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Physics can be fun and destructive!
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."
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."
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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.
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