Simple solution: in Germany the inspectors simply have the authoriy to close the bridge (or any piece of infrastructure) if they find any critical stuff.
well to your point at 17:37, I'd argue that that whole ordeal is to prevent a post like that from existing, you can't take a picture of a completly rusted off steel member if it gets fixed when damaged and a steel beam with rust on it at that kind of bridge will not get any attention, so the "common sense" point feels weak, if we have to use common sense, call me uninformed, but I think then it is way past the point where action should have been taken.
Strong Towns talks about this stuff a lot. Having a “maintenance mindset” where maybe you build less but maintain it well and plan for maintenance funding from the beginning. Seems like a good solution.
As a Pittsburgher I couldnt be more proud of our local journalists who covered this whole affair. Unfortunately the state has decided to make all bridge inspection reports "classified" for "security reasons"
The security reasons of course being the reputations of those who should be overseeing maintenance of public infrastructure who are not doing that and would like to keep not doing it while collecting paychecks.
of course they're classified !! foreign adversary countries can use bridge reports to systematically instill lack of faith in the governmental systems by... rightly pointing out that those governments are failing to maintain their infrastructure to the point where lives are at risk this is a joke just in case that isn't clear enough
People would probably refuse to cross any bridges because they fear for theyr lives, shutting down the supply lines and general economy. So the security concerns are not that far fetched, as this would probably result in riots and plundering for food or mass migration to safer places pretty quickly. And who ever is and was actually in charge of fixing that infrastructure or cutting the budget probably has to fear for his reputation or even his life as well. I sometimes think spending less money on bureaucatic administration systems and rerouting that money and time to actually do something productive would fix a lot of issues.
@@publicuser2534 Agreed, but not in the name of democracy. In the name of money, oil, food, yes, but not democracy, or some of the countries we deploy to would actually be democratic and they absolutely aren't. :|
@@publicuser2534 Militaries aren't great at building stuff that isn't physical. All they can do on a social front is enact a "temporary solution" to government...
I lived in Corpus Christi when you covered the blunder of the Harbor Bridge Project, now I live in Pittsburgh when you cover the Fern Hollow Bridge. I'm scared to move to another city with a bridge now.
What's a bit infuriating to me is that if my personal vehicle fails an inspection, (which can be caused by relatively minor things like having a turn signal out, or a slightly old windshield wiper blade) I cannot legally drive it untill the issue is resolved. But when it comes the the government inspecting itself, suddenly the issues become "recomendations" which can be ignored indefinitely!
@bugsabc956 what a hellish state does NOT demand vehicle inspections and instead lets idiots drive two ton deathtraps around that might just be one bump in the road away from a complete brake failure, steering failure, wheels coming off or other parts flying away at speed, turning them into uncuntrollable cruise missiles? 🤨
@LRM12o8 Minnesota babyyyyy. It might be a state bought and sold by the DFL (Democratic Farmers League) but if those farmers and I agree on one thing it's freedom. "Freedom" and "safety" are directly competing values. I personally prefer the former. Between a state full of jerry-rigged (we have a different term for it but I don't think RUclips would like me dropping gamer words in the comments) barely functional jalopies barreling down the freeway and having to have the car I OWN inspected by some 75 IQ state pencil pusher just to be able to drive down the road, I'll take the shitbox-laden highway option 100% of the time. We also just passed a state law allowing anyone over the age of 18 to utilize their 2nd Amendment right to conceal carry without having to apply for a state license 😊. In the words of one of our greatest founding fathers: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Benjamin Franklin
@fezawn1 I think it's a southern thing, there's a few counties in PA that don't require inspections, jackson county Georgia doesn't either, and hasn't since at least 2011 when we moved down here, but think of emissions, the US military can half a new f450 without DEF but if I have one, I'm fined and required to put all that stuff back on it, emissions is just so you spend more money
Your point about nobody having a complete view hits very close to home for me. I work in security (ex pentester, now researcher) and the sheer number of times I've seen that same pattern of "the people with a clear view have no autonomy; the people with a limited view have the authority" as a limiting factor in problem identification and remediation is staggering.
Same here-InfoSec 20+ years of experience (CCSP, CISA, and CISSP, doing Audit, Networking, SIEM, and Web App Sec.) Having InfoSec CISOs under the thumb/authority of the CFO, NOT having a seat at the C-Level table, always having to beg for more money, is the foundation for failure. (Watch the excellent 45-minute naval engineering failure analysis “Failure is like onions” by YT Presenter *Drachinifel* about the Mark XIV torpedo during the first 2 years of WWII. EVERY InfoSec Analyst/Engineer should watch this to understand how politics and cost almost always overrides good SENSE, not to mention sound engineering and testing!) Amazon’s CISO sits at that table AND the Board as well. They *at least* get heard!
When I see problems. I don't report it. Why should I? This doesn't get resolved until enough people become no more alive due to the incompetence of the system.
Yeah, while the people with the clear view maybe shouldn't have full authority, they should at least have the authority to shut something down when they have good reason in order to make sure the people with authority are forced into figuring out what is going on.
Deviant Olam, a physical security specialist and pentester emphasizes that when you do a pentest, it’s not just about proving you can get in and out. It’s about getting people with authority to take action with you - to give them that clear picture of the various security flaws. To demonstrate why they need to make those action items a priority.
"All the NTSB recommendations feel a little bit like band-aids if the real source of the problem was that no one person in this whole machine had both a full appreciation of the bridge's condition, AND the authority to do something about it." This rings painfully true for me even in the private sector
It's a real and chronic issue with investigative bodies. Often they can only get away with thorough, high quality investigations precisely because they can't do anything about the problem except make recommendations. When investigative bodies are empowered to mandate changes, suddenly their funding disappears, or they start being bound up in red tape.
The best inspections are performed by people who do have no dog in the fight. If the inspection is performed by the same person doing the fixing there's a strong incentive to downplay issues. Perhaps the solution is to mandate a followup onsite walkthrough by someone who does have approval authority in any case of a critical deficiency. As he said, a line item of 'this thing is broke' and a couple of pictures can't get the message across the same as having to look at it with your own eyes.
@@cutterjohn1921 That is essentially the current system everyone involved operates at arms length. If anyone had ticked criticality 1 as a box then they would have been required to do stuff about it. More than a little of this is the swiss cheese model. There were multiple opportunities for this to get caught. But the real issue is every single entity here had no dog in the fight. Everyone did their job (you can't say don't make mistakes, people are people, the system is meant to catch that problem) but nobody really *cared* about the result to push when the system itself wasn't doing the job. You could reduce the paperwork 80% I think, save money and have safer bridges if you had basic standards, and criminal liability for maintenance and repair. You'd basically have bridge trolls lol. People who would "own" the bridge and be responsible for keeping it in tip top shape. Bridge falls down the board of directors goes to jail. Those drains would be gleaming. With no paperwork required to enforce it.
I worked as a machine designer for over 45 years. One of the "laws" of engineering I discovered was: "Those with the most knowledge have the least authority. Conversely, those with the least knowledge have all the authority." It was maddening.
I dont know if you've heard of the water main that failed in Calgary Alberta? I looked. 1 person in city council is an engineer. Basically everyone else had "community organizer" in their bio. The water main was known to have issues for a while. They spent $4 million on a new city slogan though.
@@pin65371 Toronto has the same sort of problem. Millions on renaming an intersection and years of yammering instead of doing something about the (insert real problem of choice) issue.
@rm3141593 that's not what that phrase means. Even if you only hired expert engineers, the guy with final say at some point will be someone who probably has never even seen the bridges file.
Ah, Pittsburgh. When the Greenfield Bridge was falling apart, they built a bridge under the bridge that stood for a dozen years to catch the debris from falling onto the highway below.
This is one of the things I love about engineering. Anyone can look at the collapse and say "old parts broke." But an engineer can point to each tiny little piece of the puzzle and tell you how, why, when, and to what extent it contributed to the collapse.
And, because everything is systems, to see the wider picture as to how these things are allowed to occur. Systemic failures in design, construction, management, budget, repair, inspection, maintenance. It's complex and complicated.
ikr! I notice all the time. I don't have problems *hearing* but unfortunately i have auditory processing issues, and really relieves a lot of mental energy to understand and appreciate what's going on and being said!
💯 especially with names or technical terms, autocaptioning is garbage and I'm always so appreciative of the youtubers who take the time to make it right ❤
Part of the problem, I think is that people figure that common sense will prevail. After all, what kind of moron would look at a report that says there's holes rusted through the legs of a bridge, and *NOT* close the bridge? (Hint: the kind of moron who only sees the bridge as a line item on the budget.)
They call Pittsburgh the “city of bridges”. And some of the bridges you will see around here are truly terrifying. The fact that more of these haven’t gone down is a miracle
True! Not even just the burg, I live a few counties to the north and most of the roads, even pa state roads/bridges are below subpar. Even in my town there's huge, gaping holes between tracks and the road... massive potholes, but the states planned to put in a roundabout at an intersection where a college is. Blows my mind to think we all just got hammered by that X trillion dollar "infrastructure " bill that was past. Our gov. Has failed us and there's no one they answer to when they fail
Those safety factors we use during design and construction are there for a reason; they've kept a lot of poorly maintained structures standing and saved a lot of lives, but they can only stretch so far...
Yeah, that driver needs to get some recognition, and paid a lot more than they are. To manage their panic response enough to stop while keeping the (articulating!) bus under control on a collapsing structure is a superhuman achievement.
I live within a mile of Fern Hollow Bridge, and cross it nearly every day. That day I had missed the collapse by less than an hour. The bridge collapsing the day the President came to talk about the need for new infrastructure in our city is the deepest irony I've ever experienced in my life! With how slow construction seems to progress in this city, I was blown away by how fast the new bridge came up. Thank you for covering this!!
I do some stuff with construction on infastructure. The sad thing is, if you want to upgrade an existing structure, the government will bog you down. Planning ahead costs twice as much because government will require environmental reviews, tons of engineering, studies, public review periods, and if any group decides to fight against the project (there is always someone) the price skyrockets. You throw tons of money at lawyers and engineers. However, if your infastructure fails, the government will just sign off on you fixing it/upgrading it. It costs half as much because you skip all the burocracy. As most of the projects I'm involved with are not safety related, we often buy all the parts for an upgrade then let them sit in our yard till we have a small failure so we can get emergency approval to upgrade. Saves us a ton of money. It is very sad the way the government effectively outlaws preventative upgrades.
It baffles me how you can have 10+ years of critical failure reports and nothing was done. How many times do city officials need to be told a structure is dangerous? ONE. It should be criminal to sit on that information and do nothing.
There needs to be enough incentive for people in those positions to not even think twice about the idea of keeping an unsafe piece of infrastructure open, even if closing it will face strong backlash from the public.
A lot of people think capitalism is the only cause of such issues, but this clearly demonstrates that it's a human problem. There are always budgets. There's always a risk/reward calculation. There is always a profit motive. In this case, it's more political profit than economic. If an engineer shuts down a bridge and it causes a politician to take heat, that engineer will face backlash.
There are a bunch of cognitive biases that can lead to people dismissing obvious warning signs. People don't want to come to unpopular conclusions, people don't want to believe a catastrophe could happen to them or near them, people convince themselves that something is safe because nothing went wrong previously, and so on and so forth. The human brain is pretty bad at dealing with high consequence, low probability events. It takes training and practice.
Been watching for years and your writing is always so legit. No one could have said it better. This exact thing happens in so many industries: (18:46) "Maintaining infrastructure is thankless work (...) they’re not rewarding in the same way that designing and building new stuff can be. No one holds a big press conference and cuts a big ribbon at the end of a bridge inspection or a structural retrofit. Building a new structure isn't just an achievement in its own right; it’s a commitment to take good care of it for its entire design life, and then to rehabilitate, or replace, or even close it when it’s no longer safe for the public. And I think this is the perfect case study to show that there’s more we could do to encourage and celebrate that kind of work as well." Thanks, Grady!
Absolutely! And let's not forget the endless nickel-and-dime'ing in the public authorities responsible for maintaining the infrastructure, without which we had likely been without this accident - and countless other similar ones. Heck - even an extremely simple task like unclogging the drainage paths would have added years - if not decades - to the bridge's life.
Imagine how frustrating it must have been to the inspectors writing up their reports year after year on this bridge, seeing nothing done, and finally seeing the bridge collapse.
Maybe that's part of the problem here. They receive constant warning for things that hold on for years, so they are thinking "it's okay it will last some time again and we'll figure out something later" - until there is no later. Inspectors should have the ability to close structures that are dangerous.
There can come a point in your career where you need to say "screw it" and take it above the heads of the people making a really poor decision, no matter the risk to your own job. I've done it once, but thankfully it was only two management tiers above my own boss, not public. Anyone who blows the whistle for genuine public interest and makes it to the media has nothing but my utmost respect. Whistleblowers do not fare well when something hits the media, even today. I suspect they fare worse when it doesn't become public.
I drove over the Minnesota 35W bridge about 10 days before it failed. I was in my 1994 F250HD which had a very stiff suspension. I noticed going from bridge section to bridge section abrupt change in angle like it hit a bump. My truck was going slightly up and down as it crossed that bridge. A bridge engineer working for MnDOT repeatedly warned MnDOT management that that bridge was going to fail, and they didn’t listen. The blueprints for the bridge called for 1” thick connector plates. The plates installed were 1/2”. 13 people died because of incompetence, over 100 more were injured.
My wife was en route to cross it, but she had to turn around because she forgot something. Had she not turned around, she likely would have been on or very near the bridge when it collapsed. I also have a co-worker who drove over the bridge about 10 minutes before it collapsed.
@@thecatofnineswords Now what is the point of posting such a uselessly cynical comment? Government is the responsibility of the PEOPLE. We pay for it with our taxes, we vote for representatives, we have free speech and the right to raise cane when crucial infrastructure is ignored, we all know that graft, corruption or incompetence can occur in any human endeavor... We're not a nation of 7 year olds waiting for Mom and Dad to take care of everything.
@@mjinba07 because that is my experience/observation of those who have experienced repercusions for illegal or bad behavious. Individuals will be jailed/fined for breaking the law, but corporate executives and government leaders just move onto their next role, no matter how many people their actions killed. We bear the cost through increased taxes, but where is the actual increased funding in maintenance? I too expect the government to do good work for the benefit of society, but there are very few actual methods available to hold it accountable when it goes awry.
I'm in healthcare architecture and it is very true that a retrofit of an existing facility is a lot less glamourous than a brand new one. No one is going to have a big ribbon cut party for the new fire escape ramp we've designed for an existing hospital ward, but if there's ever a fire the staff can now evacuate patients safely in their beds instead of trying to get non-mobile, vulnerable people down the steps. Very interesting video, I find your deep dives on failed case studies very useful :)
I’m on the other side of the equation with designing equipment for hospitals not much glory in making buttons that minimise mistakes or evacuation equipment that can help workers from getting injured compared to the more expensive flashier products or “life altering” ones when reducing errors and injuries is just as important
I just wanted to say thanks for having a RUclips channel that can talk about things that have gone wrong without being overly dramatic or emotionally manipulative. That's kind of hard to do in a world where you're incentivized to maximize views. But I really appreciate your commitment to professionalism.
I've been in local government, so many times money found for a new infrastructure project. Yet I used to get told to shut up when I talked about maintenance. Therefore all the resulting facilities would have to be pulled down well before their time, because they are just left to rot rather than maintained.
I have been thinking for some time that large projects that forseeably need non-trivial maintenance budgets should be required to have an "endowment" of money that is invested in an annuity-like way to fund at least the forseeable maintenance requirements. And if the endowment runs out, it is federally required to be topped up or the project closed.
Yeah, I've seen (and am seeing) similar issues. The community as a whole (i.e. the voting population) cares far more intensely about matters like construction work making commutes longer and taxes being raised to pay for infrastructure projects than about making sure critical infrastructure is repaired before it fails. And as a result the local politicians do everything in their power to avoid doing anything, because no matter what they do it will be unpopular with a lot of people.
Well said. When the NTSB released their video report, they started with something to the effect "We apologize to all that were affected by this collapse, and this collapse SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED!" Yes, she was visibly angry that this bridge was so severely overlooked. As a Pittsburgh resident, it puts doubts about all of our 446 bridges in the back of my mind every time I cross one!
I'm not an Engineer, Just a retired Union Construction Laborer. I've helped to build and rehab many bridges in my area. From what I've seen, drainage, or rather improper drainage, is the root cause of nearly all the damage to the bridges. Especially the older design ones on interstates and toll roads. Eventually the drains fail exactly over critical places. Fail from lack of maintenance. Then the bridge would get rehabbed, rebuilt exactly as it was and eventually fail again. New designs are taking care of much of that. They drain totally different. Still, bridges need maintained not just inspected or rebuilt on failure.
Maybe bad/damaged/improper/.. drainage simply show You the best way that project/building/ had done wrong way or have serious problems in common.For example: wrong project gives extra deformation or vibration and drainage reacts it first (You see it's proiblems first, before problems of main construction. because it seems early and better).
Makes sense. Assuming that the value of drainage maintenance would be self-evident is a very engineer sort of mistake to make. Over time a pattern of bridge deterioration/failures due to lack of drainage maintenance would make it obvious that bridges shouldn't be designed assuming regular, diligent drainage maintenance.
@@SnakebitSTI Then the problems will just shift over to whatever design compromises were made to facilitate better drainage, the bottom line is that if maintenance is ignored failures will occur.
@@gas33z Yes, it will just shift the problems to things with longer mean time between failure. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing. A maintenance-less bridge would likely be wildly more expensive and thus very unlikely to be chosen, if one is even possible. But that doesn't mean some designs don't require more active maintenance than others.
Thanks for covering this! As a Pennsylvanian and a Pittsburgher, the fact that it was allowed to get this bad was pretty unsurprising - this is the city that, instead of fixing the Greenfield bridge, built another bridge underneath it to catch the falling debris. Realistically, I don't think the city or state were going to do anything without a catastrophe. I'm really glad we got one where nobody died - but it's not acceptable that it happened in the first place. The way we approach infrastructure in this state & country needs radical change. We shouldn't need to write those changes in blood.
The fact that the broken and badly rusted supports didn't cause more concern among anyone involved is indictive of how common these conditions must be.
@@electrowizard2000 Normally these quotes would be slightly exaggerated to emphasize the issue, but that just seems like something someone would actually say.
Great video. I'm a bridge engineer in Pennsylvania (Philly), and you really hit on a lot of the issues with the system. We as inspectors can only do so much. We have a responsibility to do the due diligence during the inspection and report writing process. Seeing defects like was seen on this bridge is unfortunately not uncommon. Finding 100% section loss in steel is pretty normal, but as you noted, the location of the section loss matters. It often matters more than the amount of section loss, because there's a lot of material in a bridge that doesn't see a lot of stress. Unfortunately we as inspectors only have the ability to report findings. Some owners are more proactive than others when it comes to repairs, load ratings, increased inspection frequency, and replacement. PennDOT is notoriously bad with maintaining its infrastructure. Pennsylvania is 2nd in the country for the quantity of bridges in their inventory, and they are 1st for having the worst condition bridges. Given the history of the state, including with the country's founding and steel fabrication in PA, it's no surprise that we have so many bridges in such poor condition. We have some really really old bridges here - some over 200 years old. But in spite of the monumental responsibility that Pennsylvania has as compared to other states, the state agencies and politicians seem disinterested in doing anything about it. Penndot is notoriously stingy with everything, even new design budgets. It makes it difficult to get anything done or to find competent work. The lack of attention to infrastructure is an age-old joke to Pennsylvanians. We are the pothole capital of the US. Something has to give at some point, but it doesn't seem like that's ever going to happen. Penndot and the state government are more interested in buying new technologies for turnpike tolling and building whole new interchanges than they are with fixing our existing infrastructure. Even multiple high profile bridge collapses haven't been enough to sway those in charge.
If inspectors had a federal power to limit the traffic using a bridge -- even to the point of none at all -- would that help, or would officials just take excuses through the courts or close the bridges without alternatives?
@@rivimeythey closed another Pittsburgh bridge about three miles from this bridge about a year after the Fern Hollow bridge collapsed. It was a bridge that carried major traffic. It was closed with no warning to the public (that was fun), and we were told that it was going to be repaired. Almost a year and a half later, nothing had been done. They “might” get it repaired and opened sometime next year. Welcome to Pittsburgh!
Thanks for that, it's good to hear from someone who actually knows the field. I was just thinking about the twitter post and photo that got mentioned in the report. Do you think that a loose network of concerned citizens, dog walkers, hikers, retired busybodies and just random dudes and Karens could help you, now that everyone has a smart phone? No doubt there would have to be a few simple rules they would all have to follow but you would get a large photo archive of the bridges and infrastructure over time and in different conditions. That could be useful.
@rivimey the politics of it all can be really complicated, but it's not exactly an Us vs. Them relationship with inspectors and owners. Inspectors can and (on rare occasions) do call in to the owner while on-site when the condition is severe enough for emergency intervention. The issue comes with finding that threshold where you decide that something must be done immediately. There are no shortage of bridges in this country that have very severe deterioration, yet they remain standing for years or decades. There's a lot of reserve capacity and redundancy in most bridges, so loss of material doesn't necessarily mean the bridge is in danger of collapse (often it isn't). It can be difficult to determine this in the field though, because you need to do a rigorous analysis to even know the capacity. It's not possible to do that on site. Generally, there are telltale signs of imminent danger that we would see that would cause us to call it in. Things like a significant sag in the bridge deck, a fracture in a steel member, severe scour of a bridge foundation due to water, etc. Certain types of bridges are more critical than others due to the nature of how they distribute stress. For example, trusses are typically non-redundant, so if 1 member fails then the entire bridge or a section of the bridge may collapse. So seeing a fracture in a steel member of a truss is a very big deal and we would call that in and probably try to stop traffic ourselves if possible. But seeing a crack in a steel beam on a 6-beam bridge is less critical, because if that beam fails the load can distribute to the adjacent beams and imminent collapse is unlikely. Load redistribution isn't possible with a truss. Ultimately the owner still gets the final say in whether or not to close the bridge, but generally speaking they will take the advice of the inspector. The implications for closing a small bridge on a back road are minimal, so it's not usually a big deal to close one. But closing a mainline bridge on an interstate and/or a bridge on the Federal emergency route has massive implications for the surrounding community, commerce, emergency services, safety of local residents, etc. It's no small deal to close a bridge on I-95 like the one that collapsed here in Philly after the tanker fire or the FSK bridge in Baltimore that was struck by the ship. I'm not implying that those bridges should have been closed due to their condition by the way; I'm just using them as examples since they're well known to everyone in the country and they're on major interstates. For an inspector to call in the closure of an interstate bridge, he needs to be right about it needing to be closed asap. The owner would be pissed if we called in something that wasn't that emergent, wasting tons of time and money by doing so. That's why it's so tricky to do these things. You are basically putting your entire career on the line for something that you usually cannot be 100% sure about. It's almost never black and white.
@jakedee4117 no offense to those trying to help, but the vast majority of people lack the requisite knowledge to understand the condition or potential threat to safety. The general public tends to put too much emphasis on the appearance of a bridge without understanding the mechanics. I've seen and heard many non-engineers complain about an 'old rusted bridge' which really says nothing about condition or load carrying capacity. Rust is normal on steel. Cracks are normal in concrete. You can have either without it affecting the bridge capacity at all. I've inspected countless bridges that had failed paint and rust throughout, but they didn't have any measurable loss of steel. When steel oxidizes, the resulting material (rust) is 16 times thicker than the original steel. So if you had a 1/16" steel plate that fully rusted through, you'd end up with 1" thick rust. Extrapolate this to a typical beam/girder flange that is 1", 2", or 3+" thick, and that's a LOT of rust. Point is: it often looks worse than it is to the untrained eye. We make the remaining steel section with calipers and use that data to do a load rating analysis of the bridge. It's not even possible for us as engineers to gauge these things on site. We need to run an analysis on the computer. So it's virtually impossible for the general public to have any idea about the condition of a bridge. The times when the public can help is more with the big red flag items that any person would know is a problem. Certainly the Twitter photo in this case would be a good thing to report, though 100% section loss on a bracing member is still not that unusual. I-495 around Wilmington was closed after a motorist reported a sag in the bridge barrier. That sag ended up being due to the pier tilting as a result of a stockpile of construction material too close to the bridge. That was a rare case when a not-so-obvious sign of distress ended up being a massive issue, and somehow a traveling motorist caught it. If I were to provide guidance to anyone wanting to report emergent issues with a bridge, I would say to ask themselves 'does this look right?' As in, is something bending in a way it doesn't look to be designed for? Is something leaning that probably shouldn't be leaning? Is a piece of steel cracked or fractured? Is a large portion or all of the foundation exposed? If you see something that really looks off, report it. But I would say to refrain from reporting rusted steel or cracked concrete, because 99.9% of the time it's not a serious defect requiring immediate intervention. And over-reporting non- critical issues will only take away from our time and resources. The majority of the time, we already know about the issue being reported by a concerned citizen, and it's been evaluated at least once. Many times, it's a very insignificant defect that sometimes has been around for decades, but it simply looks bad to the public so it keeps getting reported. We have to inspect all bridges in the country on at least a 2yr cycle, so there's rarely a situation where a defect goes unnoticed by inspectors for years.
I’m very happy I live in NY and work for a DOT Bridge crew. We go out every year in spring and wash the bridge decks and clear out the drainage paths so everything can be funneled correctly. At the moment of this comment we are working on bridge joints and completely rebuilding them so the bridge can flex correctly. Thank you for making this video!
I'm very happy I live in NY where I can break into an empty apartment and squat for free, take whatever I want from retail stores as long as it's worth less than $1000, and get immediately released every time I get caught shoplifting. Thank you for making this comment!
This feels like yet another example of what I call the “Bronze Plaque Problem.” Nobody gets their name on a bronze plaque for maintaining a bridge, but if you let it rust into oblivion you can build a new one with your name on a bronze plaque, to be remembered for generations. Maintenance isn't glamorous and never builds a legacy.
I grew up in this part of Pittsburgh in the 1960's thru the 1980's. Walking, bike riding and then driving over this and scores of other bridges in this area. It was not uncommon to see daylight thru pot holes in the road surfaces and rust on the structures. As a CE later, I understood how the wear and tear on these bridges would require massive maintenance and $ to keep safe. This incident happened with minimal impact, but I always thought it would happen much sooner.
@mae2759 can't be raising taxes in an election year... or ever really. Money for infrastructure maintenance is long overdue. It will be pennies in comparison when the next bridge falls or dam breaks.
@@Cassinspace We don't need to raise taxes. We need to divert funds to things we need, like infrastructure. But, you can't buy votes and political favors by cutting programs.
I feel like as the 50s to 70's becomes '50 years ago' we're going to start seeing more mid-century bridges collapse from poor maintenance as they reach their 'expected service life' and get ignored.
I work in a factory with huge equipment and machinery and I believe that your thoughts at the end are true. Everyone is excited about the purchase of a new spray dryer, a new reactor and so on... but no one cares about the maintenance needed on the equipment until it has a breakdown.
@@SnakebitSTI It's a cultural problem. Are you telling me that a mayor who finds the time to personally hype up the outcome of an inspection/safety report WOULDN'T look like a boss? If they went out to the bridge and held a press conference discussing an A+ safety report and telling people how much they value their constituents' lives and their city's infrastructure, they would get good press. You could practically campaign on that alone. If a bridge gets a B-, they implement the necessary fixes and then personally show up and hold a press conference bragging about how awesome their repairs and improvements are. You can even have a baller ribbon cutting ceremony for it if you need to. The problem is purely cultural. Politicians do not realize the potential for personal gain by taking infrastructure seriously.
Some places have a maintenance program that consists of "Fix it when it fails". The factory I am working at right now is like that (I'm an HVACR tech). I had the same experience doing repair work at McDonald's and 99 Cent stores.
Can I recommend a video? We had a feeder main break in Calgary, Alberta almost 2 weeks ago now and there are sooo many people who have no idea how our water system works. I work on a lot of city infrastructure projects and have a pretty good understanding of but would love to see the best channel on RUclips do something on this. This pipe was 2M or 6 feet in diameter and supplies about %30 of our drinking water to the underground reservoirs around the city of 1.6 million people. San Diego is sending us a piece for the repair they had spare and we really appreciate it.
++1 for this! I was just scrolling through to see if anyone mentioned this, and was thinking to recommend it if not. The pipe in question carries about 60% of the city's water, though. I really would love to see a video on this. There have been documented problems with PCCP made in the 1970s, and this pipe is at the 50 year mark in it's supposed 100-yr life span. Please help us to understand better (or at all) how water infrastructure works :)
"collapsed without warning" and "in poor condition for over a decade" are two sentences that can't be true at the same time. But i undestand it was as no warning for the drivers
I'm a structural engineering in charge of the bridges for a government entity. This level of neglect is systemic and common. There has has been a lack of public will to maintain, repair, and replace the infrastructure that already exists, be it a bridge, water system, or other. The focus is always on the shiny new projects, leaving the existing infrastructure to deteriorate. It's very likely the City didn't have the funding for a staff member to properly review the reports, or the funding to do anything about it. The fact of the matter is that the public does not vote to spend the money that is required to maintain and repair bridges like these until something disastrous happens.
Is there really even an opportunity to vote on such things? This is an honest question. I agree with you about the main issue ultimately being the electorate, but it is my gut feeling that the way our government is set up, as top heavy as it is, there isn't much political incentive for legislators, especially those at the higher levels, to be responsive to the electorate, present opportunities for the electorate to mandate concrete action, or encourage an informed electorate.
Most of the time it’s the people in charge of bridges that fail to tell the public how bad the bridges,etc really are. How can we vote on something that’s not presented to us?
@@joegosselin2888 i don't see this poster as gaslighting us. At the end of the day, voters make or break politicians, even if it is through actions outside the ballot box. But I believe you are definitely correct in pointing out that we can't vote on something that isn't presented. I argue also that the public sometimes are the ones who point out failure, in addition to the subject matter experts. Our government system still disincentivizes (and now more than ever with the Chevron SC ruling) agencies with the know-how and mandate to do stuff from actually doing stuff.
@@andresmorera6426 The information is there. It's common knowledge that our infrastructure is falling apart, just as it's common knowledge that our education system is failing us. The fact is that when it comes to selecting politicians, the politicians who the public select give it lip service at best and then focus on other things. When public servants do try to get something done, some NIMBY with a lawyer or a political connection stands in the way. If you want to find out more about your local bridges, the information is published on a website that's called LTBP InfoBridge for every publicly owned bridge over 20 feet long in the entire nation.
As a Pennsylvanian, "common sense slipping through the cracks" is the most accurate offhand description of how the state runs I've ever heard. The glory days of coal and steel are long gone, natural gas fracking is mostly done by out of state companies, and most people are committed to ignorance because they don't want to forget how good it was. Disasters like this happen all time in PA. People don't notice things falling apart, they only notice when it falls. Edit: 17:35 Haha yes Grady! Oh sure they'll spend a lot of money and write books of paperwork, but it's all deskwork in service of not going outside and having a real look. Edit2: Please see comments section for examples of ignorance. They'll talk about anything as long as it's not the topic at hand. No wonder I left.
things werent really amazing back when PA had the money either. rose tinted glasses wont show you the real picture. it was great for the rich who benefited from coal and steel production, but it was at severe cost to the lower middle class, and to the environment. and im not just talking about climate change, all of these processes dump more than just greenhouse gasses, they also poison the air, leech chemicals into the groundwater, and the efforts taken to prevent major ecological damage were practically nonexistent. i feel for those living in the results of these decisions now, but it is important to recognize that the way things were could never have been maintained, it was chosen from the start to put profits now ahead of pain and suffering later.
Was working on a building column replacement. The column in question was badly rusted, with several holes rusted through the square member. We started to shore up the roof when we heard a wet crunch, and everything started shaking. The column had broken off at the floor and was swinging freely. Partially unloading the column was enough to cause it to shear off at the base. A photo of that column still hangs over my desk with a quote from the engineer before we shored it up, "On a scale of 1-10, this is a 6." Everyone on the crew knew it was going to or had failed. And the only reason it was fixed before the roof caved it was because of Surfside.
I get a tiny rust hole in the unibody of my car, and Pennsylvania immediately fails my safety inspection. Giant holes and disconnected corroded crossmembers of their bridge for decades, and Pennsylvania just keeps passing safety inspections. 🥴
Pennsylvania's priorities are in their pockets over safety. The state also heavily penalized the owner of a plane that did an emergency landing on the Turnpike, which was literally designed for emergency landings of small planes. Now, other plane owners are more likely to crash into houses over emergency landing on the Turnpike.
I spent most of my life testing and recommending repairs for all types of heavy machinery and structures. The majority of the repairs were never preformed or preformed incorrectly or only half completed. The smaller the company, the more likely the repairs would be completed and completed correctly. Large municipalities hired us to preform many tests and provide recommendations for proper repairs. I could go back in 5 years and the recommendation that I provided before were never done and the structure or machine was out of service. Most of my direct contacts at these companies had paper work to the ceiling. It's a mess but that is what we've got. Really good video!
I have lived in Pittsburgh all of my 52 years. I believe I have only been on that bridge a handful of times mostly because I have lived in brookline and now for the last 20 years Robinson Township. I do work at the University for the last 27 years but never need to go that far east from Oakland.
@@drescherjm : I crossed that bridge frequently and hated it due to the fast traffic, narrow roadway, and grates that seemed set up to catch my bike tires, but I never feared it would collapse. Not like the Homestead bridge that you could see through, or the Greenfield bridge with the extra bridge underneath to catch the bits falling down.
I drove across this bridge all the time as part of my work commute before it collapsed. On multiple occasions I would be stuck in gridlock on the bridge, feeling it bounce every time a car drove by going the opposite way, and I'd see the weight limit sign, then count the cars currently on the bridge and do the math... it was a miracle the collapse didn't happen sooner.
"paper is patient" as we say in Germany: writing reports might not force anyone to act accordingly but gives everyone involved a feeling of having done what had to be done. a.k.a. responsibility diffusion.
I live in Pittsburgh. The government is reactionary, not proactive. You should have seen the McKees Rocks bridge before the recent renovation. You could see down to the water through the concrete and asphalt in many places.
Unfortunately, the city's response is usually to just close the road (and put a diaper under it). I really miss driving over the Panther Hollow Bridge. At least the inspection of all the rest of the bridges resulted in closure before injury.
The poor state of the bridges isn't exactly an unknown problem in Pittsburgh, even before the bridge collapse. It's kind of hard to miss the crumbling concrete and the bridge "diapers" meant to "solve" the problem of falling concrete.
What makes me sick about this country anymore is that no matter how bad the dereliction of duty, no one suffers a penalty. Multiple inspections showed that the bridge needed many repairs and eventualy one of the inspections was supposed to trigger a review that never happened, yet who went to jail? Who lost their job? Who lost their engineering license? From the tweet, its obvious the bridge should have been closed. Any fool can see that. Yet all we got were some recommendations that will not really change procedures in Pittsburg or anywhere else. There are probably many more bridges needed seriour repairs and if the people of those areas saw that you can go to jail, loose your job, get fined, loose your career, then maybe someone would pay attention. Instead they will do what happened in PA. Brush it off and wait for a collapse then make excuses. SMH
This was the greatest analogy of the problems in many large industries. The ones who see the problems are powerless and the ones given power are those who only think about building the next shiny bridge.
I lived in Pennsylvania for 23 years and this sort of thing is not surprising. Closer to where I lived, a few years ago, the Rt 30 bridge spanning the Susquehanna River shifted overnight, causing one section of the bridge to be many inches lower than the other at one of the expansion joints. Many cars experienced severe damage to their undersides from hitting the equivalent of a metal curb straight on at highway speeds.
This is 100% the issue in a lot of manufacturing operations as well. Infrastructure is just ignored until it fails because fixing it doesn't look good for someones EBIDTA.
It slipped past almost unoticed, but an estimate of 26 tons, when it should have been 3, is a mistake of galactic proportions - it's out by almost a factor of 9!! The recommendation was ok for everything but the biggest trucks, when it should have been no motorised traffic at all! How on earth didn't heads roll when a mistake of that proportion was made??
In about ~2015 in my city in NZ, the largest/tallest building in the city suddenly got evacuated and shut down for massive foundation repairs. The engineers who designed it had forgotten to factor in the mass of the building itself when designing the original foundations. This was only picked up by chance when new building owners commissioned a "let's just be extra super sure" 30 minute or so check over by an engineer after buying it - according to all council/building documents/consents from when it was built in the late 80s, everything was totally fine. Rumor is that extra little check led to a panicked meeting of the best and brightest engineering minds in the city about whether or not it was necessary to evacuate the whole downtown area immediately in case the building just suddenly fell over... But they decided closing it urgently then spending about as much as they'd spent on building it in the first place to reinforce the building, taking several years, would suffice. The building owners were under no obligation whatsoever to have that extra inspection done, as far as the council were concerned the building was 100% safe, and it could have remained as it was for years (or until it suddenly collapsed).
This reminds me of the Citigroup (formerly Citicorp) Center story, I think Grady has a video on it. I think what's cool about that story is how the chief structural engineer admitted his mistake and worked with the other stakeholders to remediate the problem. Nickolas Means has a talk about this aspect of the story.
@@HurricaneOK1 I mean, last I saw (July 2023) they were slowly dismantling it. A bunch of the decorative facade facing the police station had been removed since 2022. I knew it wasn't the tallest, but I reckon it had an argument as largest closed building besides Te Papa (which kinda counts as multiple buildings), that thing was huge. I miss the Central Library 😢
I watch this as a bridge I drive over daily is getting resurfaced. All I can think when I've been driving over the one lane left open for the last week is about vids like this and hoping it's getting properly inspected while it's getting worked on.
Google says there are 222,000 bridges that need major repairs or replacement in the US. 36% of all bridges. So.. You have a bit less than a 2/3 chance of being perfectly ok. How do you feel about gambling? :D
@@scopie49 How many of those "bridges" are part of interstate highways? How many of those "bridges" are part of State highways? Its not 36% you illiterate, you have no concept of reality or you're being dishonest. I can not decide which is worse.
I'm glad you mentioned that infrastructure failures effect victims long after the incident. Often, we hear, "there were no fatalities", which ignores the likely long-term suffering and costs. Relatedly, I wonder how much input insurance companies have regarding infrastructure. Wouldn't a possible loss of personal liability insurance and property insurance force a municipality to find funding for repair/replacement?
OMG, I saw that tweet and the reddit posts that followed, all the way back then (with plenty of people arguing that, perhaps, those supports are just not needed and competent engineers surely have everything monitored lol)! Did that thing finally collapse!? I wish people in charge would get arrested for these obvious cases of misconduct, corruption, and incompetency leading to injury.
A local bridge in IL, the I80 bridges over the des plaines river has had the lowest possible rating for well over a decade - structurally intolerable. Currently it's rated at a 6/100. It's infamous among locals and been plastered on social media with pictures of literal stacks of plywood holding up the superstructure. Locals, myself included, refuse to drive over it. but its a pair of bridges for the interstate - it sees a lot of traffic. It's shocking how bad some of these are allowed to get while we're fully aware
I remember watching this on Massive Engineering Mistakes, your video goes more in depth to the physics of the collapse while the show went more into the community impact.
There should be legal ramifications for the most extreme recommendations. I.E. having funds taken out of budgets and earmarked for whatever project if it isn't addressed within a month of the report.
what budgets? lol. new construction is prioritized because new construction gets federal funds. maintenance gets whatever change is left in the couch cushions after the meetings about how to shake down the DOT for new construction cash.
@@virginiacharlotte7007 Beards take a lot of grooming to keep looking clean and professional. I use more grooming tools now than I did when I was a bald face
"Technical debt" is a funny thing. The company can afford many hours of extra work by a bunch of employees every week for a decade to keep poorly designed software running, but the company can't afford a few extra weeks of work to ensure software works right (and is easy to fix if it turns out not to) the first time.
I used to drive over this bridge daily from 1986 to 1989. Afternoon rush hour traffic was bumper to bumper for hours. If a bus or truck was going the other direction you would feel the whole bridge bounce and was a little unnerving when more than one heavy vehicle went by. PennDot goes by the motto, if it ain't broke don't look at it, but if it is broken, wait until it collapses to fix it. They did the same thing with the Route 30 slow motion land slide.
I drive truck and just love the signs at the bridge. They tell us that the bridge will not hold us but give us no time to go around. Not that they would be nice to tell us how to get around the bridge. I always love the 21 ton limit when we are 40 tons.
Hey Grady! Thank you for covering this topic! In my short experience as a Civil Engineer, I feel like this is the lesson I find myself repeating to those outside the field most: "infrastructure needs to be built AND maintained"
Seems they found the money pretty quickly once it had actually collapsed. I wonder what the cost of timely permanent repairs would have been versus the whole bridge replacement?
I got a bridge closed off for fire equipment because sink holes were appearing. I called the fire department and suggested that unless the bridge was needed to get to a fire not to use the bridge. It would be very embarrassing for the city and the FD if a truck fell through. They took my advise. Later I had to tell them after the bridge was totally rebuilt that they could use it again. They asked me my authority, I said I had none, it was only a suggestion. Two points I would consider: The first is citizens monitor their nearby bridges and if concerned post photos and contact local emergency to avoid using the bridge if at all possible. I would also notify the government agency, such as city what you have done and that you posted photos. In my case the bridge was scheduled to be rebuilt within several months. The second, I would have a law passed that the head inspector must publically state that it appears this bridge is not longer safe and at the least weight limits or closing is recommended. Of course, if the bridge is safe no press conference would be required. This puts on notice, publically that a dangerous bridge needs attention. This opens the government's wallet to make whole if an event occurrs.
@@Mark_Bridges If everything is within standards, I don't see a need to do so, only those bridges that need to have weight loads lowered, or the bridge closed. I could see a listing of local bridges as a total to be released to the media. Only specific announcements when it is needed. This puts the managing government on notice to do something.
Grady: like I described on your "Surfside Condo Collapse" video, you are truly top-of-class when it comes to covering structural failures. I especially appreciate your musings around 18:00 about the frequent disconnect between those charged with gathering on-the-ground data and those who have authority to enact the necessary solutions. Also around 19:17, about how serious of a responsibility it is to maintain (and fund the maintenance of) infrastructure. Bravo, and thank you again for nurturing, using, and sharing this gift you have of communicating engineering.
Another factor plays into the deterioration of CorTen structures. The welding rod material prescribed for COR TEN construction was initially incorrectly formulated. Structures that were bolted instead of welded have survived well. You also see, in the failure reports you show, the major deterioration occurred at welded joints.
The deterioration was at locations that could hold rotting vegetation and road salt. I can clearly see how the central webbing was gone, not just the corroded braces. If you have ever seen the added roof section that diverts rain around a chimney, that is what was missing from these braces. But mostly, the cross brace was never highlighted as a critical tension member, and road salt was spilling over the curbs for decades.
Something I've found interesting in recent years is in DC, WMATA has found a way to make the public more interested in maintenance. If they do a major shutdown of a section of the Metrorail system, they've done re-opening celebrations of some sort. The Yellow Line's Long Bridge rehab project had a giveaway to take a special first train over the bridge again after it opened that many people were excited to enter and win a ride on. They'll often put up little presentations at reopened stations to highlight the repair work done. It costs a little extra money, but has gone long way in keeping the riding public interested and informed about necessary maintenance to keep the system on a path to a state of good repair.
As an observer from the UK, I'm struck by the disconnect between US officials that call out a problem (corroded bridge, unroadworthy stretched limo, failing apartment block) but then there's no system for enforcing follow up. Sad that such scenarios kill so many innocent victims. The UK's followed suit - see Grenfell Tower disaster and its cladding. When I started work in 1980s UK, buildings could only be completed if a public sector official went to site and approved the job in progress; nowadays, it's on the members of the building team - and whoever is slowest at passing the buck.
Grenfell really illustrated the number of opportunities design, client and construction teams have to pass the buck. From cladding choices and missing fire break strips to lack of update to the fire evac strategy, there were so many opportunities for this cascade of events to have happened differently. Hell, even the fact that the fire was started by a faulty fridge after years of complaints by the residents shows that we could have done better simply by valuing and caring about the people living in social housing.
As a Pittsburgher, went over that bridge multiple times and mention to my bud that the expansion joints were way too far apart and plus my bud and his finance got flat tires coming across that bridge heading towards downtown. My other bud that works at Port Authority told me they fixed the bus and was back in service.
I don't even mind doing ongoing gradually maintenance and improvements on a big software system, but that doesn't get me through the performance appraisal process. I would be a code janitor, refactoring, updating components, improving infrastructure, and rarely implementing a new feature. But software organizations would rather let a system crumble, and pay for a team to spend a year or two replacing it, rather then spend one person's time on an ongoing basis.
I think I've seen people ask for this before, but I'll do it again: I'd love to see your take/research on the Minneapolis bridge I35W collapse of 2007. I know there are some decent documentaries out there, and it'd probably be a massive topic, but your coverage of how catastrophes like this can happen is refreshingly objective. :)
I'm from Pennsylvania. It's like this everywhere. I know of overpasses that have holes in the concrete with exposed rebar. Roads with potholes big enough to dent rims and rip off bumpers. Places where the water bubbles up and flows right out of the middle of the road when it rains. Penn Dot doesn't care.
Absolutely one of your best videos I think - even without having the answers on how to fix what is actually the problem in cases like this, you did a fantastic job of describing the problem and pointing out not only what needs to be done, but picked the best possible example of why it needs to be dealt with.
except the inspectors, who recorded the issue dutifully for nearly a decade, submitted their paperwork, and trusted it would be fixed in time. they were really let down by the system not having a way for those reports to initiate a repair. if you've ever worked in an environment that necessitates bureaucracy, you might be more understanding that even if these people did speak up to their superiors and say "hey these have been in dangerous condition for five years", the response would have been the same. their superior would say that the inspection report is all they need, that once its submitted the higher ups will make a decision on how to proceed. its a shame that it never actually happened.
@@arcanealchemist3190 Fair enough. The visual did show that the reports mentioned the severe problems for YEARS. I guess I can only echo Brady's thoughts - how can we design such a complicated system that doesn't actually work?
This city has so much embezzlement that causes its problems, its actually insane. I wish this city actually made more jobs and cared for the people who made it what it is.
Fewer contractors, more representatives. The city council has 9 members for 300k people - that's 33k a member. Great for a national legislature, but for a city? Abysmal.
Hmm. It sounds like the bridge inspectors need the kinds of authority health department inspectors have for restaurants, to credibly threaten to close the thing if critical issues aren't fixed by the next inspection.
Need third party independent inspector. If inspectors work for the people doing the work, they have a vested interest to find things to fix or not fix. Fox guarding the henhouse.
The government is fine with shutting businesses down and forcing them to fix things (if they don't have connections, at least), but it doesn't want its own things shut down. Following its own standards is too much to ask of government.
Thank you so much for your tireless effort bringing awareness to infrastructure and its related issues and complications. On the surface might seem mundane, right up until the point where it fails you. This was a group failure, and requires a group solution. It starts with recognizing the problem: infrastructure is critical, expensive through its life, taken for granted once built, and restrained by limited resources in a budget created by those who are trying to win the approval of the local populous, who themselves have competing priorities.
Why don't the inspectors have the statutory authority to condemn the bridge if it is in such a bad condition? Other countries give inspectors that kind of power to do their jobs.
@@Br3ttM You mean like over here (Switzerland): Inspectors were a bit concerned about a major highway bridge. within a week, the clamped it full of instruments shut the highway down in the middle of the night, and got the military to run a main battle tank up and down for load testing. Next to years, they fixed it, without ever closing it down, working mostly at night.
Grady, thank you for always presenting complicated things in a way that a non-engineer can understand and learn from them. Only half way through, and really enjoying this one!
I totally thought I was clicking on a Plainly Difficult video. Pleasantly surprised to see similar content from another wonderful creator. Thanks so much Grady!
One of the bridges connecting Louisville and southern Indiana was immediately closed due to a finding during an inspection back in 2011. They found a crack, reported it, and it was immediately shut down in the middle of evening rush hour. It was enough that the inspectors didn't even wait until the inspection was finish and just put it in a report. I had crossed it maybe 15 minutes before it was shut down. And thanks to a few months of this bridge being closed, it finally pushed forward the plans to add 2 new bridges that had been talked about since at least the 1980's.
I saw the news of the bridge in my old neighborhood before my family members who live there had woken up that morning. Thanks for this in depth look at the process. I spent several years in local government (albeit in a very different part of the world) and I understand how many moving parts there are. I can't imagine the budgeting challenges in a city of so very many bridges...
It's fascinating how many times we create our own tragedies because everyone chose to ignore the warning signs. It took hundreds of people and literal years to get to this thing to fail.
Leaders are not going to implement effective systems if they feel like the added cost would result in them being removed from their office. We want nice things we maybe can't actually afford, so we take on more risks. Maintenance is the easiest expense to cut.
Everyone did their jobs, from the inspectors that filed the reports to the politicians that tried to save tax dollars. The issue was that the focus was lost. The focus should have been safety above all else. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance, everyone is afraid to speak up and everyone assumes someone else will do something. Inspectors need to feel safe to speak up and higher-ups need to fear what will happen if they don't listen.
It would be up and closed, and forgotten with a permanent detour. Stuff around here doesn't get fixed until it breaks. There's a bunch of hills with recurring landslides that basically get ignored until there's a disaster.
It's a quintessential story of American bridges: -Bridge is designed & built well -Zero maintenance -"Inspections" in name only, and if they're done competently, they'll still be ignored -Major safety defects -Shoddy "temporary" repair -Zero action taken to actually repair or replace -Bridge can't take it any more, peaces out -"How could this happen to us?" Anyway, see you in 50 years when the new one ends up in the creek.
IRRC, that's exactly what happened on the bridge over the Mississippi awhile back. I think it was shut down while they were inspecting it, but I could be wrong about that. But even that was after other inspections saw the crack.
I think that they theoretically might, although they were consultants, and that sounds like a good way to not get hired for the next inspection job. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@TheRealE.B. Yeah. Authority is only half the equation. The other half is support from above to actually exercise the authority. Authority alone doesn't mean much if the city won't stand behind the inspectors' decisions.
What's weird to me about the bridge is that it wasn't built with drain-through holes in the I-beams. I used to work on a commercial shipping vessel and part of the job is digging out the rust flakes out of the double hull and particularly making sure that the drain holes are clear of obstruction. They exist on both horizontal and vertical members, to ensure that water doesn't pools anywhere.
I almost assumed it was a Chinese company that built that bridge because of structural choices like the one you pointed out. But no, it was just sloppy work done in the 70s!
I feel that part of the problem is the growing distance between practice and theory in technical fields. We need office ppl to spend time in the field, otherwise you just can't know how to prioritize.
It’s crazy having something like this happen so close to you. I went shortly after it happened to look on from the park and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen just seeing the roadway disappear into the valley.
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🌉What do you think is the solution to this failure?
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Simple solution: in Germany the inspectors simply have the authoriy to close the bridge (or any piece of infrastructure) if they find any critical stuff.
Galvanising would have protected it better methinks.
well to your point at 17:37, I'd argue that that whole ordeal is to prevent a post like that from existing, you can't take a picture of a completly rusted off steel member if it gets fixed when damaged and a steel beam with rust on it at that kind of bridge will not get any attention, so the "common sense" point feels weak, if we have to use common sense, call me uninformed, but I think then it is way past the point where action should have been taken.
Compounding inspection recommendation priority. With automatic preventative action if it reaches a certain priority.
Strong Towns talks about this stuff a lot. Having a “maintenance mindset” where maybe you build less but maintain it well and plan for maintenance funding from the beginning. Seems like a good solution.
As a Pittsburgher I couldnt be more proud of our local journalists who covered this whole affair. Unfortunately the state has decided to make all bridge inspection reports "classified" for "security reasons"
How unfortunate. Complex systems cannot survive the competency crisis.
The security reasons of course being the reputations of those who should be overseeing maintenance of public infrastructure who are not doing that and would like to keep not doing it while collecting paychecks.
of course they're classified !! foreign adversary countries can use bridge reports to systematically instill lack of faith in the governmental systems by... rightly pointing out that those governments are failing to maintain their infrastructure to the point where lives are at risk
this is a joke just in case that isn't clear enough
I read that as "don't walk to talk about it" for "obvious reasons"
People would probably refuse to cross any bridges because they fear for theyr lives, shutting down the supply lines and general economy. So the security concerns are not that far fetched, as this would probably result in riots and plundering for food or mass migration to safer places pretty quickly.
And who ever is and was actually in charge of fixing that infrastructure or cutting the budget probably has to fear for his reputation or even his life as well.
I sometimes think spending less money on bureaucatic administration systems and rerouting that money and time to actually do something productive would fix a lot of issues.
"Cables are added as a temporary..."
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary fix.
It blows my mind that we can deploy an entire military to build up other countries in the name of democracy, but watch as our infrastructure rots.
@@publicuser2534 google "military industrial complex".
@@publicuser2534 Agreed, but not in the name of democracy. In the name of money, oil, food, yes, but not democracy, or some of the countries we deploy to would actually be democratic and they absolutely aren't. :|
sad but true
@@publicuser2534 Militaries aren't great at building stuff that isn't physical. All they can do on a social front is enact a "temporary solution" to government...
I lived in Corpus Christi when you covered the blunder of the Harbor Bridge Project, now I live in Pittsburgh when you cover the Fern Hollow Bridge. I'm scared to move to another city with a bridge now.
Have you been to San Francisco? Lots of good bridges for you over there.
New York has even more.
Please don't move to Seattle! :)
Where were you on the night of the Francis Scott key bridge collapse ?
He knows where you sleep.
What's a bit infuriating to me is that if my personal vehicle fails an inspection, (which can be caused by relatively minor things like having a turn signal out, or a slightly old windshield wiper blade) I cannot legally drive it untill the issue is resolved. But when it comes the the government inspecting itself, suddenly the issues become "recomendations" which can be ignored indefinitely!
Y....you have to have your car INSPECTED???
What hellish state/country/province do you live in??
@bugsabc956 what a hellish state does NOT demand vehicle inspections and instead lets idiots drive two ton deathtraps around that might just be one bump in the road away from a complete brake failure, steering failure, wheels coming off or other parts flying away at speed, turning them into uncuntrollable cruise missiles? 🤨
@LRM12o8 Minnesota babyyyyy.
It might be a state bought and sold by the DFL (Democratic Farmers League) but if those farmers and I agree on one thing it's freedom.
"Freedom" and "safety" are directly competing values. I personally prefer the former. Between a state full of jerry-rigged (we have a different term for it but I don't think RUclips would like me dropping gamer words in the comments) barely functional jalopies barreling down the freeway and having to have the car I OWN inspected by some 75 IQ state pencil pusher just to be able to drive down the road, I'll take the shitbox-laden highway option 100% of the time.
We also just passed a state law allowing anyone over the age of 18 to utilize their 2nd Amendment right to conceal carry without having to apply for a state license 😊.
In the words of one of our greatest founding fathers:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-Benjamin Franklin
@@bugsabc956You never had a car inspection? It’s required by law in the U.S
@fezawn1 I think it's a southern thing, there's a few counties in PA that don't require inspections, jackson county Georgia doesn't either, and hasn't since at least 2011 when we moved down here, but think of emissions, the US military can half a new f450 without DEF but if I have one, I'm fined and required to put all that stuff back on it, emissions is just so you spend more money
Your point about nobody having a complete view hits very close to home for me. I work in security (ex pentester, now researcher) and the sheer number of times I've seen that same pattern of "the people with a clear view have no autonomy; the people with a limited view have the authority" as a limiting factor in problem identification and remediation is staggering.
Same here-InfoSec 20+ years of experience (CCSP, CISA, and CISSP, doing Audit, Networking, SIEM, and Web App Sec.)
Having InfoSec CISOs under the thumb/authority of the CFO, NOT having a seat at the C-Level table, always having to beg for more money, is the foundation for failure. (Watch the excellent 45-minute naval engineering failure analysis “Failure is like onions” by YT Presenter *Drachinifel* about the Mark XIV torpedo during the first 2 years of WWII. EVERY InfoSec Analyst/Engineer should watch this to understand how politics and cost almost always overrides good SENSE, not to mention sound engineering and testing!)
Amazon’s CISO sits at that table AND the Board as well. They *at least* get heard!
When I see problems. I don't report it. Why should I? This doesn't get resolved until enough people become no more alive due to the incompetence of the system.
Yeah, while the people with the clear view maybe shouldn't have full authority, they should at least have the authority to shut something down when they have good reason in order to make sure the people with authority are forced into figuring out what is going on.
Deviant Olam, a physical security specialist and pentester emphasizes that when you do a pentest, it’s not just about proving you can get in and out. It’s about getting people with authority to take action with you - to give them that clear picture of the various security flaws. To demonstrate why they need to make those action items a priority.
Maybe a dumb question but what is a pentester?
"All the NTSB recommendations feel a little bit like band-aids if the real source of the problem was that no one person in this whole machine had both a full appreciation of the bridge's condition, AND the authority to do something about it."
This rings painfully true for me even in the private sector
It's a real and chronic issue with investigative bodies. Often they can only get away with thorough, high quality investigations precisely because they can't do anything about the problem except make recommendations.
When investigative bodies are empowered to mandate changes, suddenly their funding disappears, or they start being bound up in red tape.
The best inspections are performed by people who do have no dog in the fight. If the inspection is performed by the same person doing the fixing there's a strong incentive to downplay issues. Perhaps the solution is to mandate a followup onsite walkthrough by someone who does have approval authority in any case of a critical deficiency. As he said, a line item of 'this thing is broke' and a couple of pictures can't get the message across the same as having to look at it with your own eyes.
It's odd, since they do sometime make systemic recommendations, although they, again, have no power to make the change.
This is what happens in a bureaucratic system where no one is held accountable for their actions or inactions.
@@cutterjohn1921 That is essentially the current system everyone involved operates at arms length. If anyone had ticked criticality 1 as a box then they would have been required to do stuff about it. More than a little of this is the swiss cheese model. There were multiple opportunities for this to get caught. But the real issue is every single entity here had no dog in the fight. Everyone did their job (you can't say don't make mistakes, people are people, the system is meant to catch that problem) but nobody really *cared* about the result to push when the system itself wasn't doing the job.
You could reduce the paperwork 80% I think, save money and have safer bridges if you had basic standards, and criminal liability for maintenance and repair. You'd basically have bridge trolls lol. People who would "own" the bridge and be responsible for keeping it in tip top shape. Bridge falls down the board of directors goes to jail. Those drains would be gleaming. With no paperwork required to enforce it.
I worked as a machine designer for over 45 years. One of the "laws" of engineering I discovered was: "Those with the most knowledge have the least authority. Conversely, those with the least knowledge have all the authority." It was maddening.
That needs to change. We need people who know their stuff and are smart to be in charge and have the ability to act. 👍
One of my sayings was "If you really want to know what really happens talk to the guy with the greasiest hands"
I dont know if you've heard of the water main that failed in Calgary Alberta? I looked. 1 person in city council is an engineer. Basically everyone else had "community organizer" in their bio. The water main was known to have issues for a while. They spent $4 million on a new city slogan though.
@@pin65371 Toronto has the same sort of problem. Millions on renaming an intersection and years of yammering instead of doing something about the (insert real problem of choice) issue.
@rm3141593 that's not what that phrase means. Even if you only hired expert engineers, the guy with final say at some point will be someone who probably has never even seen the bridges file.
Ah, Pittsburgh.
When the Greenfield Bridge was falling apart, they built a bridge under the bridge that stood for a dozen years to catch the debris from falling onto the highway below.
And they didn't fix it until John Oliver turned it into a national embarrassment.
Parkway east!
i commuted under that bridge!
Hell the bridge under the bridge was considered an improvement to the situation. Before that they just had netting wrapped around it.
@@teslalvr lol I remember the net days.
This is one of the things I love about engineering. Anyone can look at the collapse and say "old parts broke." But an engineer can point to each tiny little piece of the puzzle and tell you how, why, when, and to what extent it contributed to the collapse.
And, because everything is systems, to see the wider picture as to how these things are allowed to occur. Systemic failures in design, construction, management, budget, repair, inspection, maintenance. It's complex and complicated.
And at the same time it's very simple and obvious. Some one somewhere wanted to save a few bucks. @@Jablicek
Yeah… that’s what the engineers are doing… not skimping on materials because of their employers…
Joking!
This is part of our job, yes.
Thank you Grady for writing real closed captions instead of relying on RUclips's auto-transcript. Your efforts are noticed and appreciated!
Yep. Having RUclips-generated captions is worse than useless.
As a hearing impaired individual I could not agree more.
@@craigpridemore7566 They've improved a lot over the years
ikr! I notice all the time. I don't have problems *hearing* but unfortunately i have auditory processing issues, and really relieves a lot of mental energy to understand and appreciate what's going on and being said!
💯 especially with names or technical terms, autocaptioning is garbage and I'm always so appreciative of the youtubers who take the time to make it right ❤
Having no bureaucratic mechanism to trigger repairs after massive flaws are found is typical bureaucracy
we need to give inspectors the authority to close infrastructure entirely on their own.
Part of the problem, I think is that people figure that common sense will prevail. After all, what kind of moron would look at a report that says there's holes rusted through the legs of a bridge, and *NOT* close the bridge?
(Hint: the kind of moron who only sees the bridge as a line item on the budget.)
Build Back Better!!!
What about the inspector that missed the crack on the ohio brige i believe?
This by design from republicans. They de-fund government then point to how terrible government is when it can't run correctly.
They call Pittsburgh the “city of bridges”. And some of the bridges you will see around here are truly terrifying. The fact that more of these haven’t gone down is a miracle
True! Not even just the burg, I live a few counties to the north and most of the roads, even pa state roads/bridges are below subpar. Even in my town there's huge, gaping holes between tracks and the road... massive potholes, but the states planned to put in a roundabout at an intersection where a college is. Blows my mind to think we all just got hammered by that X trillion dollar "infrastructure " bill that was past. Our gov. Has failed us and there's no one they answer to when they fail
Allegheny, Beaver and Lawrence counties all have SHITE bridges that are berry dangerous. That being said, WHAT'S UP YINZERS?!
I just wish they'd find a solution to their hellacious tunnels.
Those safety factors we use during design and construction are there for a reason; they've kept a lot of poorly maintained structures standing and saved a lot of lives, but they can only stretch so far...
Meanwhile Ukraine gets 100 billion. Make that make sense.
11:40 The skills of that bus driver were amazing. To keep your head straight enough to keep the bus under control in that situation was fantastic.
scariest day of their life I'm sure.
Yeah, that driver needs to get some recognition, and paid a lot more than they are. To manage their panic response enough to stop while keeping the (articulating!) bus under control on a collapsing structure is a superhuman achievement.
@@leakingamps2050 Not every hero, wears a cape.
I live within a mile of Fern Hollow Bridge, and cross it nearly every day. That day I had missed the collapse by less than an hour. The bridge collapsing the day the President came to talk about the need for new infrastructure in our city is the deepest irony I've ever experienced in my life! With how slow construction seems to progress in this city, I was blown away by how fast the new bridge came up. Thank you for covering this!!
Amazing how fast stuff can get done when there's a major embarrassment
Bootygig was probably busy with
Other things
@@UncleWermus You have 0 idea the time it takes for actual progress to be made in the government. It's not as simple as sayinh "Do this, now."
or somebody knocked it over to sell a spending package
I do some stuff with construction on infastructure. The sad thing is, if you want to upgrade an existing structure, the government will bog you down. Planning ahead costs twice as much because government will require environmental reviews, tons of engineering, studies, public review periods, and if any group decides to fight against the project (there is always someone) the price skyrockets. You throw tons of money at lawyers and engineers. However, if your infastructure fails, the government will just sign off on you fixing it/upgrading it. It costs half as much because you skip all the burocracy. As most of the projects I'm involved with are not safety related, we often buy all the parts for an upgrade then let them sit in our yard till we have a small failure so we can get emergency approval to upgrade. Saves us a ton of money. It is very sad the way the government effectively outlaws preventative upgrades.
FJB
It baffles me how you can have 10+ years of critical failure reports and nothing was done. How many times do city officials need to be told a structure is dangerous? ONE. It should be criminal to sit on that information and do nothing.
There needs to be enough incentive for people in those positions to not even think twice about the idea of keeping an unsafe piece of infrastructure open, even if closing it will face strong backlash from the public.
A lot of people think capitalism is the only cause of such issues, but this clearly demonstrates that it's a human problem. There are always budgets. There's always a risk/reward calculation. There is always a profit motive. In this case, it's more political profit than economic.
If an engineer shuts down a bridge and it causes a politician to take heat, that engineer will face backlash.
@@UserNameAnonymous Engineers can handle it, mostly because their jobs aren't tied to popularity.
There are a bunch of cognitive biases that can lead to people dismissing obvious warning signs. People don't want to come to unpopular conclusions, people don't want to believe a catastrophe could happen to them or near them, people convince themselves that something is safe because nothing went wrong previously, and so on and so forth.
The human brain is pretty bad at dealing with high consequence, low probability events. It takes training and practice.
@@UserNameAnonymous Capitalism is when a state entity fails to do his job, lol
Been watching for years and your writing is always so legit. No one could have said it better. This exact thing happens in so many industries: (18:46) "Maintaining infrastructure is thankless work (...) they’re not rewarding in the same way that designing and building new stuff can be. No one holds a big press conference and cuts a big ribbon at the end of a bridge inspection or a structural retrofit. Building a new structure isn't just an achievement in its own right; it’s a commitment to take good care of it for its entire design life, and then to rehabilitate, or replace, or even close it when it’s no longer safe for the public. And I think this is the perfect case study to show that there’s more we could do to encourage and celebrate that kind of work as well." Thanks, Grady!
Absolutely! And let's not forget the endless nickel-and-dime'ing in the public authorities responsible for maintaining the infrastructure, without which we had likely been without this accident - and countless other similar ones. Heck - even an extremely simple task like unclogging the drainage paths would have added years - if not decades - to the bridge's life.
Imagine how frustrating it must have been to the inspectors writing up their reports year after year on this bridge, seeing nothing done, and finally seeing the bridge collapse.
Maybe that's part of the problem here. They receive constant warning for things that hold on for years, so they are thinking "it's okay it will last some time again and we'll figure out something later" - until there is no later. Inspectors should have the ability to close structures that are dangerous.
There can come a point in your career where you need to say "screw it" and take it above the heads of the people making a really poor decision, no matter the risk to your own job. I've done it once, but thankfully it was only two management tiers above my own boss, not public. Anyone who blows the whistle for genuine public interest and makes it to the media has nothing but my utmost respect. Whistleblowers do not fare well when something hits the media, even today. I suspect they fare worse when it doesn't become public.
At that point all you really can do is laugh.
"... welp."
Then you get thousands of keyboard warriors talking about how the inspector must have been taking bribes
I drove over the Minnesota 35W bridge about 10 days before it failed. I was in my 1994 F250HD which had a very stiff suspension. I noticed going from bridge section to bridge section abrupt change in angle like it hit a bump. My truck was going slightly up and down as it crossed that bridge. A bridge engineer working for MnDOT repeatedly warned MnDOT management that that bridge was going to fail, and they didn’t listen. The blueprints for the bridge called for 1” thick connector plates. The plates installed were 1/2”. 13 people died because of incompetence, over 100 more were injured.
My wife was en route to cross it, but she had to turn around because she forgot something. Had she not turned around, she likely would have been on or very near the bridge when it collapsed.
I also have a co-worker who drove over the bridge about 10 minutes before it collapsed.
and of COURSE, no one went to jail...
@@roberthousedorfii1743 The greater the impact, the lower the consequences for those responsible. Especially in government.
@@thecatofnineswords Now what is the point of posting such a uselessly cynical comment? Government is the responsibility of the PEOPLE.
We pay for it with our taxes, we vote for representatives, we have free speech and the right to raise cane when crucial infrastructure is ignored, we all know that graft, corruption or incompetence can occur in any human endeavor...
We're not a nation of 7 year olds waiting for Mom and Dad to take care of everything.
@@mjinba07 because that is my experience/observation of those who have experienced repercusions for illegal or bad behavious. Individuals will be jailed/fined for breaking the law, but corporate executives and government leaders just move onto their next role, no matter how many people their actions killed. We bear the cost through increased taxes, but where is the actual increased funding in maintenance?
I too expect the government to do good work for the benefit of society, but there are very few actual methods available to hold it accountable when it goes awry.
I'm in healthcare architecture and it is very true that a retrofit of an existing facility is a lot less glamourous than a brand new one. No one is going to have a big ribbon cut party for the new fire escape ramp we've designed for an existing hospital ward, but if there's ever a fire the staff can now evacuate patients safely in their beds instead of trying to get non-mobile, vulnerable people down the steps.
Very interesting video, I find your deep dives on failed case studies very useful :)
I’m on the other side of the equation with designing equipment for hospitals not much glory in making buttons that minimise mistakes or evacuation equipment that can help workers from getting injured compared to the more expensive flashier products or “life altering” ones when reducing errors and injuries is just as important
Well, I for one salute you, dear Internet stranger that does this awesome work 💪👍
An added problem with infrastructure maintenance is that it often causes traffic disruption which leads to people complaining.
I just wanted to say thanks for having a RUclips channel that can talk about things that have gone wrong without being overly dramatic or emotionally manipulative.
That's kind of hard to do in a world where you're incentivized to maximize views. But I really appreciate your commitment to professionalism.
I agree with your remark. Grady is awesome.
I've been in local government, so many times money found for a new infrastructure project. Yet I used to get told to shut up when I talked about maintenance. Therefore all the resulting facilities would have to be pulled down well before their time, because they are just left to rot rather than maintained.
I have been thinking for some time that large projects that forseeably need non-trivial maintenance budgets should be required to have an "endowment" of money that is invested in an annuity-like way to fund at least the forseeable maintenance requirements. And if the endowment runs out, it is federally required to be topped up or the project closed.
Maintenance is not electorally efficient!
And its amazing that just cleaning the drains and clearing debris would have extended the life of the bridge a huge amount.
Yeah, I've seen (and am seeing) similar issues. The community as a whole (i.e. the voting population) cares far more intensely about matters like construction work making commutes longer and taxes being raised to pay for infrastructure projects than about making sure critical infrastructure is repaired before it fails. And as a result the local politicians do everything in their power to avoid doing anything, because no matter what they do it will be unpopular with a lot of people.
“new infrastructure project” pays for cronies “maintenance” is just a drain on resources, despite being more important
Well said. When the NTSB released their video report, they started with something to the effect "We apologize to all that were affected by this collapse, and this collapse SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED!" Yes, she was visibly angry that this bridge was so severely overlooked. As a Pittsburgh resident, it puts doubts about all of our 446 bridges in the back of my mind every time I cross one!
I'm not an Engineer, Just a retired Union Construction Laborer. I've helped to build and rehab many bridges in my area. From what I've seen, drainage, or rather improper drainage, is the root cause of nearly all the damage to the bridges. Especially the older design ones on interstates and toll roads. Eventually the drains fail exactly over critical places. Fail from lack of maintenance. Then the bridge would get rehabbed, rebuilt exactly as it was and eventually fail again. New designs are taking care of much of that. They drain totally different. Still, bridges need maintained not just inspected or rebuilt on failure.
Maybe bad/damaged/improper/.. drainage simply show You the best way that project/building/ had done wrong way or have serious problems in common.For example: wrong project gives extra deformation or vibration and drainage reacts it first (You see it's proiblems first, before problems of main construction. because it seems early and better).
Makes sense. Assuming that the value of drainage maintenance would be self-evident is a very engineer sort of mistake to make. Over time a pattern of bridge deterioration/failures due to lack of drainage maintenance would make it obvious that bridges shouldn't be designed assuming regular, diligent drainage maintenance.
@@SnakebitSTI Then the problems will just shift over to whatever design compromises were made to facilitate better drainage, the bottom line is that if maintenance is ignored failures will occur.
@@SnakebitSTI I'm not sure they should be designed expecting maintenance, period.
@@gas33z Yes, it will just shift the problems to things with longer mean time between failure. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
A maintenance-less bridge would likely be wildly more expensive and thus very unlikely to be chosen, if one is even possible. But that doesn't mean some designs don't require more active maintenance than others.
Thanks for covering this! As a Pennsylvanian and a Pittsburgher, the fact that it was allowed to get this bad was pretty unsurprising - this is the city that, instead of fixing the Greenfield bridge, built another bridge underneath it to catch the falling debris.
Realistically, I don't think the city or state were going to do anything without a catastrophe. I'm really glad we got one where nobody died - but it's not acceptable that it happened in the first place.
The way we approach infrastructure in this state & country needs radical change. We shouldn't need to write those changes in blood.
The fact that the broken and badly rusted supports didn't cause more concern among anyone involved is indictive of how common these conditions must be.
Normalisation of deviance is the name of the day.
Right. "The engineer complained about this issue last year, and it still hasn't caused any problems."
@@electrowizard2000 Normally these quotes would be slightly exaggerated to emphasize the issue, but that just seems like something someone would actually say.
Great video. I'm a bridge engineer in Pennsylvania (Philly), and you really hit on a lot of the issues with the system. We as inspectors can only do so much. We have a responsibility to do the due diligence during the inspection and report writing process. Seeing defects like was seen on this bridge is unfortunately not uncommon. Finding 100% section loss in steel is pretty normal, but as you noted, the location of the section loss matters. It often matters more than the amount of section loss, because there's a lot of material in a bridge that doesn't see a lot of stress. Unfortunately we as inspectors only have the ability to report findings. Some owners are more proactive than others when it comes to repairs, load ratings, increased inspection frequency, and replacement. PennDOT is notoriously bad with maintaining its infrastructure. Pennsylvania is 2nd in the country for the quantity of bridges in their inventory, and they are 1st for having the worst condition bridges. Given the history of the state, including with the country's founding and steel fabrication in PA, it's no surprise that we have so many bridges in such poor condition. We have some really really old bridges here - some over 200 years old. But in spite of the monumental responsibility that Pennsylvania has as compared to other states, the state agencies and politicians seem disinterested in doing anything about it. Penndot is notoriously stingy with everything, even new design budgets. It makes it difficult to get anything done or to find competent work. The lack of attention to infrastructure is an age-old joke to Pennsylvanians. We are the pothole capital of the US. Something has to give at some point, but it doesn't seem like that's ever going to happen. Penndot and the state government are more interested in buying new technologies for turnpike tolling and building whole new interchanges than they are with fixing our existing infrastructure. Even multiple high profile bridge collapses haven't been enough to sway those in charge.
If inspectors had a federal power to limit the traffic using a bridge -- even to the point of none at all -- would that help, or would officials just take excuses through the courts or close the bridges without alternatives?
@@rivimeythey closed another Pittsburgh bridge about three miles from this bridge about a year after the Fern Hollow bridge collapsed. It was a bridge that carried major traffic. It was closed with no warning to the public (that was fun), and we were told that it was going to be repaired. Almost a year and a half later, nothing had been done. They “might” get it repaired and opened sometime next year.
Welcome to Pittsburgh!
Thanks for that, it's good to hear from someone who actually knows the field.
I was just thinking about the twitter post and photo that got mentioned in the report. Do you think that a loose network of concerned citizens, dog walkers, hikers, retired busybodies and just random dudes and Karens could help you, now that everyone has a smart phone? No doubt there would have to be a few simple rules they would all have to follow but you would get a large photo archive of the bridges and infrastructure over time and in different conditions. That could be useful.
@rivimey the politics of it all can be really complicated, but it's not exactly an Us vs. Them relationship with inspectors and owners. Inspectors can and (on rare occasions) do call in to the owner while on-site when the condition is severe enough for emergency intervention. The issue comes with finding that threshold where you decide that something must be done immediately. There are no shortage of bridges in this country that have very severe deterioration, yet they remain standing for years or decades. There's a lot of reserve capacity and redundancy in most bridges, so loss of material doesn't necessarily mean the bridge is in danger of collapse (often it isn't). It can be difficult to determine this in the field though, because you need to do a rigorous analysis to even know the capacity. It's not possible to do that on site. Generally, there are telltale signs of imminent danger that we would see that would cause us to call it in. Things like a significant sag in the bridge deck, a fracture in a steel member, severe scour of a bridge foundation due to water, etc. Certain types of bridges are more critical than others due to the nature of how they distribute stress. For example, trusses are typically non-redundant, so if 1 member fails then the entire bridge or a section of the bridge may collapse. So seeing a fracture in a steel member of a truss is a very big deal and we would call that in and probably try to stop traffic ourselves if possible. But seeing a crack in a steel beam on a 6-beam bridge is less critical, because if that beam fails the load can distribute to the adjacent beams and imminent collapse is unlikely. Load redistribution isn't possible with a truss. Ultimately the owner still gets the final say in whether or not to close the bridge, but generally speaking they will take the advice of the inspector. The implications for closing a small bridge on a back road are minimal, so it's not usually a big deal to close one. But closing a mainline bridge on an interstate and/or a bridge on the Federal emergency route has massive implications for the surrounding community, commerce, emergency services, safety of local residents, etc. It's no small deal to close a bridge on I-95 like the one that collapsed here in Philly after the tanker fire or the FSK bridge in Baltimore that was struck by the ship. I'm not implying that those bridges should have been closed due to their condition by the way; I'm just using them as examples since they're well known to everyone in the country and they're on major interstates. For an inspector to call in the closure of an interstate bridge, he needs to be right about it needing to be closed asap. The owner would be pissed if we called in something that wasn't that emergent, wasting tons of time and money by doing so. That's why it's so tricky to do these things. You are basically putting your entire career on the line for something that you usually cannot be 100% sure about. It's almost never black and white.
@jakedee4117 no offense to those trying to help, but the vast majority of people lack the requisite knowledge to understand the condition or potential threat to safety. The general public tends to put too much emphasis on the appearance of a bridge without understanding the mechanics. I've seen and heard many non-engineers complain about an 'old rusted bridge' which really says nothing about condition or load carrying capacity. Rust is normal on steel. Cracks are normal in concrete. You can have either without it affecting the bridge capacity at all. I've inspected countless bridges that had failed paint and rust throughout, but they didn't have any measurable loss of steel. When steel oxidizes, the resulting material (rust) is 16 times thicker than the original steel. So if you had a 1/16" steel plate that fully rusted through, you'd end up with 1" thick rust. Extrapolate this to a typical beam/girder flange that is 1", 2", or 3+" thick, and that's a LOT of rust. Point is: it often looks worse than it is to the untrained eye. We make the remaining steel section with calipers and use that data to do a load rating analysis of the bridge. It's not even possible for us as engineers to gauge these things on site. We need to run an analysis on the computer. So it's virtually impossible for the general public to have any idea about the condition of a bridge. The times when the public can help is more with the big red flag items that any person would know is a problem. Certainly the Twitter photo in this case would be a good thing to report, though 100% section loss on a bracing member is still not that unusual. I-495 around Wilmington was closed after a motorist reported a sag in the bridge barrier. That sag ended up being due to the pier tilting as a result of a stockpile of construction material too close to the bridge. That was a rare case when a not-so-obvious sign of distress ended up being a massive issue, and somehow a traveling motorist caught it. If I were to provide guidance to anyone wanting to report emergent issues with a bridge, I would say to ask themselves 'does this look right?' As in, is something bending in a way it doesn't look to be designed for? Is something leaning that probably shouldn't be leaning? Is a piece of steel cracked or fractured? Is a large portion or all of the foundation exposed? If you see something that really looks off, report it. But I would say to refrain from reporting rusted steel or cracked concrete, because 99.9% of the time it's not a serious defect requiring immediate intervention. And over-reporting non- critical issues will only take away from our time and resources. The majority of the time, we already know about the issue being reported by a concerned citizen, and it's been evaluated at least once. Many times, it's a very insignificant defect that sometimes has been around for decades, but it simply looks bad to the public so it keeps getting reported. We have to inspect all bridges in the country on at least a 2yr cycle, so there's rarely a situation where a defect goes unnoticed by inspectors for years.
"Nobody cuts a ribbon at the end of a bridge inspection" - maybe we should start.
No! The ribbon is structural!
@@JonBrase well done, comment of the century 😂
Gonna tell the boss he needs to up the ribbon budget by about 10,000% for me to get through July.
@@jabumbo 10000 x 0 is still 0
This bridge gets a D-
*Cuts celebration ribbon*
I like your conclusion saying that if you add more papers and more prcedures and more inspections it will not change the absence of actual action.
I’m very happy I live in NY and work for a DOT Bridge crew. We go out every year in spring and wash the bridge decks and clear out the drainage paths so everything can be funneled correctly. At the moment of this comment we are working on bridge joints and completely rebuilding them so the bridge can flex correctly. Thank you for making this video!
Thanks for keeping State Bridges safe
I'm very happy I live in NY where I can break into an empty apartment and squat for free, take whatever I want from retail stores as long as it's worth less than $1000, and get immediately released every time I get caught shoplifting. Thank you for making this comment!
@@B3Band You should move to TX, you can shoplift up to $2500!
@@B3BandWow I wanna live there now, thanks for the recommendation!
This feels like yet another example of what I call the “Bronze Plaque Problem.”
Nobody gets their name on a bronze plaque for maintaining a bridge, but if you let it rust into oblivion you can build a new one with your name on a bronze plaque, to be remembered for generations.
Maintenance isn't glamorous and never builds a legacy.
I'd rather have my name lost than in an inquiry report! It's a shame the bronze plaque is so tempting.
@@mouseluva But if the inquiry report brings no repremandation, does it even matter?
We as a society can change that!
Until people stop saying "politicians" and start using actual names of the people responsible, nothing will change.
I grew up in this part of Pittsburgh in the 1960's thru the 1980's. Walking, bike riding and then driving over this and scores of other bridges in this area. It was not uncommon to see daylight thru pot holes in the road surfaces and rust on the structures. As a CE later, I understood how the wear and tear on these bridges would require massive maintenance and $ to keep safe. This incident happened with minimal impact, but I always thought it would happen much sooner.
They should have torn it down and replaced it sadly politics gets in the way.
If only government spent our money on stuff that mattered like infrastructure.
@mae2759 can't be raising taxes in an election year... or ever really. Money for infrastructure maintenance is long overdue. It will be pennies in comparison when the next bridge falls or dam breaks.
@@Cassinspace We don't need to raise taxes. We need to divert funds to things we need, like infrastructure. But, you can't buy votes and political favors by cutting programs.
Hope those injured by this collapse filed a lawsuit, this looks like negligence. Glad no one lost their life.
I feel like as the 50s to 70's becomes '50 years ago' we're going to start seeing more mid-century bridges collapse from poor maintenance as they reach their 'expected service life' and get ignored.
With how much of the country is running on shoestring budgets these days I'm very afraid that you're correct.
Humans are cheap and easy to replace.
I work in a factory with huge equipment and machinery and I believe that your thoughts at the end are true. Everyone is excited about the purchase of a new spray dryer, a new reactor and so on... but no one cares about the maintenance needed on the equipment until it has a breakdown.
It seems to be a human brain thing. On some level, we expect to spend money for new things, but we expect the things we have to just continue working.
@@SnakebitSTI It's a cultural problem. Are you telling me that a mayor who finds the time to personally hype up the outcome of an inspection/safety report WOULDN'T look like a boss?
If they went out to the bridge and held a press conference discussing an A+ safety report and telling people how much they value their constituents' lives and their city's infrastructure, they would get good press. You could practically campaign on that alone.
If a bridge gets a B-, they implement the necessary fixes and then personally show up and hold a press conference bragging about how awesome their repairs and improvements are. You can even have a baller ribbon cutting ceremony for it if you need to.
The problem is purely cultural. Politicians do not realize the potential for personal gain by taking infrastructure seriously.
Some places have a maintenance program that consists of "Fix it when it fails".
The factory I am working at right now is like that (I'm an HVACR tech). I had the same experience doing repair work at McDonald's and 99 Cent stores.
Can I recommend a video? We had a feeder main break in Calgary, Alberta almost 2 weeks ago now and there are sooo many people who have no idea how our water system works. I work on a lot of city infrastructure projects and have a pretty good understanding of but would love to see the best channel on RUclips do something on this. This pipe was 2M or 6 feet in diameter and supplies about %30 of our drinking water to the underground reservoirs around the city of 1.6 million people. San Diego is sending us a piece for the repair they had spare and we really appreciate it.
I would love to see this!
++1 for this! I was just scrolling through to see if anyone mentioned this, and was thinking to recommend it if not. The pipe in question carries about 60% of the city's water, though. I really would love to see a video on this. There have been documented problems with PCCP made in the 1970s, and this pipe is at the 50 year mark in it's supposed 100-yr life span. Please help us to understand better (or at all) how water infrastructure works :)
@@camrouxbg the plant produces %60, this is one of 2 pipes leaving the plant, one heading north and the south one that broke.
@@codybarker3863 Ah alright, that actually makes sense. Thanks for the correction.
Could the pipe have failed due to seismic activity?
"collapsed without warning" and "in poor condition for over a decade" are two sentences that can't be true at the same time.
But i undestand it was as no warning for the drivers
I'm a structural engineering in charge of the bridges for a government entity. This level of neglect is systemic and common. There has has been a lack of public will to maintain, repair, and replace the infrastructure that already exists, be it a bridge, water system, or other. The focus is always on the shiny new projects, leaving the existing infrastructure to deteriorate. It's very likely the City didn't have the funding for a staff member to properly review the reports, or the funding to do anything about it. The fact of the matter is that the public does not vote to spend the money that is required to maintain and repair bridges like these until something disastrous happens.
Is there really even an opportunity to vote on such things? This is an honest question. I agree with you about the main issue ultimately being the electorate, but it is my gut feeling that the way our government is set up, as top heavy as it is, there isn't much political incentive for legislators, especially those at the higher levels, to be responsive to the electorate, present opportunities for the electorate to mandate concrete action, or encourage an informed electorate.
Most of the time it’s the people in charge of bridges that fail to tell the public how bad the bridges,etc really are. How can we vote on something that’s not presented to us?
I find it funny a government employee gaslighting citizens,blaming them for the failures of the government
@@joegosselin2888 i don't see this poster as gaslighting us. At the end of the day, voters make or break politicians, even if it is through actions outside the ballot box. But I believe you are definitely correct in pointing out that we can't vote on something that isn't presented. I argue also that the public sometimes are the ones who point out failure, in addition to the subject matter experts. Our government system still disincentivizes (and now more than ever with the Chevron SC ruling) agencies with the know-how and mandate to do stuff from actually doing stuff.
@@andresmorera6426 The information is there. It's common knowledge that our infrastructure is falling apart, just as it's common knowledge that our education system is failing us. The fact is that when it comes to selecting politicians, the politicians who the public select give it lip service at best and then focus on other things. When public servants do try to get something done, some NIMBY with a lawyer or a political connection stands in the way. If you want to find out more about your local bridges, the information is published on a website that's called LTBP InfoBridge for every publicly owned bridge over 20 feet long in the entire nation.
As a Pennsylvanian, "common sense slipping through the cracks" is the most accurate offhand description of how the state runs I've ever heard. The glory days of coal and steel are long gone, natural gas fracking is mostly done by out of state companies, and most people are committed to ignorance because they don't want to forget how good it was. Disasters like this happen all time in PA. People don't notice things falling apart, they only notice when it falls.
Edit: 17:35 Haha yes Grady! Oh sure they'll spend a lot of money and write books of paperwork, but it's all deskwork in service of not going outside and having a real look.
Edit2: Please see comments section for examples of ignorance. They'll talk about anything as long as it's not the topic at hand. No wonder I left.
things werent really amazing back when PA had the money either. rose tinted glasses wont show you the real picture. it was great for the rich who benefited from coal and steel production, but it was at severe cost to the lower middle class, and to the environment. and im not just talking about climate change, all of these processes dump more than just greenhouse gasses, they also poison the air, leech chemicals into the groundwater, and the efforts taken to prevent major ecological damage were practically nonexistent.
i feel for those living in the results of these decisions now, but it is important to recognize that the way things were could never have been maintained, it was chosen from the start to put profits now ahead of pain and suffering later.
yes we need to fund them so they can take swift strong proletarian action
Well we had Pittsburgh bridges featured in 2 videos in a month, this one was inevitable.
@@nitehawk86 Bridges are what the state, and especially Pitt, are known for eh? On full display of how well they're taken care of.
Pennsylvania, always number two.
Was working on a building column replacement. The column in question was badly rusted, with several holes rusted through the square member. We started to shore up the roof when we heard a wet crunch, and everything started shaking. The column had broken off at the floor and was swinging freely. Partially unloading the column was enough to cause it to shear off at the base.
A photo of that column still hangs over my desk with a quote from the engineer before we shored it up, "On a scale of 1-10, this is a 6." Everyone on the crew knew it was going to or had failed. And the only reason it was fixed before the roof caved it was because of Surfside.
What a haunting experience
I get a tiny rust hole in the unibody of my car, and Pennsylvania immediately fails my safety inspection.
Giant holes and disconnected corroded crossmembers of their bridge for decades, and Pennsylvania just keeps passing safety inspections.
🥴
Pennsylvania's priorities are in their pockets over safety. The state also heavily penalized the owner of a plane that did an emergency landing on the Turnpike, which was literally designed for emergency landings of small planes. Now, other plane owners are more likely to crash into houses over emergency landing on the Turnpike.
@@ChicaDeBiblia everyone else has to pay a toll on the turnpike, why should he get away with it for free. 😂😂
I spent most of my life testing and recommending repairs for all types of heavy machinery and structures. The majority of the repairs were never preformed or preformed incorrectly or only half completed. The smaller the company, the more likely the repairs would be completed and completed correctly. Large municipalities hired us to preform many tests and provide recommendations for proper repairs. I could go back in 5 years and the recommendation that I provided before were never done and the structure or machine was out of service. Most of my direct contacts at these companies had paper work to the ceiling. It's a mess but that is what we've got. Really good video!
Saw the bus in the thumbnail and knew exactly what it was. Busses getting sucked up into weird calamities is a meme around here.
I have lived in Pittsburgh all of my 52 years. I believe I have only been on that bridge a handful of times mostly because I have lived in brookline and now for the last 20 years Robinson Township. I do work at the University for the last 27 years but never need to go that far east from Oakland.
The bus-muda triangle
i saw the bus in the thumbnail too. And i also knew exactly what it was instantly.
It's a bus.
They are heavy and drive strange routes.
@@drescherjm : I crossed that bridge frequently and hated it due to the fast traffic, narrow roadway, and grates that seemed set up to catch my bike tires, but I never feared it would collapse. Not like the Homestead bridge that you could see through, or the Greenfield bridge with the extra bridge underneath to catch the bits falling down.
I drove across this bridge all the time as part of my work commute before it collapsed. On multiple occasions I would be stuck in gridlock on the bridge, feeling it bounce every time a car drove by going the opposite way, and I'd see the weight limit sign, then count the cars currently on the bridge and do the math... it was a miracle the collapse didn't happen sooner.
TBH, even healthy bridges bounce. You just don't notice it while your car is moving. But pedestrians and people in idling cars notice.
ok, ok, but the weight limit is per vehicle or axle. There's no "math" to be done.
"paper is patient" as we say in Germany: writing reports might not force anyone to act accordingly but gives everyone involved a feeling of having done what had to be done. a.k.a. responsibility diffusion.
I live in Pittsburgh. The government is reactionary, not proactive. You should have seen the McKees Rocks bridge before the recent renovation. You could see down to the water through the concrete and asphalt in many places.
😮 wow
See bridge conditions here: gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/BridgeConditions.aspx
Unfortunately, the city's response is usually to just close the road (and put a diaper under it). I really miss driving over the Panther Hollow Bridge. At least the inspection of all the rest of the bridges resulted in closure before injury.
The poor state of the bridges isn't exactly an unknown problem in Pittsburgh, even before the bridge collapse. It's kind of hard to miss the crumbling concrete and the bridge "diapers" meant to "solve" the problem of falling concrete.
@@SnakebitSTI Too true, unfortunately
What makes me sick about this country anymore is that no matter how bad the dereliction of duty, no one suffers a penalty. Multiple inspections showed that the bridge needed many repairs and eventualy one of the inspections was supposed to trigger a review that never happened, yet who went to jail? Who lost their job? Who lost their engineering license? From the tweet, its obvious the bridge should have been closed. Any fool can see that. Yet all we got were some recommendations that will not really change procedures in Pittsburg or anywhere else. There are probably many more bridges needed seriour repairs and if the people of those areas saw that you can go to jail, loose your job, get fined, loose your career, then maybe someone would pay attention. Instead they will do what happened in PA. Brush it off and wait for a collapse then make excuses. SMH
One of the things that makes me sick about this country is the use of positive anymore. Just kidding.
Same here in the U.K. Nobody gets sacked or imprisoned for dereliction or neglect, especially in the public sector
So...like Boeing?
@@JoshuaTootell exactly. If CEOs started losing all their assets and spending time in real prisons not country clubs then maybe things would change
This was the greatest analogy of the problems in many large industries. The ones who see the problems are powerless and the ones given power are those who only think about building the next shiny bridge.
I lived in Pennsylvania for 23 years and this sort of thing is not surprising. Closer to where I lived, a few years ago, the Rt 30 bridge spanning the Susquehanna River shifted overnight, causing one section of the bridge to be many inches lower than the other at one of the expansion joints. Many cars experienced severe damage to their undersides from hitting the equivalent of a metal curb straight on at highway speeds.
This is 100% the issue in a lot of manufacturing operations as well. Infrastructure is just ignored until it fails because fixing it doesn't look good for someones EBIDTA.
It slipped past almost unoticed, but an estimate of 26 tons, when it should have been 3, is a mistake of galactic proportions - it's out by almost a factor of 9!! The recommendation was ok for everything but the biggest trucks, when it should have been no motorised traffic at all! How on earth didn't heads roll when a mistake of that proportion was made??
@@paulhaynes8045 Because "now isn't the time to assign blame" and "we shouldn't play politics with this tragedy".
In about ~2015 in my city in NZ, the largest/tallest building in the city suddenly got evacuated and shut down for massive foundation repairs. The engineers who designed it had forgotten to factor in the mass of the building itself when designing the original foundations. This was only picked up by chance when new building owners commissioned a "let's just be extra super sure" 30 minute or so check over by an engineer after buying it - according to all council/building documents/consents from when it was built in the late 80s, everything was totally fine. Rumor is that extra little check led to a panicked meeting of the best and brightest engineering minds in the city about whether or not it was necessary to evacuate the whole downtown area immediately in case the building just suddenly fell over... But they decided closing it urgently then spending about as much as they'd spent on building it in the first place to reinforce the building, taking several years, would suffice. The building owners were under no obligation whatsoever to have that extra inspection done, as far as the council were concerned the building was 100% safe, and it could have remained as it was for years (or until it suddenly collapsed).
Timeframe sounds about right for Wellington Central Library. Though I’m sure there’s plenty of other examples around the country.
oof 💀
This reminds me of the Citigroup (formerly Citicorp) Center story, I think Grady has a video on it. I think what's cool about that story is how the chief structural engineer admitted his mistake and worked with the other stakeholders to remediate the problem. Nickolas Means has a talk about this aspect of the story.
@@thesquishedelf1301 ....Not the library :D ... That's still closed and they're just ignoring it, as far as I recall...
@@HurricaneOK1 I mean, last I saw (July 2023) they were slowly dismantling it. A bunch of the decorative facade facing the police station had been removed since 2022. I knew it wasn't the tallest, but I reckon it had an argument as largest closed building besides Te Papa (which kinda counts as multiple buildings), that thing was huge.
I miss the Central Library 😢
I watch this as a bridge I drive over daily is getting resurfaced. All I can think when I've been driving over the one lane left open for the last week is about vids like this and hoping it's getting properly inspected while it's getting worked on.
if its being resurfaced, that is a good sign that the DoT in the area has the funding and desire to maintain that bridge. i wouldn't stress about it.
Google says there are 222,000 bridges that need major repairs or replacement in the US. 36% of all bridges. So.. You have a bit less than a 2/3 chance of being perfectly ok. How do you feel about gambling? :D
@@scopie49 How many of those "bridges" are part of interstate highways? How many of those "bridges" are part of State highways? Its not 36% you illiterate, you have no concept of reality or you're being dishonest. I can not decide which is worse.
I'm glad you mentioned that infrastructure failures effect victims long after the incident. Often, we hear, "there were no fatalities", which ignores the likely long-term suffering and costs.
Relatedly, I wonder how much input insurance companies have regarding infrastructure. Wouldn't a possible loss of personal liability insurance and property insurance force a municipality to find funding for repair/replacement?
OMG, I saw that tweet and the reddit posts that followed, all the way back then (with plenty of people arguing that, perhaps, those supports are just not needed and competent engineers surely have everything monitored lol)! Did that thing finally collapse!? I wish people in charge would get arrested for these obvious cases of misconduct, corruption, and incompetency leading to injury.
A local bridge in IL, the I80 bridges over the des plaines river has had the lowest possible rating for well over a decade - structurally intolerable. Currently it's rated at a 6/100. It's infamous among locals and been plastered on social media with pictures of literal stacks of plywood holding up the superstructure. Locals, myself included, refuse to drive over it. but its a pair of bridges for the interstate - it sees a lot of traffic. It's shocking how bad some of these are allowed to get while we're fully aware
I believe there are plans to replace the bridges in 2026-2028. hopefully they hold up long enough.
@@retro_88yota yep, they're in the final stage of planning. Pending land acquisition, they can break ground by the end of the year
Any other bridges up there I should be careful of?
If that's the same one I'm thinking of: I drive over that one probably once a month and that thing is shabby as all heck!
I remember watching this on Massive Engineering Mistakes, your video goes more in depth to the physics of the collapse while the show went more into the community impact.
There should be legal ramifications for the most extreme recommendations. I.E. having funds taken out of budgets and earmarked for whatever project if it isn't addressed within a month of the report.
what budgets? lol. new construction is prioritized because new construction gets federal funds. maintenance gets whatever change is left in the couch cushions after the meetings about how to shake down the DOT for new construction cash.
The beard is working, my guy, we need more
And yet the advertisement is for a razor. Well, I guess the old neck beard always needs a gentlemanly trim!
@@virginiacharlotte7007
Beards take a lot of grooming to keep looking clean and professional. I use more grooming tools now than I did when I was a bald face
Practical Engi-Bearding!
Yeah the beard and the top 2 buttons undone gives a more playful and jovial vibe than usual from Grady. I like it!
Only for the advert 😫
I learned this early in my construction career- There is never enough time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over.
I'm sure it’s true in every human endeavour, certainly is in my field of software development.
"Technical debt" is a funny thing. The company can afford many hours of extra work by a bunch of employees every week for a decade to keep poorly designed software running, but the company can't afford a few extra weeks of work to ensure software works right (and is easy to fix if it turns out not to) the first time.
I used to drive over this bridge daily from 1986 to 1989. Afternoon rush hour traffic was bumper to bumper for hours. If a bus or truck was going the other direction you would feel the whole bridge bounce and was a little unnerving when more than one heavy vehicle went by. PennDot goes by the motto, if it ain't broke don't look at it, but if it is broken, wait until it collapses to fix it.
They did the same thing with the Route 30 slow motion land slide.
I drive truck and just love the signs at the bridge. They tell us that the bridge will not hold us but give us no time to go around. Not that they would be nice to tell us how to get around the bridge. I always love the 21 ton limit when we are 40 tons.
Hey Grady! Thank you for covering this topic! In my short experience as a Civil Engineer, I feel like this is the lesson I find myself repeating to those outside the field most: "infrastructure needs to be built AND maintained"
Seems they found the money pretty quickly once it had actually collapsed.
I wonder what the cost of timely permanent repairs would have been versus the whole bridge replacement?
And lawsuits for the injured people.
I got a bridge closed off for fire equipment because sink holes were appearing. I called the fire department and suggested that unless the bridge was needed to get to a fire not to use the bridge. It would be very embarrassing for the city and the FD if a truck fell through. They took my advise. Later I had to tell them after the bridge was totally rebuilt that they could use it again. They asked me my authority, I said I had none, it was only a suggestion.
Two points I would consider: The first is citizens monitor their nearby bridges and if concerned post photos and contact local emergency to avoid using the bridge if at all possible. I would also notify the government agency, such as city what you have done and that you posted photos. In my case the bridge was scheduled to be rebuilt within several months. The second, I would have a law passed that the head inspector must publically state that it appears this bridge is not longer safe and at the least weight limits or closing is recommended. Of course, if the bridge is safe no press conference would be required.
This puts on notice, publically that a dangerous bridge needs attention. This opens the government's wallet to make whole if an event occurrs.
Wise advice.
In other words all bridge inspection reports should be sent to the local newspaper, radio station, police, ambulance, fire, etc. Not a bad suggestion.
@@Mark_Bridges If everything is within standards, I don't see a need to do so, only those bridges that need to have weight loads lowered, or the bridge closed. I could see a listing of local bridges as a total to be released to the media. Only specific announcements when it is needed. This puts the managing government on notice to do something.
Grady: like I described on your "Surfside Condo Collapse" video, you are truly top-of-class when it comes to covering structural failures. I especially appreciate your musings around 18:00 about the frequent disconnect between those charged with gathering on-the-ground data and those who have authority to enact the necessary solutions. Also around 19:17, about how serious of a responsibility it is to maintain (and fund the maintenance of) infrastructure. Bravo, and thank you again for nurturing, using, and sharing this gift you have of communicating engineering.
Another factor plays into the deterioration of CorTen structures. The welding rod material prescribed for COR TEN construction was initially incorrectly formulated. Structures that were bolted instead of welded have survived well. You also see, in the failure reports you show, the major deterioration occurred at welded joints.
The deterioration was at locations that could hold rotting vegetation and road salt. I can clearly see how the central webbing was gone, not just the corroded braces.
If you have ever seen the added roof section that diverts rain around a chimney, that is what was missing from these braces.
But mostly, the cross brace was never highlighted as a critical tension member, and road salt was spilling over the curbs for decades.
Something I've found interesting in recent years is in DC, WMATA has found a way to make the public more interested in maintenance.
If they do a major shutdown of a section of the Metrorail system, they've done re-opening celebrations of some sort. The Yellow Line's Long Bridge rehab project had a giveaway to take a special first train over the bridge again after it opened that many people were excited to enter and win a ride on. They'll often put up little presentations at reopened stations to highlight the repair work done.
It costs a little extra money, but has gone long way in keeping the riding public interested and informed about necessary maintenance to keep the system on a path to a state of good repair.
A project of that magnitude and complexity deserves a celebration in any case. It's an oft-overlooked part of the project cycle
As an observer from the UK, I'm struck by the disconnect between US officials that call out a problem (corroded bridge, unroadworthy stretched limo, failing apartment block) but then there's no system for enforcing follow up. Sad that such scenarios kill so many innocent victims. The UK's followed suit - see Grenfell Tower disaster and its cladding. When I started work in 1980s UK, buildings could only be completed if a public sector official went to site and approved the job in progress; nowadays, it's on the members of the building team - and whoever is slowest at passing the buck.
Grenfell really illustrated the number of opportunities design, client and construction teams have to pass the buck. From cladding choices and missing fire break strips to lack of update to the fire evac strategy, there were so many opportunities for this cascade of events to have happened differently. Hell, even the fact that the fire was started by a faulty fridge after years of complaints by the residents shows that we could have done better simply by valuing and caring about the people living in social housing.
As a Pittsburgher, went over that bridge multiple times and mention to my bud that the expansion joints were way too far apart and plus my bud and his finance got flat tires coming across that bridge heading towards downtown. My other bud that works at Port Authority told me they fixed the bus and was back in service.
18:52 - Speaking as a software engineer, it's funny how much this sentiment still applies.
Yup. In my experience, the people who put out fires got all the glory while taking the time for well-designed software was seen as extravagant.
I don't even mind doing ongoing gradually maintenance and improvements on a big software system, but that doesn't get me through the performance appraisal process. I would be a code janitor, refactoring, updating components, improving infrastructure, and rarely implementing a new feature. But software organizations would rather let a system crumble, and pay for a team to spend a year or two replacing it, rather then spend one person's time on an ongoing basis.
I had the same thought. Maybe we need some occasional “ribbon cuttings” for those mundane but necessary maintenance tasks.
Some people still think that the Y2K bug was a hoax. It wasn't, but only due to timely maintenance.
I instantly thought “wow this relates to scrum!”
I think I've seen people ask for this before, but I'll do it again: I'd love to see your take/research on the Minneapolis bridge I35W collapse of 2007. I know there are some decent documentaries out there, and it'd probably be a massive topic, but your coverage of how catastrophes like this can happen is refreshingly objective. :)
I'm from Pennsylvania. It's like this everywhere. I know of overpasses that have holes in the concrete with exposed rebar. Roads with potholes big enough to dent rims and rip off bumpers. Places where the water bubbles up and flows right out of the middle of the road when it rains. Penn Dot doesn't care.
Absolutely one of your best videos I think - even without having the answers on how to fix what is actually the problem in cases like this, you did a fantastic job of describing the problem and pointing out not only what needs to be done, but picked the best possible example of why it needs to be dealt with.
Wow. This sounds like EVERYONE responsible failed in their jobs.
Except for the inspectors. They repeatedly documented everything wrong with the bridge, but had no power to get it repaired.
except the inspectors, who recorded the issue dutifully for nearly a decade, submitted their paperwork, and trusted it would be fixed in time. they were really let down by the system not having a way for those reports to initiate a repair.
if you've ever worked in an environment that necessitates bureaucracy, you might be more understanding that even if these people did speak up to their superiors and say "hey these have been in dangerous condition for five years", the response would have been the same. their superior would say that the inspection report is all they need, that once its submitted the higher ups will make a decision on how to proceed. its a shame that it never actually happened.
@@arcanealchemist3190 Fair enough. The visual did show that the reports mentioned the severe problems for YEARS. I guess I can only echo Brady's thoughts - how can we design such a complicated system that doesn't actually work?
Except for the city's lawyers. Their job is to make sure that nobody is ever found legally liable for this mess.
@@jakedee4117is that confirmed?
This city has so much embezzlement that causes its problems, its actually insane. I wish this city actually made more jobs and cared for the people who made it what it is.
Fewer contractors, more representatives. The city council has 9 members for 300k people - that's 33k a member. Great for a national legislature, but for a city? Abysmal.
Bill Maher says Democrats are insane.
Let me guess the demographic that dominates city council.
@@xr6lad Hello dogwhistle, how are you today?
Recommended reading for IT security consultants. If you don't get distracted by details, you see the process that makes IT systems fail just the same.
Hmm. It sounds like the bridge inspectors need the kinds of authority health department inspectors have for restaurants, to credibly threaten to close the thing if critical issues aren't fixed by the next inspection.
Need third party independent inspector. If inspectors work for the people doing the work, they have a vested interest to find things to fix or not fix. Fox guarding the henhouse.
@@JKHTX Inspector are typically independent contractors, but they don't usually have authority to shut things down.
@RBzee112 this is an unfortunate example of where convenience and economics are more important than safety. Same decision going on all across the US.
The government is fine with shutting businesses down and forcing them to fix things (if they don't have connections, at least), but it doesn't want its own things shut down. Following its own standards is too much to ask of government.
@@Br3ttM rules for thee, not for me
Thank you so much for your tireless effort bringing awareness to infrastructure and its related issues and complications. On the surface might seem mundane, right up until the point where it fails you. This was a group failure, and requires a group solution. It starts with recognizing the problem: infrastructure is critical, expensive through its life, taken for granted once built, and restrained by limited resources in a budget created by those who are trying to win the approval of the local populous, who themselves have competing priorities.
Why don't the inspectors have the statutory authority to condemn the bridge if it is in such a bad condition? Other countries give inspectors that kind of power to do their jobs.
Raise red flag, and shut down the system. Get reamed by 3 levels of middle management then fired 'for cause'.
Because then the politicians would be forced to deal with it, instead of ignoring the issue.
@@Br3ttM You mean like over here (Switzerland): Inspectors were a bit concerned about a major highway bridge. within a week, the clamped it full of instruments shut the highway down in the middle of the night, and got the military to run a main battle tank up and down for load testing. Next to years, they fixed it, without ever closing it down, working mostly at night.
@@beyondEVI wouldn't brag about the fact that everyone had to work at night. it sucks being on those type of crews.
They'll need more to blame on Trump.
Grady, thank you for always presenting complicated things in a way that a non-engineer can understand and learn from them. Only half way through, and really enjoying this one!
Sounds like criminal negligence to me ... surprised no one got sued 6 feet under because the knew and just kicked the can down the road.
Never seen Grady so pissed off!
I noticed as well. This accident touched down to his soul.
I totally thought I was clicking on a Plainly Difficult video. Pleasantly surprised to see similar content from another wonderful creator. Thanks so much Grady!
Man I hate how you can make these topics so interesting. I should be in bed but here I am listening to you talk about metal rusting.
I spent several years in Structural Steel but you need zero experience to look at that decay and know the danger of collapse was real.
People in charge need to be held responsible for such things, or else it will remain just a piece of paper they can shuffle away.
Yes, but did they fire or jail those who ignored Level 2 recommendations for years?
One of the bridges connecting Louisville and southern Indiana was immediately closed due to a finding during an inspection back in 2011. They found a crack, reported it, and it was immediately shut down in the middle of evening rush hour. It was enough that the inspectors didn't even wait until the inspection was finish and just put it in a report. I had crossed it maybe 15 minutes before it was shut down.
And thanks to a few months of this bridge being closed, it finally pushed forward the plans to add 2 new bridges that had been talked about since at least the 1980's.
I saw the news of the bridge in my old neighborhood before my family members who live there had woken up that morning. Thanks for this in depth look at the process. I spent several years in local government (albeit in a very different part of the world) and I understand how many moving parts there are. I can't imagine the budgeting challenges in a city of so very many bridges...
It's fascinating how many times we create our own tragedies because everyone chose to ignore the warning signs. It took hundreds of people and literal years to get to this thing to fail.
A profound statement, and considering what's occurring in November of this year, possibly chillingly prescient.
Leaders are not going to implement effective systems if they feel like the added cost would result in them being removed from their office. We want nice things we maybe can't actually afford, so we take on more risks. Maintenance is the easiest expense to cut.
Everyone did their jobs, from the inspectors that filed the reports to the politicians that tried to save tax dollars. The issue was that the focus was lost. The focus should have been safety above all else. This is an example of pluralistic ignorance, everyone is afraid to speak up and everyone assumes someone else will do something. Inspectors need to feel safe to speak up and higher-ups need to fear what will happen if they don't listen.
@@cyberpleb2472 sorry but deciding to cut too much is not "doing their job". Their job is allocating resources to keep everything functional
@@marcogenovesi8570 Where did I say their job is to cut "too much". By definition, "Too much" would indicate they are not doing their job.
4:00 If only Post10 would live in Pittsburgh, the bridge may well still be up 🙈
😂😂😂😂 yeah he should train more people.
It would be up and closed, and forgotten with a permanent detour. Stuff around here doesn't get fixed until it breaks. There's a bunch of hills with recurring landslides that basically get ignored until there's a disaster.
It's a quintessential story of American bridges:
-Bridge is designed & built well
-Zero maintenance
-"Inspections" in name only, and if they're done competently, they'll still be ignored
-Major safety defects
-Shoddy "temporary" repair
-Zero action taken to actually repair or replace
-Bridge can't take it any more, peaces out
-"How could this happen to us?"
Anyway, see you in 50 years when the new one ends up in the creek.
9 years ago i subscribed and I still watch your videos with my family.
Thank you.
When we need action the government demands more paperwork.
Clearly, the inspectors need to have the authority to shut down bridges, not just file reports.
That's insane, like 10 years of stacked up reports showing a bad situation getting even worse, and that's all they could do.
IRRC, that's exactly what happened on the bridge over the Mississippi awhile back. I think it was shut down while they were inspecting it, but I could be wrong about that. But even that was after other inspections saw the crack.
I think that they theoretically might, although they were consultants, and that sounds like a good way to not get hired for the next inspection job. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@TheRealE.B. Yeah. Authority is only half the equation. The other half is support from above to actually exercise the authority. Authority alone doesn't mean much if the city won't stand behind the inspectors' decisions.
@0:17 correction, "and another car drove off while texting and driving"
The footage seemed VERY dark. No street lights. And when there's snow it makes it even harder to tell where it drops off
What's weird to me about the bridge is that it wasn't built with drain-through holes in the I-beams. I used to work on a commercial shipping vessel and part of the job is digging out the rust flakes out of the double hull and particularly making sure that the drain holes are clear of obstruction. They exist on both horizontal and vertical members, to ensure that water doesn't pools anywhere.
I almost assumed it was a Chinese company that built that bridge because of structural choices like the one you pointed out. But no, it was just sloppy work done in the 70s!
I feel that part of the problem is the growing distance between practice and theory in technical fields.
We need office ppl to spend time in the field, otherwise you just can't know how to prioritize.
not to detract from the video at all, it’s always great work, but i loved how many times you said rigid member in this video
It’s crazy having something like this happen so close to you. I went shortly after it happened to look on from the park and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen just seeing the roadway disappear into the valley.