Friday, October 19, 2018

Bridge has a ten ton load limit. Getting close here.

5 comments:

  1. Rosie O'Donnell was on that bus. Scary.

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  2. Just up the road from us, state of Arkansas inspected it and found no damage. Kudo's to the designers and builders.

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    1. It needed to be inspected before anyone else crossed it. The bus driver should lose his license as well. That bus was over 10 tons with the deflections seen in the clip. A neighboring County Engineer in Ohio had a bridge under his responsibility that was rated at 5 tons and a lot of people that were well over that weight tried crossing. He ended up erecting a height barrier to keep anything other than passenger cars, off the bridge.

      What saves the day in situations of this sort is the analysis of bridges and hos weight limits are set. It might be able to take 15 tons, but the limit would be set at 10 to try to insure the bridge is not damaged when vehicles at the 10 ton limit cross. I'm sure there was damage done to the bridge, just nothing that could be seen by people inspecting the bridge. The danger is cumulative fatigue and the bus has taken some of that away. That bridge now needs annual detail inspection, and not the lesser stuff that would normally be given with a detail inspection every 5 years.

      Detail inspection requires they actually climb the bridge and make measurements of the steel for rating purposes and look for cracks around the supports where shear is highest.

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  3. White River a Beaver Arkansas. Photographer standing in my grandmother's driveway. The bridge was erected shortly after WWII, so I would bet that is not the first overload on it. I played under it in the last forties and caught cat fish just up stream.

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