From inside the paper:
"7 things to know about the fiery I-85 bridge collapse."
"Tens of thousands of metro Atlanta residents are trying to leave town for spring break. Thousands more want to catch the first Braves exhibition game at SunTrust Park. Hundreds of thousands of others just want to get to work or school. And then an I-85 bridge collapsed in the heart of the city. The epic collapse of one of metro Atlanta’s busiest highways has commuters scrambling to figure out how they’ll get where they’re going Friday...."
"It didn’t take long for the I-85 bridge collapse to become political fodder."
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102 comments:
Why I like that I live somewhere where I can walk to work. Location, location, location.
I assumed the "political fodder" would be the Trump admin using it to push its infrastructure agenda. Lashes with a wet noodle for nationalizing a local issue.
That first article was very helpful, until it got to the "what people are saying" section. Suddenly even asinine tweets that say "oh no! A fire" are newsworthy.
Why didn't Obama fix bridges when he was in charge?
Who will be the politician in the first car to drive over the repaired section of Interstate? That's the politician you don't want to vote for. There should be a poll for when that drive will occur though. I'd say by Mother's Day.
The 2007 collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis is what finally convinced me it was time to retire.
The Twin Towers implosion in NYC was only a local issue, I suppose.
The point is interstate commerce strangulation. There is a reason the fall of Atlanta ended the Civil War: location, location and location.
We still have the trains and planes, but we
Need our automobiles and trucks back or most of the commerce in the
southeastern USA will come to a near stop.
I think of bridges as concrete and steel, which are notably not flammable.
CJinPA said...
I assumed the "political fodder" would be the Trump admin using it to push its infrastructure agenda.
It won't be long before this happens but it will be wrong. There's a picture at the first link showing something stored underneath the bridge and that's what caught fire. It's referred to as "PVC products" but it looks like barrels to me.
That is actually really big news as 85 is the major road in and out of Atlanta. I was surprised when I read about it online this morning and didn't see it on the morning news in NY.
It's like a section of 95 collapsing in North Jersey. It'd be national news but for the fact that it's in Atlanta.
If you're not familiar with Atlanta and it's 10 lane merge of 1-75 and 1-85, it's hard to state how complete of a disaster this is for car travel in and through the city.
The quickest way through Atlanta has always been through downtown on I75. Now with the adjoining I85 down on both sides Atlanta traffic is truly and beyond redemption fucked. I weep for the citzenry of Atlanta. That said, nothern Georgia is truly one of the lovliest areas of America - try the road south through Rome along the Alabama border.
Think how abnormally quiet it is for people who live near the now-closed Interstate.
It was a spectacular fire that is for sure. Our local news stations were beside themselves with the bad news and as the evening wore on their predictions of the time to repair the damage went from four to six months. The MacArthur Maze collapse in California in 2007 was twice or three times as large. It was fixed in 26 days. It will be interesting to see if the politicians can get out of the way of the engineers and workers who could, given the money, fix this in a jiffy. In the meantime the tens of thousands of people who use the road will have to find alternative routes, routes that are already jam packed. Atlanta's infrastructure is edging towards the third world.
MadisonMan
Excellent point. I actually did not sleep well last night without the drone of traffic on I-85 which through the decades has become something of a white noise for me.
I didn't pay attention to this story at first. I presumed that it was like a freeway overpass collapse that we had here in Detroit. In the summer of 2009, a gasoline tanker was involved in a very unusual multi-tractor-trailer collision. The gasoline tanker happened to rupture (rare) underneath one of the I-75 overpasses (rarer still) and resulted in such a conflagration that the structure of the bridge melted. Flames that summer evening could be seen for miles.
But the Atlanta bridge collapse was triggered by something a lot less serious and I gather that almost everyone is asking how a highway interchange bridge could collapse without such a disastrous and freakish occurrence like the one I described in Detroit?
Sam L.: Get it hot enough, and steel does melt. Which is how that steel got shaped in the first place. If you'd like to melt a concrete and steel overpass, I recommend that you start with the largest gasoline tanker that your state will permit on the roadways...
http://image.themorningsun.com/storyimage/MS/20090717/NEWS/307179994/EP/1/1/EP-307179994.jpg&maxh=400&maxw=667
"I think of bridges as concrete and steel, which are notably not flammable."
The heat of the fire weakens the steel reinforcing rods, as well as probably causing cracks in the concrete, causing the overpass to collapse.
I live part-time north of Atlanta and can say this truly is disastrous for traffic there. Traffic on I-85 into the merge with I-75 just north of the city center usually is bumper-to-bumper, even on weekends. There are may alternate routes, as indicated in the AJC article, but they are not up to handling the extra load. MARTA, the local rail/bus system, is inadequate. The rail lines are too few and cover too little of the overall populated area to make much difference. From where I live in Forsyth County, a major growth area, it is 20 miles to the northernmost MARTA station, same for the end of the line at Doraville adjacent to I-85. Parking lots there usually fill up even without this happening. Glad I live way out and am retired and don't have to go into town. It will be a big mess for months.
Oh...it looks like the city or state was storing all sorts of stuff under that bridge.
I'm guessing those were reels of pvc conduit in front of the fire.
is it Bush's fault or Trump's fault?
Alas there are no dramatic photos owing to ad block detectors.
Stuff gets rebuild very fast with
1. No environmental impact regulation
2. Incentive pay for faster completion.
But democrats are in charge of Atlanta.
If ISIS is taking notes, our key infrastructure assets will be their next targets. Do enough of these and they cripple our economy.
Nothing on Drudge right now.
Did this really happen?
John Henry
Blogger Chuck said...
resulted in such a conflagration that the structure of the bridge melted.
Jeez, Chuck. You don't know what you are talking about. EVERYBODY knows that fire can't melt steel!
Rosie says so and could she possibly be wrong?
(Just kidding)
John Henry
"...PVC piping under the interstate may have been on fire"
PVC piping does not spontaneously combust and burn like crazy, especially if it is buried in the ground under an interstate. What was traveling through the PVC pipe? What was burning so hot it caused the overhead highway to collapse?
Worst southern bridge disaster since Chocktaw bridge.
An I-95 bridge collapsed in Connecticut in 1983 with three fatalities.
Scarily it was due to corrosion, not a fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mianus_River_Bridge
It would have been much worse if hadn't happened in an off hour.
Igv,
Look at the photo I linked to earlier. There were stacks of reels (big 6 foot reels) of PVC conduit stored under that part of the bridge. A fire started near the reels and caught them on fire.
At least we're not opening a new stadium tonight in the most congested intersection in Atlanta.
rhhardin said...
Worst southern bridge disaster since Chocktaw bridge.
I thought it was the Tallahatchie bridge.
AJ Lynch,
There's a fiction book titled "Metzger's Dog" by Thomas Perry about how to cripple a major city with a few, well-placed accidents. The concept of attacking infrastructure has been around for a while.
Xmas said...
A fire started near the reels and caught them on fire.
So a homeless encampment, or just some kids engaged in what they thought was minor vandalism?
If I was an elected official, I'd be in the media everyday claiming credit for what wasn't going wrong. For example, today I'd be on the morning news proclaiming:
"It's FRIDAY!!!!!!! Woohooo!
Mayor bagoh20 - Making Friday Great Again!"
"Worst southern bridge disaster since Chocktaw bridge.
I thought it was the Tallahatchie bridge."
The Tallahatchie Bridge is up on Choctaw Ridge, along with a sawmill and some flowers.
As a long-time Althouse reader, and a resident of Atlanta, I can tell you all that we're fucked. Atlanta is a great town. It really is. Beautiful (especially now in the spring with the blooming azaleas, dogwoods, Bradford pear trees, etc), rolling hills, lush with trees/plants (and kudzu), nice people, pro and college sports, strong economy, great weather...and some of the worse traffic in North America.
That traffic has suddenly got even worse. First the Falcons. Now this!!??
First the Falcons.
Yep...they burned hot, then collapsed.
This area is not a bridge. It is a 2 mile long overhead viaduct of 12 lanes built about 30 years ago when GA 400 was built to take off from and dump traffic into I-85. That Ga.400 road has extended upper end Metro Atlanta 50 miles north of Buckhead and itself been widened many times.
The then existing I-85 4-lane stretch along there was left in place and repurposed as an access road next to the elevated portion. There are several access roadways from old 85 going under the new 12 overhead lanes to access areas to the north.
But like any city area created under very wide overhead cover, it is dry and therefore attracts the homeless. The part that was used to store polyethylene pipe ( by the City, I suppose)was fenced, but the homeless are not stopped by man made fortifications. I suspect the fire was accidentally set by one of those small house lovers.
Full disclosure: During the Eisenhower Interstate construction, in 1952-53, I personally supervised the grading and bridge work from my bicycle. There are many bridges built along the stretch from Cheshire Bridge Road to Piedmont Road that were impressive jobs, such as the one over Peachtree Creek; but this elevated viaduct is not a bridge. Or at most it is 20 bridge-like sections built end to end.
Clicked through to AJC and the local Fox station, and I still don't know what happened, apart from something caught fire and the bridge collapsed.
I know they want the latest info out there, but just one link to explain how this happened?
It doesn't help that I'm using Microsoft's Edge browser that came with Win10 and it's absolute shite.
Anyway, I feel for Atlanta. Grew up in Charlotte (which always wanted to be Atlanta when it grew up), and the infrastructure that finally grew up is very car centric, with emphasis on ring roads and interstates. (This is opposed to the northeast--I live near Harrisburg, Pa. -- where towns and cities grew, then interstates were punched through them.
In other words, they don't have many road options down there to get around easily. They're fucked for the next six months to a year down there.
A federal problem this is not.
Actually the I-75 corridor is not affected, except to tripple its load. And I-285 will take through traffic around it like it is supposed to do.
So we are calming down. We will Just add half an hour to all local trips.Lawyers will be late to Court and Drs will have to see many patients who come in late.
But I hope DJT gets him some PR for his Bi-Partisan infrastructure with Dems...Atlanta is Dems inside and GOP outside. We are Bi-bipartisan.
Probably some kind of plastic conduit for traffic signal wiring, but not PVC. PVC is a "rigid" material and does not come in rolls.
As for ATL's problems being Federal concerns, If they are not, then we want our leaders back. Trump took two of them to run his HHS and Agriculture Departments. We will trade you John Lewis's political support and a CNN Studio for a lousy road repair grant, straight up.
One result of the NIMBY sentiment is that arterial traffic get concentrated in a few major-major arteries, and then when one of those go down it is a major disaster.
Thus, here in Albuquerque, the transportation wallahs know we should have had 3 or 4 more bridges across the Rio Grande, so that when one goes down traffic can be shunted over to other bridges, but there is no use telling the gentry of Los Ranchos or Corrales that. Not in their back yard!
It seems to be minor. The news is scrambling to find downsides
For some motorists, Thursday's snarl brought back nightmares from a winter storm in January 2014 that left drivers stranded on interstates and highways overnight and children trapped on school buses. During that storm, many abandoned their cars and slept in convenience stores or restaurants that opened their doors to commuters seeking shelter.
also
Rose Diggs told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she lives less than a mile from the fire site but couldn't get home because of blocked surface streets. She said she was told to walk despite being disabled, "but it's raining and dark."
I used to live about a mile south of there in the early 90s when I was a post doctoral student at Emory.
I looked at visual pictures of the damage. This sort of damage should be repairable in less than two weeks. In any case, it sounds like to me that the fire was arson.
Blogger John said...Nothing on Drudge right now. Did this really happen?
Drudge only reports on weird shit.
It was on Drudge last night because that is where I first read about the fire.
Nothing about this in the coastie papers so it really doesn't matter.
thanks for sharing though!
have a great day.
you guys know what is on Drudge at all times-so fucked up
The Drudge link to a Yahoo story is active. There is only speculation about what caused the fire.
I have been on that highway when on business in Atlanta. It is truly horrible for about two hours of evening rush hour, but it seems to clear up quickly. Chicago's expressways are worse and Boston is no picnic. I have heard that LA is the worst.
PASCUAL PEREZ, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!
Since it is an "I" it is a federal issue. Here is an opportunity for Trumpy to get fast infrastructure done. As an example of what a competent businessman can do. Hell just for fun he ought to waive the Davis-Bacon Act for this project to enlarge the number of bidders and save money on the repair (as well as making Democrats apoplectic).
PASCUAL PEREZ, YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD!
I got that.
It's lucky no one was killed.
Did not see this video at the linked story (best one I have seen so far). Amazing that people were still driving just a few feet away from this fire.
https://twitter.com/JackSmithIV/status/847595760011137024
Ten years ago something similar happened near the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The state offered a contractor an incentive of $200,000 per day if the replacement was completed in less than two months. The replacement was completed in 26 days.
Interesting about the possibility of the fire being due to construction materials being under the bridge. Several factors in the 2007 I-35 bridge collapse (Twin Cities, Minnesota)were design flaw (connecting plates were undersized), a concrete resurfacing had increased the weight by 20%, and 260+ tons of construction equipment parked on the area with the most deteriorated connecting plates.
What about the SeaBees. They're still around. Isn't this the type of project for which they would be perfect? Yes, get a contractor to organize the repairs but we have thousands of SeaBees who could provide fast and competent around the clock labor (and I bet they're not unionized).
I am waiting to hear who owns or leases the land under the interstate where the materials were stored and who insures those materials. There are quite a few homeless people who reside in the nearby Clear Creek area and who often sleep under this bridge. PVC pipe does not spontaneously combust, or at least I don't think it does.
I got a great idea Mayor!
How about we store flammables under the federal highways...
When the I-40 bridge was knocked out by a tug boat in eastern Oklahoma, it took only weeks to put up a new one.
Asked why they couldn't work that fast all the time, the company said it's easier and faster to perform construction with no traffic.
The reason it takes so long, is we normally have to keep one lane open. In this case we were lucky, the whole thing fell down.
Terrorism?
This is an illustration of just how fragile our complacent lives are. Especially for those who live in the urban areas where all things are taken care of by government. When one piece of the infrastructure fails it has huge ramifications and people are just not at all prepared.
God help them when a real disaster should occur.
Virgil Hilts said...
What about the SeaBees. They're still around. Isn't this the type of project for which they would be perfect? Yes, get a contractor to organize the repairs but we have thousands of SeaBees who could provide fast and competent around the clock labor (and I bet they're not unionized).
3/31/17, 11:47 AM
Didn't they just (like within a week or so) celebrate their 60th year anniversary or some such?
Imagine if something similar happened with the American Legion bridge on I-495 in DC. There isn't another bridge over the Potomac to the west until Point of Rocks.
They are gonna replace two more sections going north and three going south. They're gonna shit down Piedmont.
i remember that happening in California. Wonder who the governer was?
That should be shut. Sorry.
Tradguy. My dad grew up in Atlanta about the time you were doing that work. He was probably 14 at the time and we were talking about the whole development of the interstates.
He has no intention of going above I-20 from r the rest of his life. 😃
Just about any highway and most city arterial streets have some Federal funding, which makes any work on them "a Federal issue" with all attendant Federal laws, rules, and regulations inn addition to the State and local ones. This is "Murphy's Golden Rule" at work.
The "I" makes it an entirely Federal project for funding, but since the FHWA does not have a construction arm, it must still work through the Georgia DOT to get anything done.
And the politicians must declare an emergency to exist in order to bypass the procedures for selecting engineering firms and then construction contractors.
Still, they cannot just wave their arms and tell a contractor to go down there and do "something."
Should be for. Damn.
I heard about this from the horse's mouth, as it were: My husband, a bunch of parent chaperones, and his entire top string orchestra were in Atlanta playing a concert. They avoided the worst of the immediate backup (he went online to find alternative routes), but they fly home today, and God knows how they're going to get to the airport. Awkward.
And, of course, The Donald could say "No discretionary funds for Atlanta until they promise to cut out this 'sanctuary city' BS."
As for room to do quick work, this section exists because it was a cheaper way to go over the bottleneck area that lies adjacent to the older I-85 4 lane section. It had been built after a year of drilling and dynamiting to remove the outer layer of the 1000 yard long chunk of of Stone Mountain granite. The area was wild one lying in a low trench area behind the Jewish Temple and next to the Ansley Park Golf course.
But as for the newer 12 lane section that lost a link, it was built to run slowly up and over that granite obstacle. And it will be as hard to remove and replace as ObamaCare is to remove and replace being defended by Conservative, ideological purist, granite hard heads.
You need to start a website on this Tradguy. Seriously.
Atlanta has s not a Sanctuary city.
Is not. Geez.
Atlanta is a city of six million souls with an infrastructure designed for one million.
OK, but promise anyway.
Hagar said...
And, of course, The Donald could say "No discretionary funds for Atlanta until they promise to cut out this 'sanctuary city' BS."
I don't see any rebellions in Atlanta's future. They tried secession once. It didn't work out.
Why? It's not a sanctuary city.
Is there something wrong with that?
Just like the Falcon's collapse against Brady.
That's also why Cali doesn't get out. Just sayin.
I moved to Atlanta from Wichita, Kansas, in September of 2014 to live near family and pursue a new career. It's a hell hole. Unrelenting crime, mind numbing traffic and largest concentration of ignorant and poorly educated people I have ever encountered. I'm happy to say I'm happily living back in Wichita.
Already old Mr guild. I did laugh heartily however.
Good riddance!
this is a great opportunity to re-purpose it into a green park - a new kind of green space in a park-starved city! The Freeway Ruins of Atlanta can become part of an eco-park featuring social themes of disenfranchised Americans - or others suffering at the hands of reduced social services - and the area can be restored to its pre-Columbian splendour. The Freeway Park can provide opportunities for social education about other forms of mobility, including walking and bike paths while providing eco-niches for low-income residents, especially those seeking sanctuary, a hallmark of a generous and compassionate Atlanta. The Freeway Park will become a world-class destination dotted with towers designed to clean the air and capture solar energy and storm water. The old freeway would be covered with carbon-absorbing paving capable of trapping pollutants from the air while allowing storm water to pass through and flow to ground-level retention ponds. A city that makes its land-use and open-space decisions solely on the basis of anxieties about traffic is a city that will find itself - like contemporary Los Angeles! - both drastically short on parks and facing sky-high housing prices. The other thing to point out is that those residents would benefit in all sorts of ways from this reimagination of the freeway that now runs above their heads. Even if they’d see more traffic on on those itty-bitty secondary roads, living along a landscaped formal boulevard adjacent to a major new park is far more desirable — and far better for their property values — than living next to a roaring highway. Pieces of land that have been noisy and polluted would suddenly overlook a quiet green space. There is no doubt they would become immediately more desirable in social, urban and economic terms. Instead of connecting us to each other, in some ways our highways have represented a separation, destroying connective tissue. Decision makers really thought of low-income and minority communities as in many ways the communities of least resistance when this obstruction was designed. We need to start talking about how to replace both the corners and the corner stores demolished by freeways — how to bring back the sense of community, of full and shared publicness, that so much of our 20th century infrastructure managed to erase. And we need to do it even when it’s complicated or politically controversial. Problem solved!
Don't give them ideas!
Video: "Fleeing Atlanta"
John Taylor said...
3/31/17, 1:06 PM
Why stop there with a "partial solution to a partial problem"? As the world's most famous orator is rumored to have said, don't let a crisis go to waist!
What they should do is declare the entire city a "no auto" zone. Raze all of the buildings to the ground and cart out the rubble. Remove all of the fences. Rip up all of the roads and highways and replace them all with grass/meadows with meandering bike and walking paths. In place of all of the buildings erect large tent cities. This will increase the cohesiveness of the citizens as they all will live not only closer together but also with fewer walls separating them. Install communal public facilities and bath houses to build on that. It could be come an ecological and environmental oasis in a sea of concrete! Praise Gaia!
Gonna pass Todd!
Darn... :(
Just get Rhett Butler and his horse and buggy to drive people around - fires in Atlanta don't stop him!
Interesting thread. Wasn't going to read it, since Atlanta is one of those places I have only flown through, or stayed overnight when the airline screwed up. No real interest in the South. Hate the climate. But learned a lot in the thread (including that TradGuy is a real person with real expertise and an interesting history). I knew that Atlanta had grown, but not that much. I think the traffic alone would have kept me out of there (as LA did).
I think that one thing that we have discovered is that fire is the best way, a lot of the time, to take down large concrete and steel structures. I am reminded of the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11/01. A lot of people thought that the buildings had to have been dynamited to cause the zippering of floors, because the fuel from the crashed jumbo jets didn't burn hot enough to melt the steel. But it was hot enough to ignite the furnishings, which in turn burned hot enough to weaken the steel, which then wouldn't support the load above. And, by the time the collapse got to unweakened floors, there was too much weight coming down to resist. So, the structures were actually built strong enough to withstand a jumbo jet crashing into them, just not strong enough to survive the collateral damage. What will be interesting is to see if the problem was indeed burning PVC. My guess (with little training in civil engineering) is that the structure was probably built to survive the fire from a tanker truck burning up underneath it, but that the PVC (if that was, indeed, the cause) either burned hotter than a tanker truck full of, say, gasoline, or there was a lot more of it that burned. We shall see.
@Bruce Hayden: Burning PVC would generate lots of volatile hydrochloric acid. This in turn might attack concrete which is basic.
I wonder if this was a factor?
The Falcons didn't really collapse. They just stopped getting lucky. Watch the game again.
Living it Atlanta is like living in a Third World country anyway.
"Since it is an "I" it is a federal issue."
Not directly, certainly not completely. The Federal-aid highway program is Federally funded, but largely state controlled. If the state wants fast track incentives the Feds would undoubtedly go along. But the decision and the contract details are primarily left to the state.
Yes, steel melts. But not at temperatures reached in these incidents. Steel bridge beams have softened and sagged when (as described above) when fuel tankers burn underneath. Think twin towers. The nut job conspirators were right. The steel beams did not melt. But they certainly softened enough to deflect and were no match for the thousands of tons of load above the impact area.
Concrete beams with reinforcing steel is a different issue. The steel expands much more than the concrete breaking the bond between the two materials and thus losing the ability to resist tensile stresses. The concrete also cracks. I inspected such a situation a few years ago. The bridge looked fine. But whack the deck with a hammer, the "good" part rang. The delaminated parts sounded a "thud". That particular bridge was toast..
I should have said the nut job conspirators were right in only one aspect.
Two men and one woman arrested in connection with the fire.
Wow. I-85 Truthers. That was fast.
What were they storing under the highway that burned that intensely?
Diogenes - probably either PVC pipe or reels of (plastic coated) cable.
Traffic wasn't too terrible this morning on the surface streets--there were bad backups closer to me where usually there are no slowdowns, but lots of schools were closed so there was less traffic than usual on other parts.
Many of my colleagues worked from home. Not much choice if you have kids out if school with little notice!
Steel is alotropic. Which in the case of steel means it can have more than one crytal structure depending on temperature. Steel doesnt have to melt to deform. Just reach a temperature where the crytal structure rearranges to the point where , instead of interlocking, the structure runs side by side and slides. For most steels around 1600 deg f.
Just sayin'
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