I smell a colbert threat down canidate

Corrosive guano might have weakened steel

Aug 23, 2007 04:30 AM
Martiga Lohn
Associated Press

ST. PAUL, Minn.–Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: Birds, specifically pigeons.

Inspectors began documenting the build-up of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago.

Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the bridge's framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

Although investigators have yet to identify the cause of the bridge's Aug. 1 collapse, which killed at least 13 people and injured about 100, the pigeon problem is one of many factors that dogged the structure.

"There is a coating of pigeon dung on steel with nest and heavy build-up on the inside hollow box sections," inspectors wrote in a 1987-1989 report.

In 1996, screens were installed over openings in the bridge's beams to keep pigeons from nesting there, but that didn't prevent the build-up of droppings elsewhere.

Pigeon droppings contain ammonia and acids, said chemist Neal Langerman, of the American Chemical Society. If the dung isn't washed away, it dries out and turns into a concentrated salt. When water gets in and combines with the salt and ammonia, it creates small electrochemical reactions that rust the steel underneath.

"Every time you get a little bit of moisture there, you wind up having a little bit of electrochemistry occurring and you wind up with corrosion," said Langerman. "Over a long term, it might in fact cause structural weaknesses.''

Langerman emphasized that he wasn't saying absolutely that pigeon dung factored into the collapse of the bridge, but the problem is familiar to bridge inspectors everywhere.

The Colorado Department of Transportation spent so much time cleaning pigeon manure off bridges that it's researching new ways to keep the birds away from its spans.

No Conservatives are to blame, the Iraq war is the reason, remember?
Stated Sarcastically

ST. PAUL, Minn.–Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River

This is stupid. We know there was way too much traffic (government did not take into account unintended consequences of "free" public roads) and shoddy work ("UNION YES!"). The story outlines this in the first paragraph. Mark my words - no one will be actually held responsible. This happens on a private bridge and there would have been justice for these victims.

thread is lol

source btw

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/249037

just think of the reporters as they write this story, their low low and sadly accurate estimation of the common man

Corrosive guano might have weakened steel

this sounds like a phrase that you would have to repeat in speech therapy class

you think unions mean lower quality work?

and shoddy work ("UNION YES!").

nice agenda there buddy

It was blown-up by Mexicans.

It was blown-up by Mexicans.

nice agenda there buddy

Well I'll blame it on the Liberals. The bridge fell in a blue area.

minnesota had a corrupt dem governor when this bridge went up. guy was already taking bribes from contractors who cheated on concrete specs for the highways... naturally he caught no charge and none of this went down in the history the way in 10 years noone will remember that clinton sold china our nuclear secrets

Yeah bring back the governor who used to be a pro-wrestler and wants to legalize prostitution!

I say that but in reality he was a fairly good governor economicly speaking.

fucking neo-cons blaming birds .....what's new

my mom would say it was the illegal aliens

nice agenda there buddy

I don't see any non-union bridges collapsing



But seriously, you can trace this back to non-market forces.

I work at a union construction company and I havent seen any of our bridges collapse

well I actually do work for our union and non-union sectors and the quality of employees is higher in the union part.

You're born in a car you die in a car, way I see it.

Can't blame unions or the fecal matter of pigeons for this one, this tragedy has shed light on the fact that too much money the government dedicates to highway projects is wasted on non-essential projects. Over the years, regardless of who has been president, way too much of this money has been used for things not all that important, such as construction of additional off ramps and planting of trees and flowers along highways. All this while much more critical items such as maintenance & repairs of bridges and roads gets pushed to the side in a "we'll get to it in a couple years" mindset; thus the reason why it would cost countless billions now to make all the necessary repairs. As much as I love to fault "Dubya" for everything that goes wrong nowadays, I must say I agree with his statement in which he said the Congress needs to look more closely at how it spends this money set aside for the highways rather than just request more money only to produce more non-essential projects.

You need taxes to do highway work. Nobody with money wants to pay taxes, that's what poor people are for.

Can't blame unions or the fecal matter of pigeons for this one, this tragedy has shed light on the fact that too much money the government dedicates to highway projects is wasted on non-essential projects. Over the years, regardless of who has been president, way too much of this money has been used for things not all that important, such as construction of additional off ramps and planting of trees and flowers along highways. All this while much more critical items such as maintenance & repairs of bridges and roads gets pushed to the side in a "we'll get to it in a couple years" mindset; thus the reason why it would cost countless billions now to make all the necessary repairs. As much as I love to fault "Dubya" for everything that goes wrong nowadays, I must say I agree with his statement in which he said the Congress needs to look more closely at how it spends this money set aside for the highways rather than just request more money only to produce more non-essential projects.


offramps are made ( a lot of times) with good reason. either for easing traffic congestion and eliminating a lot of accidents that occur at stoplights, or to bring roads up to "interstate" standards so they receive more funding.

the tree thing... yeah I agree. Ugh on this one highway in fresno they are putting in irrigation lines for a few miles. That must cost a lot of money!! It doesnt rain here and everyone tries to have green plants. However... I suppose that "beautifucation" of a city can bring in more people, which would bring in more funding for local roads, schools, whatever.

I think that the money is there to repair the bridges, I think more of a problem may be the monitoring and maintenance of them.

maybe the problem is we dump so much money into our congested highways generally when europe and japan and places like that have awesome trains that go a bajillion miles an hour and go to lots of cool places and are relatively inexpensive

going "cool" places =/ going to work

Chuck and I both live in PA and while I love sports, the state spent over 300 million if memory serves me correct to build 2 football and 2 baseball stadiums in philly and pittsburgh. Then our local news reports that PA has like 90 some bridges with low ratings like the one in MN with over 50 of these bridges being in Philly on I95

Yeah ravenguy, no one works in Japan and Europe.

i get the feeling some people in japan and europe take said trains to work, too

whoa rapid fire simultaneous postings

rebuilding a bridge like the one in MN is not like a 10 million dollar project

Chuck and I both live in PA and while I love sports, the state spent over 300 million if memory serves me correct to build 2 football and 2 baseball stadiums in philly and pittsburgh. Then our local news reports that PA has like 90 some bridges with low ratings like the one in MN with over 50 of these bridges being in Philly on I95
You can't qualify all the "low rankings" to equal what the bridge in Minnesota was like, though. If I recall correctly no single bridge in Pennsylvania (concrete bridge that is) was deemed failing.

That said, transportation impact fees are the solution to this shit but municipalities and states are generally retarded and won't impose them because god-forbid they lose control of the highways.

When I become governor one of my first acts will be to privatize roadways as much as possible.

"How do I get to the nearest gas station, man?"

"Head south down Chase Bank Avenue, and hook a right on Staples Street."

It'll be the future, and it'll be filled with awesome roadways! If Germany can do it, so can we.

sppunk, you are correct. my point was that there is a reason why all the truckers every year vote PA roads the worst in the country and that is might only be a matter of time before the same shit hits the fan here.

The roads are bad here because PennDOT is full of inept managers and archaic engineers. It's the state government's fault for failing to hold PennDOT accountable for their ineffective roadway maintenance. I was stuck on I-81 today for 45 minutes for virtually no reason because of these morons. They should all be terminated.

Well, all that and the fact Pennsylvania roadways are the most traveled of any in the entire country.

we had no plows, postal service, nothing for 5 days after that ice storm. I didn't work from Tuesday (let us home early) until the following monday.

To their credit, there wasn't much of anything they could have done to limit the hell that was the Valentine's Day storm.

I've never, ever, experienced ice like that. I used a butane torch to melt it off my driveway. The ice, at one point, was a solid eight inches deep.

I grew up in northwestern PA right in the snowbelt of lake erie and they never left snow on the road when they knew it was going to ice shortlythereafter. They fucked up by not plowing that morning and leaving well over 6 inches of snow on the ground...

But before an icestorm you're supposed to leave a bit of snow on the ground to prevent it from bonding onto the pavement.

The problem was the temperature dropped so rapidly the slush froze almost instantly. PennDOT's major flaw was the highway closure (or lack thereof) handling, but for the most part I did think they got fucked by mother nature moreso than themselves on the storm itself.

my point is that where I grew up, they laughed at that notion of leaving snow on the road before ice storms. we used to get 2 feet of snow overnight, and school would not be cancelled. Around here at the school i work at, it snows an inch or two and they are cancelling...