Bridges, Vibration, Fatigue and ONE freaked out Jackhammer Dude

The collapsed bridge story in Minneapolis has some strange abstract twists and turns beyond the tragic actual twists and turns.

First off the sound must have been HUGE. This was a 458 foot arch span without a center support.....which might not be a related factor....but there is another potential factor that caught my attention.

There is one freaked out State worker sitting around today asking questions that might never be answered.

A crew of workers was resurfacing a portion of the bridge when it buckled and collapsed. A bridge engineer on CNN made a passing remark this morning about the depth of the resurfacing and that perhaps the moment of ultimate stress fracture could have been caused by a....JACKHAMMER.

Imagine the JACKHAMMER "dude" at that precise moment.

JACKHAMMER DUDE is having a problem with a small area on the bridge....and JACKHAMMER is not breaking through a portion. It's causing JACKHAMMER DUDE to get pissed off and he intensifies his effort and drives the JACKHAMMER a little further down at the same moment he says.....

"I'm going to f..k you up Mr. Bridge."

AND WHAMO....the bridge answered back.

From what the bridge engineer said on CNN...the stress fatigue moment could have been caused by a single episode and the VIBRATION started from that single episode could have started a chain reaction of substructure weakness.

Obviously there was some structural problems with the bridge and how it was built with what materials were used.....must be taken into account.

I hope this doesn't come down to some contractor or inspector deciding, 40 years ago, to either use some inferior product or ignore some facts.

Rumors are circulating that there are more than 70,000 bridges in America that need attention, and today bridge builders are front and center in the news....

and one JACKHAMMER DUDE is hiding under his bed.

The first comment from any authoritative person was....

"There doesn't seem to be any indication that this was an act of terrorism."

Can you imagine how bored Al-Queda would have to have been to attack a bridge in Minneapolis just to prevent the groundbreaking ceremony at the Twins new stadium?

"But....we are looking for a JACKHAMMER DUDE"

SIDE-BAR

How many Presidential hopefuls will arrive in Minneapolis over the next few days?

Talk about a photo-op!

Maybe we should take note and decide not to vote for anyone of those yokels who does show up at this tragic scene.

Michael Timothy McAlevey