Foot bridge collapses at Florida university, several killed

[Kraniac]

this is seriously crazy and sad..and makes you look back at 'His' moment where he stood in front of a group of reporters and showed them how he was gonna reduce the pile of codes and formalities to 2/3 of the stack of paper.. to make it 'easier' to execute infrastructure projects. There is a reason for all of this rigorous inspection and triple checking..this is it.

[OWC Jamie]

Jeebus, they don't even know why it collapsed yet.

[mikebw]

billb wrote:
Jeebus, they don't even know why it collapsed yet.

Gravity.

[Kraniac]

I'm quite sure that none of this had anything to DO with any deregulation..the point is that this stuff does demand a high level of scrutiny..it's just an illuminating moment.

[ztirffritz]

99Percent Invisible had a good episode about the near collapse of the Citicorp building because of a design change made by the contractor that was really interesting.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/s...integrity/

The convention center in Pittsburgh has some massive trusses anchoring parts of the structure. They had a similar failure because a contractor swapped some less expensive nuts/bolts in place of what the architect spec'd.

https://failures.wikispaces.com/David+L....s+Collapse

[RE:up]

I'm sure that the NRA had something to do with this.

[M A V I C]

RE:up wrote:
I'm sure that the NRA had something to do with this.

And because of that, some are calling for tighter bridge control. Bridges doesn't kill people, people wrongly using bridges do. There's no mental health check on those building bridges. If just one life could be saved by not building bridges, we should get rid of them all.

[lost in space]

mikebw wrote:
[quote=Acer]
I'm reminded of that The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse in 1981. The contractor requested a change that seemed innocuous, the engineer said "whatevs" without running the numbers, and 114 people died in a blink. My office pool bet says something similar happened here. We'll see.

I read about that in an engineering book years ago. Tragic.
Was that the one where the change put a concentrated load on an upright, which then took all the weight instead of it being distributed across several uprights? Or something like that?

Also, I'm astounded to think that the bridge essentially couldn't support its own weight, considering how little pedestrians using it could have weighed in comparison to the structure itself.

[ka jowct]

That Citicorp piece is really scary. I’ve been through that subway stop many times, and am very familiar with the area, since I worked not far from there years ago and have clients nearby now. A building collapse there would have been really dreadful.

It’ll be interesting to hear what went wrong with the bridge. Horrible situation, although at least it wasn’t open to pedestrians yet. Driving along minding your own business and a bridge falls on you. What a nightmare.

[deckeda]

That Citi building is a classic study in all the Project Management books. It’s what could happen when you don’t take all reasonable engineering circumstances into account ... but the true lesson there is in risk management. The design was “OK” until you factored the risk into it. And so they rejiggered it. ‘Cause wind.

It’ll be interesting to learn where the decision making failed here. Tacoma Narrows, Denver Airport ... they all had glaring Achilles Heels.