Physics can be fun and destructive!

[gridlore]

This morning in the section of the Bay Bridge approach known to locals as the MacArthur Maze, a tanker truck went a little too fast, and had an oopsie. Well, actually, he crashed and his tanker full of unleaded exploded.

But that's not the fun part. No, the fun part is he was under the 580/80 connector ramp when his load began to oxidize rapidly, releasing large amounts of heat. Which softened the steel supports of said connector ramp, which meant that gravity soon noticed this big chunk of concrete and asphalt with no viable means of support, reached out, and...







Here's the full story.

The driver? Crawled out of the wreck on his own, hailed a cab, and is now in the hospital with critical but non-life threatening burns.

You cannot begin to imagine how happy I am that my route doesn't come near the Bay Bridge. I see a surge in ridership on BART and the ferries. Right now, they have no estimate on how long this will take to fix, but one official on the radio said "could be a couple of months."

Comments

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Whenever I see 'accidents' like this, where drivers haven't been driving properly, I always hope that the government will try to collect the cost of repairs from the chap who decided to speed (or do whatever stupid thing caused the problem), rather than add the bill to my taxes.

Never happens up here (at least, I've never seen it -- sometimes they get a small fine, but never enough to cover the cost of repairs). What happens in the US?

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Well, right now we don't know the cause of the accident. But there's a reason truckers refer to smaller vehicles as pinballs. I spend most of my day worrying about what the next moron move is going to be.

If the driver was at fault, his career is over. At the least, the DOT will pull his Federal Carrier permit. He will also lose his tanker and hazardous materials endorsements from his state license along with a long suspension. If his mandatory drug test is possible, he will simply loose all right to drive anything.

Most gas tankers are company owned, and they have insurance to cover this sort of thing. But as part of any negligance suit settlement will include the firing of the driver.

Most people don't appreciate what commerical drivers go through to get the license. To drive a car, you need to read an eye chart. For a truck, you get the chart, color vision test, periphial vision test, depth of vision test and we won't even start on the hearing tests.

I'm going to wait to see what the CHP report says before passing judgement.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

You said he was going too fast, so I assumed you had seen more reports than I had.

[bunyip.livejournal.com]

Glad to know you're not affected, Doug

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

zahraa and zyxwvut drove over it at 3:30 am. Very Scary. And she has to commute through the maze. She sees a lot of BART in her future.
Luckily, I don't commute through there, but MythCon is going to be in Berkeley during the summer (probably within those couple of months of reconstuction) and we hold committed meetings up there. We are going to have to print out alternate routes to getting to and from the con in the PR.
From what I've heard 880 up to 80 E is OK. It is the 80W down to 880 S that is broken. Along with the section of 580/980/24 he was driving on. They don't call it a maze for nothing.

[murphymom.livejournal.com]

One report I heard timed the accident as happening at 3:42 a.m. - so, yes, very scary indeed.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

*stunned*

never seen pavement melt or *bend* before, usually it just breaks/shatters.

amazing.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

I've already seen suggestions that the section involved be renamed the Salvaldor Dali Impass until repairs are complete.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

*snork*

It is rather Dali-esque, isn't it?

And no one was killed. that's the *really* amazing thing, to me.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

That melting & bending of the steel supports (not the concrete) was instrumental in the World Trade collapse.

Cement, when made right anymore, will melt before it fractures. That it did here is a good thing. That bodes well for the surrounding parts of the structures involved.

It's still impressive.

[kengr]

Bet you a cookie it'll be more like six months to a year. For one thing, they'll have to inspect the hell out of the adjacent sections that *didn't* fall.

[kengr]

Just had a really nasty thought.

I wonder how many of those GPS setups like TomTom are gong to have their databases updated by tomorrow. And how many of them require you to go out and *get* the update.

Gonna be a lot of very upset folks when their "make car navigation easier" gizmos try to route them thru either of those overpasses.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Luckily the Bay Area (and most of Northern California) has a very good system of freeway signs to warn of traffic, closures, and expected travel times. They also show Amber Alerts. I've seen Bay Bridge warnings all the way out in Stockton (80 miles or so) so that, along with all the news coverage means that most people should be warned.

We do have excelent alternate methods of getting across the bay, and last I heard the Governator was talking about emergency funding to make BART free for the duration.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

I'm not looking forward to hearing this be griped abo - discussed ad infinitum beginning tomorrow. I generally don't go that way when I'm going to SF, but I sometimes have occasion to go to Berkeley or Emeryville.

Well, they fast-tracked the highway reconstruction in LA after the Northridge quake. The plans for these structures should still be on file in Sack-o'-tomatoes. So all that's needed is to pull some state structural & highway engineers in on a Sunday and make them earn their salaries.

Wanna bet they aim for a July fourth finish?

Other comment:
Commuters can well & easily avoid this route by using public transit; it might even cut down on the insane traffic in the City. What are the contingency plans going to be for commercial &/or tourist traffic?

[melchar.livejournal.com]

If they use what they used in Lost Hills, they take flat-bed railway cars and set them in place like 'Legos'. Dr Bill Wattenburg explained on KGO earlier today that the plans are on-file in Sacra-pimento and that there is a very large stockpile of the flat-beds available [so that a week of constant effort could wupply a viable work-around while repairs get made].

Now if only poly-ticks allows it...

[aurictech.livejournal.com]

Clearly government-sponsored sabotage was involved. After all, noted metallurgist Rosie O'Donnell has assured the nation that fire doesn't melt steel....

obviously, it was a controlled demolition

[redc1c4.livejournal.com]

just like the one that destroyed the WTC.....

redc1c4,
who gets all his facts on Usenet. %-)

the good news is.....

[redc1c4.livejournal.com]

all they'll need to haul off the tanker wreckage is a vacuum cleaner and a dust pan.

it's a given that all the aluminum parts are smoke, but there *may* be some frame or engine block left, if they were ferrous.

more than a few years back there was an accident here in Lost Angels that burned the truck and (iirc) one car. they ID'd the car because a license plate broke free and spun forward of the burn zone. they ID'd the truck when one of the local companies figured out who hadn't made their deliveries that night. the rough spot on the pavement is sitll there on the N-710, right around Del Amo Blvd.

redc1c4,
who remembers the JP-4 tanker drivers being a bit excitable %-)