 1990s. The original cables are cast into concrete, not removable.
If one is interested on how these bridges were built, there is a nice video (in German though) about the construction of a bridge in Venzuela (Maracaibo) 1959 which has an almost 100% identical design, except that the cables are not cast into concrete. http://www.bauforum24.tv/bilfinger-berger-maracaibo-bruecke-1962-121/

Interesting ... so if there were issues related to the integrity of the bridge with respect to the cables before, requiring the addition of new cables, then that would surely make the cables highly suspect as the cause of the failure.


Brian

[floobydust]

Are engineers to be silent?

After the FIU Miami pedestrian bridge collapse: "Ron Sachs, a spokesman for FIGG, provided the following statement:

"It is a breach of widely held professional standards of ethics for any engineer to judge or speculate on any aspect of a construction accident unless they have complete knowledge of all the facts, which include construction, materials, design, and other factors, and are highly experienced in bridge design."  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article212571434.html

I don't agree, at all.

A community of engineers looks at these disasters and discusses them (on other forums). They speculate and calculate, share wisdom and observations, photos, and narrow down the cause. It also prevents "final reports" from being laced with politics and ass covering.

[floobydust]

The Morani bridge uses concrete-encased steel rods (tendons) instead of cables for the stays.
The concrete ended up trapping water and causing more (rod) corrosion, and making inspection near impossible.

The pylon that failed did not get the 1993 upgrade where a bundle of cables were added around the original rod, and bolt-on steel added.
Morani bridge pics

[Beamin]

They tried to run NASA like a business because the shuttle was sold on the fact it was a lower cost alternative to rockets. In reality it costs 10 times more and probably held us back from 10 years using the new spaceX type rockets we see today.

They were warned about the foam that brought down discovery too.

[Kjelt]

To make you understand my point of view, suppose a serious electronic failure on a control panel occurred in the subway and because of this many people lost their lives. What would you say here if some "experts" without any electronic degree or training would confidently state what caused the problem, mostly without even having the advice in hand and the tools to be able to inspect it? Or what would you think of a real expert who just declares what happened without even having inspected the board?

It is worse in your hypothetical case it would have been 10 control panels failing in 4 years, and even non-experts would say it would be wise to inspect all panels for design flaws or fatique or whatever might cause these panels to fail.
As the picture showed it is not a single event, it is a series of bridge and overpasses collapsing in the last years.
Some might be accidental for instance due to an earthquake yes, but still this many indicates a very serious situation even for non-experts that something is terribly wrong since in other countries the number of failures on these infrastructural constructions is way, way less.
If in our country more than 2 bridges would have collapsed in the last two years we had a major government crisis.
We shut down a bridge because there was a very minor risk something might happen and all traffic had to drive around to another bridge.
Although I agree to wait till the end report to definitly have the answer I would like to see that there is action taken to check the inspections of all the bridges and overpasses asap and in doubt take action to for instance limit the traffic from 2x2 roads to 1x1 to half the traffic. But you would rather do nothing, wait two years for a final report and in the meanwhile other bridges might collapse and innocent people die ?

[mcinque]

But you would rather do nothing, wait two years for a final report and in the meanwhile other bridges might collapse and innocent people die ?

I'm not saying that we should do nothing until the final report and let other people die. Never stated that. Maybe my english is not perfect.
My posts on this thread are only to show my disagreement on how non-experts come to technical conclusions and on tv jackals.

I am disputing the way some people reach a technical conclusion on a field without a degree or experience in that field AND how much is disgusting for me that Mr. Brencich went to the scene of the tragedy, just 15 hours after the collapse, with the people still under the rubble, just to be interviewed by the newscasts and say that he had warned that the bridge was faulty since its first day.

even non-experts would say it would be wise to inspect all panels for design flaws or fatique or whatever might cause these panels to fail.

Indeed. It is certainly wise and prudent to start a global check of the country bridges and to take all the necessary measures in order to minimize future collapse risks while the final report arrives, and that is indeed what they are doing right now. Another Morandi bridge was closed to be checked just yesterday for example.

But after the recurrence of an accident, any ordinary person or someone without a degree or expertise in that field can say that something is wrong and that they "should check".
What that category of people can't tell is what they have to check and what is the cause of the fail.
I can say "for me it's gone in this way", but I'm noone in that field: only a team of engineering graduates with experience and many hours of on site and laboratory investigations will find the true, because this things can be assessed only by them, with science.

Instead I read a lot of opinions from ordinary people, who (for example) do not have the slightest idea of what the dynamic stresses are, saying confidently that "things have definitely gone like this". These things make me angry, it's speculation.

[Kjelt]

Ok than I misunderstood you and I do agree with your points.

[mcinque]

You're welcome.

And, just about jackals: Antonio Brencich made so much noise that was appointed as "expert member" of the government investigation team. Now we will even pay his fee. This is disgusting.

EDIT: A. Brencich wrote in 2016 that the bridge was defective. AND... is one of the people who signed the bridge status report in February 2018. This report stated that the cables were corroded by 20%. But he, along with others, has signed a document declaring "as already noted, the experimental investigations and the monitoring system appear complete and very detailed" . No one in that meeting thought it was necessary to warn of the risks, instead the document concluded "Overall, the executive project examined appears well written and complete in every detail, the same is studied in a methodologically impeccable way" . It seems to me bipolarism to say that the bridge is badly built and then sign a document where it says that, after all, even if there are signs of wear, everything is ok.

[Kjelt]

Yes well there are more things happening in Italy that I as a more northern person don't understand
Beautifull country, hope that things get more "organised" in the near future.

[ignator]

This just popped up in my youtube suggested video's:

[floobydust]

They demolished the rest of the Morandi bridge

[james_s]

The thing I see here is that all of these benefit from hindsight. I wonder how many projects had engineers and other "experts" warning of dire consequences then went on to perform just as designed without any of these dire things ever happening? It's easy to say "this guy warning about this bad thing and then he was ignored and people died" but you don't know how often someone warned about something that was not actually an issue and nobody died.

[bloguetronica]

I wonder if the Columbia disaster could not be averted, not by trying to fix the ship, but by trying to rescue the cosmonauts. But I might be talking about sufficient knowledge.

It would be expensive, for sure, but human life is invaluable, and worth of any effort to save it. At least they should cancel the landing and think of another plan. NASA had days to analyze the launch footage, which is a thing that should be analyze always, at every launch, and not in the sequence of a tragedy.

Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

[floobydust]

Now that the bridge has been demolished, Italian Police released new (original) collapse video footage.

The bridge engineer Morani warned 40 years ago the corrosion rate was much higher than anticipated, either from acid rain and the nearby steel plant pollution, or sea mist. He recommended higher maintenance and epoxy coating.

Autostrade per l’Italia had the maintenance contract, they reinforced one set of cable stays but the bridge was in very sad shape and it was another that snapped.
Autostrade makes $10M USD per day on roadway and bridge tolls.

Here, it's greed and politics that failed to maintain the bridge and killed 43 people.

[Nusa]

I wonder if the Columbia disaster could not be averted, not by trying to fix the ship, but by trying to rescue the cosmonauts. But I might be talking about sufficient knowledge.

It would be expensive, for sure, but human life is invaluable, and worth of any effort to save it. At least they should cancel the landing and think of another plan. NASA had days to analyze the launch footage, which is a thing that should be analyze always, at every launch, and not in the sequence of a tragedy.

Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

Astronaut and cosmonaut are the same profession, but in English the word cosmonaut is usually specific to USSR/Russian personnel. The Columbia had six Americans and one Israeli on it.

The subject of whether the Columbia crew could have been rescued prior to their life-support running out has been written about extensively, so I will leave the googling to you. Bottom line is there were no good options, even if they had been able to determine the shuttle was damaged, which they really couldn't determine.

As for the value of human life, the principle is easy to state, but reality is another matter. You don't have to look for space-related accidents to find people dying for lack of basic necessities.

[chickenHeadKnob]

--snip--
The bridge engineer Morani warned 40 years ago the corrosion rate was much higher than anticipated, either from acid rain and the nearby steel plant pollution, or sea mist. He recommended higher maintenance and epoxy coating.
--snip--

You have to be careful in recommending epoxy coated steel encased in concrete. It is not the wonder anti-corrosion coating that people (including myself) thought it was.
I have epoxy coated rebar lying in my yard experiencing  the weather over multiple years with practically no rust so I thought I would use it in my next pour, but then youtube suggested I view this:

[windsmurf]

I wonder if the Columbia disaster could not be averted, not by trying to fix the ship, but by trying to rescue the cosmonauts. But I might be talking about sufficient knowledge.
It would be expensive, for sure, but human life is invaluable, and worth of any effort to save it.
...

Some lives are more valuable than others.

[james_s]

You have to be careful in recommending epoxy coated steel encased in concrete. It is not the wonder anti-corrosion coating that people (including myself) thought it was.
I have epoxy coated rebar lying in my yard experiencing  the weather over multiple years with practically no rust so I thought I would use it in my next pour, but then youtube suggested I view this:

I kind of feel that way about automotive undercoating. On multiple different cars I've noticed a small blister in the undercoat then started pecking at it and realized there's a hole several inches around rotted out of the floor pan. It seems what happens is moisture finds its way between the sheetmetal and the rubbery undercoat where it sits there hidden rusting away. The stuff probably helps in places where they use that horrid salt on the roads and cars only last 10 years anyway but elsewhere I suspect it causes more harm than good.