Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Appa
It boggles my mind, too, but the scale of it is eye watering. That's a lot of potential energy going into a pretty tiny chunk of concrete in comparison, and I can't imagine the boat blocker on the transmission tower would've fared any better.
I agree that if its not part of AASHTO bridge design manual or not required by an outside regulator for CEII/CUI (which this bridge probably isn't, although it may make sense to include it now?) then it won't be mandated. And it still probably won't because 1) unfunded mandates aren't particularly popular (and we can already not keep thousands of bridges structurally competent without a boat ramming into it) and 2) in a risk framework this is way less than it just being deficient due to age or seismic risk (remember that EQ in 2011 that this bridge wasn't designed for?)
It's the talk of the office in my design group full of a bunch of Civils on how this will play out. None of us are sure. But we hope that the whatever lessons and information we learn from this is worth the 6 lives it cost (as of 20:36 PST)
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I realize that the protection of the power line was limited, but none the less, the owners thought it provided some protection against risk. There the risk is loss of power to customers and their infrastructure, not much chance of loss of life. The bridge is entirely different, much larger economic costs of a failed bridge and most important the almost certain loss of life. This could have been so much worse if occurred during rush hour. Risks like this are not acceptable.
I spent most of my career building bridges and roads not designing them. However, I am sure a that for the new bridge will either have a fender system designed and built to prevent this or the new bridge will not have its piers placed in a such a vulnerable position. For existing bridges in this environment this will become a hot topic for retrofit much like the Schoharie bridge collapse caused bridges to be evaluated for scour risk.