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Oakland Bridges Falling Down
Location:
880 at 580,
oakland, ca 94608
Sunday morning, at 3:42 AM, a tanker truck carrying 9,600 gallons of unleaded gasoline overturned and caught fire on a bridge in Oakland. But this wasn't any Oakland bridge. It was part of what is known locally as the MacArther Maze, a point where the 80, 580, 880 and the 24 freeway intersect. The burning tanker truck melted the steel in the bridge causing it to collapse onto the freeway below it. No one was killed and only the driver was injured. He left his vehicle, walked to a gas station and took a cab to the hospital where he is being treated for burns. As for the MacArther maze, they are estimating 2 months until the roads are rebuilt. In the meantime, a section of freeway used by roughly 280,000 people every day has been shut down. The economic costs are estimated in the multi-millions of dollars. The Governor has issued a state of emergency to speed up the rebuilding process and was at the bridge last night. There are two reasons that I bring this up. One is that a gasoline fire in the open melted a freeway. I occassionally meet people who do not believe the World Trade Center could have been brought down by fire. Hopefully this will put an end to that sort of speculation. Secondly, we know now this was not a terrorist attack, but what does it mean to keep us safe in a world where a single person can do something like this? 27 comments from 8 users
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posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 08:58 AM
All of the local websites are down, but I may try to swing by there later to get a picture of my own up. In the meantime: http://news.google.com/nwsh...
posted by
Hardliner4freedom
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:02 AM
The more interdependent we become, the more vulnerable we become. That's why I align myself with folks like Pat Buchanan and the Patriot movement on issues like globalization. [Aside: I predict that the inevitable move toward alternative energy sources will bring the side benefit of partial energy self-sufficiency at the town and household level.]
posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:05 AM
SFGate has a come back, but it's slow. See some amazing pictures here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/o...
posted by
NancyII
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:08 AM
Tom, thanks for posting that. I've been watching it on the news and it's a horrific thing to see. My first thought also was that fire CAN melt steel. (which logical people alreday knew) Off that for a second but do any of you remember the old commercials where vats of molten steel were poured into molds with sparks flying? The steel company sponsored the show..can't remember who or what... but that steel was definitely melted. posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:09 AM
H4F, this is yet another reason to decentralize in every way our energy sources. Also a good reason to move away from internal combustion engines.
posted by
Hardliner4freedom
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:10 AM
"Off that for a second but do any of you remember the old commercials where vats of molten steel were poured into molds with sparks flying?" Union Carbide? posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:12 AM
Nancy, what's interesting is that the World Trade Center conspiracy relies on the fact that steel doesn't become molten at that temperature. It requires a blast furnace at a higher temp. But melting and molten are two very different things and either can cause very bad things to happen to big structures.
posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:19 AM
 http://people.bakersfield.c... />http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/o... I'm going to repost this image with credit and a link. The SFGate website is dragging today and this explains what happened better than anything else. posted by
mattloch
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:32 AM
All that is required is for the steel to become weakened for a collapse to occur. Many theories state (correctly) that aviation fuel (or gasoline) cannot come close to melting steel rebar. But all that is required for the steel to become weakened (and the concrete as well) are temperatures that are easily reached by burning fuel, something ignored by many conspiracy theorists.
posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:41 AM
The picture I posted above has a snippet that says steel loses half of its rigidity at 1000 degrees. Most building practices now operate with a safety factor of 30%. This gasoline fire was estimated at around 3000 degrees.
posted by
mattloch
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:43 AM
posted by
mattloch
on Apr 30, 2007 at 09:44 AM
"Strength loss for steel is generally accepted to begin at about 300ºC and increases rapidly after 400ºC, by 550ºC steel retains about 60% of its room temperature yield strength. This is usually considered to be the failure temperature for structural steel."
posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 10:12 AM
That is a great picture, Mattloch. What's funny is that digg has some people who are seriously trying to spin a conspiracy here.
posted by
anonymous
on Apr 30, 2007 at 10:20 AM
This looks like Iran's work, lets get the carriers in place and the troops on the border.both of them.
posted by
TomW
on Apr 30, 2007 at 10:22 AM
I'm pretty sure this was done by a missile. Iran must have better technology than we thought. Let's bomb them until they admit it.
posted by
randomfactor
on Apr 30, 2007 at 10:22 AM
Anny, I don't think San Francisco will let the carriers come in...
posted by
anonymous
on Apr 30, 2007 at 10:29 AM
No,no, out, not in, but wher do we send them, Iran, or North Korea? Wolfowitz, Perle, Tenant, where are you when we need a slam dunk!
posted by
mattloch
on Apr 30, 2007 at 11:05 AM
"4,000 Oakland Jews stayed home on 4/29. And all the Jewish commuters got to work on time, because they had their alternate routes planned in advance! Coincidence? I think not."
posted by
anonymous
on Apr 30, 2007 at 11:22 AM
I'm convinced and anyone who is not has to be either for you or against you. I hear the driver survived lets get him to one of the secret prisons for debriefing (literally) than when we squeeze him enough (again literally), winter in Gitmo!
posted by
pamg
on Apr 30, 2007 at 11:37 AM
Very good Mattloch! Are these your own comments, or is this stuff actually being said?
posted by
Hardliner4freedom
on Apr 30, 2007 at 11:40 AM
"I heard there were some Middle Eastern looking men, maybe Israelies taking pictures of the fire, and laughing. No one can find them now, even though there was a 911 call about them." I remember when the mainstream media spent two days spreading Middle Eastern rumors after the Oklahoma City bombing. Yeah, gotta love that (nonexistent) "liberal bias."
posted by
mattloch
on Apr 30, 2007 at 11:54 AM
Pmag, they were comments I found on the Fark discussion thread for this story. They have had 9/11 "conspiracy" discussions that are legendary (for them. The threads have gone into the thousands of posts, with arguments that become extremely technical and obscure, as well as exceedingly silly and sarcastic). There are some very brilliant people that post there, and some very stupid sheeple as well. My post was culled from "joke" posts that a few people wrote to make fun of the nuts that take every opportunity to say that 9/11 was a massive government conspiracy.
posted by
pamg
on Apr 30, 2007 at 12:03 PM
Ah, and here I was thinking that you've a brilliant sense of humor! : )
posted by
mattloch
on Apr 30, 2007 at 12:10 PM
Sorry to disappoint, pmag. I'm just the messenger......
posted by
anonymous
on Apr 30, 2007 at 12:56 PM
You know Caltrans structures in Sacramento is full of Middle-Eastern men and women engineers, HMMMMMMMMMM.
posted by
anonymous
on May 1, 2007 at 02:45 PM
Is there a difference between a freeway bridge and a 47 story building that did not get hit by a plane????? posted by
mattloch
on May 1, 2007 at 04:51 PM
Not when you have a couple million tons of concrete and steel landing within mere feet of it, anon. <<sigh>> Oh, and the BBC didn't announce the freeway fell a half-hour before it happened, either.
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