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

[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...