I’ll speculate that state employees check their voicemail differently than those in the private sector. Message left on Tuesday isn’t retrieved until Friday. That won’t fly in my world. Wish it would, but it won’t. Oh well, sovereign immunity will cover all of the state agencies and employees. Sad story.
I'm guessing FIU's engineering program is about to take a hit.
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I’ll speculate that state employees check their voicemail differently than those in the private sector. Message left on Tuesday isn’t retrieved until Friday. That won’t fly in my world. Wish it would, but it won’t. Oh well, sovereign immunity will cover all of the state agencies and employees. Sad story.
That's an untrue/unfair blanket statement. I've had equal issues with both the private and public sectors.
In fairness, you don't just leave critical info on a voicemail and let it go. He should've kept calling or escalated to another contact at DOT.
In many technology packages — including the one I use — if you leave me a voicemail I also immediately receive an email alerting me to your message, and giving me your number. It is getting increasingly difficult to blow people off.
Sure, but not everyone has that. I don't. Not sure if the state does. Or the recipient could be on vacation for two weeks.
I just think you keep reaching out until you find someone. Leaving a single voicemail just seems insufficient.
Now, if the engineer was following up on cosmetic surface cracking with no structural implications then I'd think leaving a voicemail was fine.
Not arguing with you, but the substance of the message did not seem to convey any life-death safety issue. The message was actually pretty ho-hum, making me think the speaker was not trying to sound any alarms. Yes, in retrospect, things were far more serious than anyone involved seemed to recognize.
Take a walk around Heritage Grove at FSU. Shocking to me that the school allows that to exist (i.e., apartments jacked up by shoring, etc.). The point is that no one seems to view that as serious either, even though the problems are obvious and very visible.
Until an investigation is concluded, no one knows exactly what caused the collapse. Maybe the crack reported was just superficial and had no structural impact to the bridge in the opinion of the engineer who left the message. Too early to assess fault now. There will be plenty of time for that.
Isn't Heritage Grove where the fraternities are? If so, that's privately owned, correct?
Several of the frats are there, yes. It is owned by the Leon County Educational Facilities Authority, a branch of “government” that was created for the issuance of municipal bonds. It was privately funded and developed, but FSU has some voice in what goes on there.
Can’t call in to retrieve messages?
I hear this all of the time: “he’s traveling.” So what? He has a cell phone. Maybe he can’t call back immediately, and we all get that. But this “he’s traveling” card isn’t a bona fide excuse for days and days of ongoing silence.
If someone wants to talk to you, they can, almost irrespective of where they are.
I have a cell phone issued by work, but not everyone does. Hell, my agency had to get approval to spend money over two years for simple bandwidth upgrades. Technology is lacking at a lot of state agencies.
I use my personal cell phone for work, everyone in my company does. If it's urgent, people will call or text. That's pretty standard practice for private engineering firms, as senior engineers tend to travel often or be out of the office and we tend to be "always working".
I work with FDOT folks on occasion, we are generally aware of their travel schedules and never rely solely on voice-mail if it's urgent. The nature of the call sounds minor, that's not to say the cracking observed was unrelated to failure, just that at the time it sounds like it was thought to be of cosmetic nature and call was intended to be more of a heads up CYA. I'd be surprised if FDOT didn't have a field inspector or day to day contact for a project like this.
Anxiously awaiting findings from NTSB.
If someone is seeing cracks in a structure like that bridge wouldn't that be a good indicator that immediate attention is needed?
Not necessarily. If, as Desi said, the crack appeared to be superficial, noting it for follow up may have been thought to be adequate. I imagine the fault lies in the failure of the reinforcement not the concrete itself.
In my non-engineering opinion, a lot of our infrastructure needs attention.
I get an email with a MP3 of the voicemail.
Correct.
Personally, if this were my project and cracking started appearing on a critical element like this unexpectedly, I'd have called for a structural inspection and testing.
Structural engineers tend to be worriers and extremely cautious by nature. Most would rather be cautious rather than take risks.
In situations like this, it's not like the engineer could just drive down the street to check on bridge, design firm was in Tallahassee so they had to rely on local inspectors and construction manager to get them info.
Hindsight is 20-20, bridge could have been temporarily braced and road closed if inspection returned issues. If those comments from Rubio are true and the contractor was tensioning cables without stopping traffic, I'm sure that'll have changes to industry practices moving forward.
Anyone hear anything about the cranes? My father, the engineer, says that in one of the photos you can see a crane near the side where the failure began with a broken cable. Possible a cable snapped and a load was released onto the structure?
This video is unreal and very sad. That little crane wasn't going to help much even if the crew connected it.
I agree that a voice mail on a land line isn't enough. To me that's negligent he should have we sent a email and involve all parties at least. The cables should also indicate something major is going on and major safety concerns should have been taken.
ABC is a great program that has had huge success throughout the US.
I'm not a civil engineer but did do some basic materials science/engineering early on in college.
I'd guess that every bridge in America has cracks to some degree. That by itself means nothing.
Which is why there are regularly scheduled bridge inspections. Concrete cracks. That's just a reality of building whether it's a house or a high rise or a bridge. I've built all of them.
Horrible tragedy. Will be interesting to see whether any negligence rose to a level that will support criminal charges. You can rest assured that all of the vendors involved are already lawyering up and preparing for the next inevitable chapter of this saga. Very sad for everyone involved and affected.
You are minimizing the significance of the cracking greatly. Also the cables losing tension. Couple this 2 things together that's a real issue it means the structure is moving. Sure it's suppose to flex but not move.
I think bigger issue here is cracking in post-tensioning members is more problematic than in traditional reinforced concrete beams. The minute the concrete starts cracking, the capacity of the beam can start to compromise the member's ability to retain the tension on the strands.
I just got back from teaching a 3-day course in USVI last week and one of the topics we hammered home was designing for ductile structure behavior to avoid brittle failure mechanism. Shear failures are almost always instantaneous, like the bridge collapse at FIU. Not saying it was definitely shear, but the failure did not give the crew advanced warning of the impending collapse that you would expect from a ductile failure.
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I have poured tens of thousands of yards of concrete. It cracks for multiple reasons. All of which do not mean or result in a decrease in structural integrity.
I agree that cracking occurs often in concrete forming and curing process. A million different things can cause the cracking as well. They also aren't always indication that something wrong is happening. Cracking without context (i.e. a discernable pattern, thickness, location) are not overly useful. Typically, clients hate cracking because aesthetically they are not attractive and can allow for water and chloride intrusion, which accelerates corrosion of reinforcing steel.
We're all speculating here, but until the NTSB report comes out, we won't know for sure what directly caused the failure.
I understand. I work in heavy construction. And here is where I disagree with you. You get a load of beams or in this case full structure they are inspected for cracks before they are set. Once set if a crack forms under load that would be a red flag to me. Especially with a new construction method and before it is complete. What you are saying is "oh its just a little crack no big deal." What I am saying is something is wrong it should be noted and people notified. This is all I'm saying.
Also a few things I see wrong. The cable stay isn't tied to the structure that is what essentually holes it in place so personally I almost would expect that to be supported until those cables are tied to the structure.
Also notice the crane is in place exactly where the bridge buckled. To me that isn't a coincidence. Either the crew was scrabbling or working on a part of the structure that needed immediately to be address once in place.
Also note the angled supports. It looks like the designer used a design like a lattice crane. The area in which the structure collapsed the angle gets greater from right to left. Notice less than 45 degree angle to a 45 at angle 4 to great than 45 at 5. This could also have something to do with it.
It will be fascinating for sure. I Can guarantee a lot of hard lessons will be learned. Just sad that events like this we learn the most.
Yep. I managed a condo community on the ocean with 90 units in 25 buildings. Built on concrete pilings sunk 30 feet down. Inspections were just part of recurring maintenance operations. Some cracks are inevitable and to be expected.
I managed an HOA whose main road (private roads) had a bridge and I had it inspected annually- you can't fool around with safety.
Yes, when cracks allow air (especially damp salt air) to seep in, over time the rebar becomes deteriorated. One of my other oceanfront condo communities spent $700k a few years ago to address this issue.
I'm a GC and have built everything from houses to high rises to bridges. We don't know when the cracking occurred just that some cracking was apparently noted.
I agree on the design. It looks more like form over function. Potentially compromising integrity for aesthetics is never wise.
Here's a GIF from the dash cam video above, slowed down to 1/8 speed.
Few observations:
Originally, I was thinking it was more construction failure than design failure (jumping to conclusions on my half, of course), but now that I see this, I think we'll find it's not solely on one side or the other.
Few observations:
- Yes, the failure began in the vicinity of the worker on the concrete canopy structure.
- It's entirely possible the top canopy was unable to sufficiently transfer the load back through the diagonal brace (which in the future was to be used with support cables back to tower structure). Punching shear or otherwise.
- It will be important to know what the worker was doing at the time. Marco Rubio posted on twitter that crews were tightening cables, but there's no way a person should be on the canopy during that process.
- The fall protection completely failed for the worker on the canopy. I hope he survived.
Originally, I was thinking it was more construction failure than design failure (jumping to conclusions on my half, of course), but now that I see this, I think we'll find it's not solely on one side or the other.
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I am surprised that they didn't place a support in the roadway to support the structure until the cables had been placed. They even had a area between what looks like a left turn lane and the straight lane.
