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Tragic Accident at FIU


greenjoe

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On March 10, the main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge was lifted from its temporary supports, rotated 90 degrees across an eight-lane thoroughfare, and lowered into its permanent position.

“FIU is about building bridges and student safety. This project accomplishes our mission beautifully,” said FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg. “We are filled with pride and satisfaction at seeing this engineering feat come to life and connect our campus to the surrounding community where thousands of our students live.”

The 174-foot, 950-ton section of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest Eight Street using Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) methods, which are being advanced at FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC). This method of construction reduces potential risks to workers, commuters and pedestrians and minimizes traffic interruptions. The main span of the FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge was installed in a few hours with limited disruption to traffic over this weekend.

“This project is an outstanding example of the ABC method,” said chair of FIU’s Civil & Environmental Engineering Department and director of FIU’s ABC-UTC Atorod Azizinamini, who is one of the world’s leading experts on Accelerated Bridge Construction. “Building the major element of the bridge – its main span superstructure – outside of the traveled way and away from busy Eighth Street is a milestone.”

The FIU-Sweetwater UniversityCity Bridge is the largest pedestrian bridge moved via Self-Propelled Modular Transportation in U.S. history. It is also the first in the world to be constructed entirely of self-cleaning concrete. When exposed to sunlight, the titanium dioxide in the concrete captures pollutants and turns it bright white, reducing maintenance costs.

 

 

That bridge collapsed today (TH) killing 6-8 and trapping several cars underneath. 

Thoughts to our conference mate.

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5 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

Is “self cleaning concrete” as strong as regular concrete that has been used in bridge construction forever?  Sure hope this wasn’t some new, “environmentally” safe concrete that was used.

The bridge used tech developed by FIU's  special civil engineering program (I don't remember the exact program name, but I described it as best I could remember).  But as I understand it, they built the bridge with new techniques.   I don't think it was about the concrete used, but the idea was behind saving time/man hours/etc.

Regardless, this is a tragic accident (as far as we know now anyway).

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As with any failure in manufacturing  or construction the builder attempts to mitigate liability.  This is done in thousands of different ways but the easiest is to "confidentially" tell a press guy about this new technology and intimating that it could have something to do with it.  The press guy runs with it and you have 100 paid experts ready to tell you how it could have caused a failure.

Let the investigation play out.  This was a 950 ton structure that had just been put in place.  It was not fully tied in nor were the support cables set as the were being tightened when the collapse occurred.  I will bet is was not caused by faulty concrete.

16 hours ago, DeepGreen said:

Is “self cleaning concrete” as strong as regular concrete that has been used in bridge construction forever?  Sure hope this wasn’t some new, “environmentally” safe concrete that was used.

Self-cleaning concrete was invented in 1997 has been used without fail since 2003.  The nanotechnology of adding titanium dioxide (TiO2) actually strengthens concrete. Making it photocatalytic requires manipulating the material to create extremely fine nanotechnology-sized particles with a different atomic structure. Self-cleaning concrete is an effective alternative to provide cleaner environment which contribute to sustainability and towards a green environment. 

 

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What a disaster. Especially sad when the purpose is to keep people out of harm’s way by avoiding a dangerous road crossing. I thought of our bridge over 35 and the structures are very different. That FIU has a lot of concrete particularly with the cover. There is no center support. The middle span of ours is probably comparable in length but ours has a heavy metal cage on the bottom and the cover is light metal not concrete. I wonder how much real world testing they put on an experimental structure before they deployed it with peoples’ lives at stake.

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On ‎3‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 7:25 PM, DeepGreen said:

Is “self cleaning concrete” as strong as regular concrete that has been used in bridge construction forever?  Sure hope this wasn’t some new, “environmentally” safe concrete that was used.

Deep, this really isn't the thread to take shots at environmentalists.

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4 hours ago, GTWT said:

Deep, this really isn't the thread to take shots at environmentalists.

I didn't really see his post as taking a shot at "environmentalists" generally.  But we've seen it before where, to please or placate certain groups, the tried and true has too quickly been set aside for the unproven, and negative consequences followed.

As an aside, maybe these various threads on this same event could be merged into the initial thread?

Edited by Mean Green 93-98
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On 3/16/2018 at 10:18 PM, DeepGreen said:

Just heard on the local news that someone(worker, contractor??) reportedly called in to (installer, builder?) to report a crack in the structure, left message on voice message recording.  Hard to believe.  We will see if this is true.

On the news: Heard the replayed voicemail message left for the bureaucrat that was reportedly "taking a few days off" and nobody was checking his messages...not even him. Just another disaster that could have been averted by alert, engaged government clerks.

Edited by EagleMBA
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1 hour ago, EagleMBA said:

On the news: Heard the replayed voicemail message left for the bureaucrat that was reportedly "taking a few days off" and nobody was checking his messages...not even him. Just another disaster that could have been averted by alert, engaged government clerks.

That's a failure on both sides, but more on the one who observed the crack.  If you haven't spoken to a living, breathing, human being, you haven't reported the emergency.

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26 minutes ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

That's a failure on both sides, but more on the one who observed the crack.  If you haven't spoken to a living, breathing, human being, you haven't reported the emergency.

Agreed. So many things wrong in this tragic event.

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2 hours ago, EagleMBA said:

On the news: Heard the replayed voicemail message left for the bureaucrat that was reportedly "taking a few days off" and nobody was checking his messages...not even him. Just another disaster that could have been averted by alert, engaged government clerks.

To be fair, the voicemail said it wasn't an issue but something to be taken care of later.

From the video it appears the initial break occurs where the construction crew was working. 

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44 minutes ago, NorthTexan95 said:

To be fair, the voicemail said it wasn't an issue but something to be taken care of later.

From the video it appears the initial break occurs where the construction crew was working. 

True. It appears that every quote I've read or heard from all parties seemed to downplay the risk of continuing the installation. That video of the collapse is really disturbing but it should isolate the issue that resulted in failure of the structure. If they had only stopped or re-routed the traffic for a short time. :(

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I would have thought it just collapsed in the middle cause so long for a concrete segment, but in the video it looks like the support on the left gave way or it fell off that support.  I was impressed by the drivers who immediately got out and ran forward to help. It’s what you should do of course, but to see people actually doing it is at least one encouraging sign in such a terrible tragedy. 

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https://amp.local10.com/news/florida/miami-dade/lawsuit-filed-in-fiu-pedestrian-bridge-collapse

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said in a statement Friday that a project manager left a voice mail indicating that there was "some cracking" on the bridge two days before it collapsed.

"Obviously some repairs or whatever will have to be done, but from a safety perspective we don't see that there's any issue there," FIGG lead engineer Denney Pate said in the voice mail.

The FDOT said the message was left on a landline and wasn't heard until the day after the collapse because the intended recipient was out of the office on assignment. The employee listened to the voice mail when he returned to his office Friday.

State officials claim FIU was responsible for the project.

"The responsibility to identify and address life-safety issues and properly communicate them is the sole responsibility of the FIU design build team," the FDOT said in a statement. "At no point during any of the communications above did FIGG or any member of the FIU design build team ever communicate a life-safety issue."

 

Rick

 

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On 3/17/2018 at 9:09 AM, GTWT said:

Deep, this really isn't the thread to take shots at environmentalists.

Look, this is not a shot at environmentalists.  I was in an industrial related business for 46+ years.  During that span, I have seen manufactured products change "for the good", because ingredients found in products caused health issues, some fatal, or environmental issues.  But the fact is, by and large, the new, chemically altered products do not work near as well as products manufactured using the original "ingredients", formulas, or procedures.

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