Mike Mulligan
Hinsdale, NH
16033368320
steamshovel2002@yahoo.com
I proofed this so many times...I still got mistakes in it. So I am fixing what "i can see". Sorry!
The walkway under structure goes like this. Large metal brackets are attacked to the bridge. Two metal c-beams run parallel to the bridge and bolted to the brackets. Two by six boards are bolted to the c-beams through the length of the bridge. Then the top wooded planks are nailed to the 2 by 6s.
The 2 by 6s seem to be in good shape.
I am all confused with the bridge inspector talking about screws and metal beams underneath.
Was he saying the 2 by 6s were rotting?
I just think they were just too lazy to re-nail the top wooden planks to the 2 by 6s. The don’t waste money on Hinsdale and those bridges anymore attitude.
Those brackets holding up sidewalks are in dangerously corroded condition…
Right, they can't use those bridge inspection vehicles with a long hydraulic arm and a personal basket on this bridge...
Dear Loriella Babkirk,
What a pretty first
name!
I received a copy of
your e-mail titled "RE: Brattleboro/ Hinsdale Bridge" dated July 8,
2013 a few days ago. The documents were placed anonymously on the open front
seat of my car at the approach of the Route 119 Brattleboro. Actually, I got
the Vermont and NH state DOT officials’ response to youy letter also with all
the attachments. You haven’t seen the truth in these official state responses
and their documents.
By the way, could somebody
send me through e-mail those NHDOT bridge inspection reports and photos stated
in the attachments please…the five attachments?
You know, everyone’s got
to start buckling up here right now. This ride is going to get goddamn rough.
I am the guy at the
Route 119 Hinsdale bridges blessing you and everyone else who passes this area.
Have you recently seen me dressed up with my nice halo as a bridge safety
angel? I am warning all of the lands with an impending bridge collapse
or closure in the near future. It is going to be an economic, individual
and multi community catastrophe.
As you know, I have spent
considerable time at the bridge this year. This is my third year working on
this project. I am the talk of the town in Hinsdale...mostly positive and a few
even threatening harm to me. Most of Hinsdale thinks I have really gone
overboard with my halo and blue angel get-up. Pictures of pathetic me wearing a
halo are on my blog! See pictures on my blog!
I would consider our
grossly technically obsolete 1921 and dangerously degraded bridge…engineers
language… being a “super fracture critical” bridge! The collapsed I35
Minneapolis Bridge was built in 1964 and the I-5 Skagit River Bridge was built in
1955. The Hinsdale/Brattleboro Bridges were built in 1921. The Concord, NH
Sewalls Falls road bridge five miles north of Concord, NH was built in 1915.
This is the future of our bridge.
NTSB 2007 Investigation
into the Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
“NTSB findings:
Because
the deck truss portion of the I-35W bridge was non-load-path redundant, the
total collapse of the deck truss was likely once the gusset plates at the U10
nodes failed.
Non-load-path-redundant: The condition where
fracture of an individual structural element (a fracture-critical element)
could lead to a partial or total collapse of the entire bridge. A bridge that
is non-load-path-redundant is not inherently unsafe, but it does lack
redundancy in the design of its support structure. Such bridges are sometimes
referred to as fracture critical. The I-35W bridge was of a
non-load-path-redundant design.”
I will speak plainly to
you. I think the NH bridge inspection process is severely corrupted. The NHDOT
roads and bridges budget has been severely restrained for many years now. NH
got a huge back log of projects. We are never going to catch up to our responsibilities.
They don't have enough money to keep the
1921 Hinsdale Bridge functional and up to date with maintenance considering the
growth of traffic and large trucks. So these guys just close their eyes to
Hinsdale. The NHDOT fear the enormous political fallout if they are forced to
restrict flow of the traffic or close the bridge. NHDOT fears more the approximate
$35 million dollar cost with the replacement bridge.
New Hampshire and their
NHDOT are in existentialism’s vice between money limitations and vital societal
pubic needs. It ends up as a disproportional war against small town and rural
New Hampshire from the powerful well-heeled and high population areas. An
unfair and severely unsafe proportion of the NHDOT budgets (and stimulus) has
been going to the powerful well healed Concord, Nashua and our NH golden
seacoast corridor triangle. This is Boston’s exurbia bedroom community within
New Hanshire. That blood sucking sound you hear is all the big southeast NH transportation
projects stealing our hopes and dreams from us…the jobs and transportation
resources from rural NH.
Our Route 119 Hinsdale/Brattleboro
Bridge is tragically obsolete and fracture critical. I keep thinking about the
disgusting bent, corroded gusset and the deeply displaced vertical member
caused by a vehicle crash on our bridge. How come that wasn’t ever repaired. This
indicates a profound agency attitude with valuing human life and infrastructure
engineering integrity.
‘I-5 Bridge listed as 'fracture critical'
Columbia River span
could collapse if hit with big enough blow
Tuesday, May 28,
2013
Both
spans of the Interstate 5 Bridge over the Columbia River are considered
"fracture critical" by the Oregon Department of Transportation,
meaning if one crucial part of the bridge sustains a big enough blow, the
bridge could collapse.
In
it, the I-5 Columbia River Bridge is categorized as a bridge without safety
redundancies or backups that would prevent it from collapsing if part of a
bridge truss is damaged or removed.
"If
one of the fracture-critical pieces is somehow taken out, removed or fails in
some way, the whole bridge could collapse," Oregon transportation
spokesman Don Hamilton said Tuesday. He declined to specify where the bridge
would need to be damaged in order to collapse, because he didn't want to make
the bridge's weak spots public.
It is the absence of our
tiny voice within New Hampshire government with how we control the arterial
life blood flow within little Hinsdale and all of the small town and rural New
Hampshire. And our tiny voice stands up for the efficiency of traffic flow and
safety for our surrounding communities and bordering states. The majority of
the flow of traffic on Hinsdale’s route 119 is not our town’s people. This itty
bitty voice in the wilderness is sticking up for the safety interest of the
multitudes. They all come from far and wide
for passage through our town or to see our little rendition of heaven.
I am saying, who is
going to oversee and regulate the state bridge inspectors? Who is going to inspect the NH bridge
inspectors? I wouldn’t be surprised after reading the 2007 NTSB’s Minneapolis
I35 bridge report if knowingly grossly inaccurate and falsified state and
federal documents are legal in New Hampshire. You know, the privilege of kings
with total unaccountability. This is a fundament flaw with our nation. We don’t
have one highway and road standard, seeing how we send many million dollars to
the states. Our federal system should have stick oversight of the State Dots.
As an example, just look at the I-35 Minneapolis bridge collapse. There was
many known long term flaws in bridge maintenance and state DOT engineering codes.
Who is going to step in if the states don’t give a shit?
So the easy way out of
this political mess is to falsify bridge inspections and state and federal
documents. The NHDOT staff and officials of NHDOT are severely demoralized,
underpaid and intimidated by severely underfunded and highly politicalized
agency state budgets. The NHDOT employees are all facing massive and
unprecedented employee, personal and official layoffs and firings in the next
two years. The organization are a "black hole" with withholding
information and selective truth telling for political, personal and career protection.
Just give them the minimum transparency, boys…for our protection. This is black
hole organization is beyond the control of any entity on the planet because of
their self-interested selective truth-telling, lying and object and uncontested
NH and federal illegal document falsification.
So below article is an analogy for similar cultures and
systems across many organizations. Who plays
the roles of the patients, the doctors, the medical employees and the medical
establishment and the bureaucracy in our system of bridges, towns, employees,
voters/taxpayers/ public, the feds, state DOT
and our wider transportation system. If the NHDOT respects their
professional employees more will Hinsdale town’s people be more secure and
safe? At least the citizens of Hinsdale would have a lot more accurate
information to engage our state politicians. Of course, our state government
never operates on the facts. Is the sick patient the Hinsdale Route 119 Bridge
or is it all the people and businesses who use our bridges?
Why is government always hiding in the deep shadows?
Where is the respect of us and why is it lacking in in
our wider culture and system? I bet you it’s all related to greed and economic
insecurity?
“In a Culture of
Disrespect, Patients Lose Out” (NYT)
I’ve always thought about
respect as common decency, something we should do because it’s simply the right
thing to do. In the medical world, we certainly need to strive for respectful
behavior, especially given our historically rigid pecking order, our ingrained
traditions of hierarchical bullying and, of course, a primary constituency —
patients — who are often on uniquely vulnerable footing.
But then I stumbled across two articles in
Academic Medicine that talked about respect as an issue of patient safety. The
authors, a group of doctors and researchers at Harvard Medical School, outlined
the myriad acts of disrespect that we’ve come to accept as a way of life in
medicine, and showed how these can lead to a final pathway of harm to our
patients.
This shift in perspective was a shock to the
system. When we tolerate a culture of disrespect, we aren’t just being
insensitive, or obtuse, or lazy, or enabling. We’re in fact violating the first
commandment of medicine. How can we stand idly by when our casual acceptance of
disrespect is causing the same harm to our patients as medication errors,
surgical mistakes, handoff lapses and missed lab results?
… Though these annoyances
may seem trivial, this lack of respect
“undermines morale, and inhibits transparency and feedback,” the authors write.
Morale, transparency and feedback are pillars of preventing medical error.
Patients ultimately bear the brunt of this unhealthy atmosphere.
…Added to the clarion call
should be patient safety. The connection between disrespectful behavior to
patient safety should be made explicit in our efforts, since this is a rallying
point that everyone can agree on. Medical staff members should absolutely be
holding ourselves to the highest bar of professional and respectful conduct. We
have no excuses for anything less. But beyond this, the medical system needs to
re-evaluate itself and the way it respects — or disrespects — its own workers,
and by extension, its patients.
We are still trying to
figure out what this NHDOT scientific and engineering phrase means. A lead
“bridge inspector” told us this. He was performing a bridge inspection this
spring. We got pictures...see my blog. He told us his group was just "corn
cobbing" these bridges. What does "corn cobbing" a bridge
inspection mean? This is such obscene disrespect to concerned members of the
public.
So this is my blog:
"The Poppervillve Town Hall.
Don't forget to click on
my other articles and links in my blog...I pictured up most of the underneath
of the Route 119 Brattleboro and Hinsdale bridge. Scroll down to look at all of
my bridge pictures...you won't be able to stop. These are dangerously obscene
pictures of the structures of the
bridge.
Added:
iBrat
The Vermont DOT
officials might recognize my name. I took pictures of their I 91 (between exit
1 and 2) “William Street" interstate bridge in early 2007. See my pictures
of this now demolished bridge under steamshovel2002 and Flickr. Those bridge
piers were in dangerously and atrocious conditions. This rather new 1960 (smile)
bridge was functionally obsolete. The I91 Interstate Bridge was dangerously
narrow and didn’t have safety breakdown lanes like Hinsdale’s route 119
bridges.
Do you remember a
tractor trailer who was trying to miss a skidded and stalled car on the
Williams Street Bridge. The semi tried to skid around the stalled car on the north
bound bridge. Instead, he went right through the bridge railings like tissue
paper to his death. I renamed that bridge the Vermont “Daddy Killer Bridge”
because the driver had young kids. What shall I name the Hinsdale Route 119 Bridges?
I thinking “The Route
119 Hinsdale, NH Family Killer Bridges“. I could make this a sign and plaster
the bridges with it.
I forced Vermont into the replacement of these
bridges and many blame me with a rethink on the conditions of all I 91 bridges.
This demolished young (humor) bridge was built in the early 1960 and the new
bridges are 1000 times more gorgeous than the dead headed baby boomer bridge
when we were developing our Interstate system.
Man, I am in love with those new huge concrete
piers holding the new Brattleboro "William Street" bridge. You know, those
NJ style integral to the bridge concrete safety barriers will certainly contain
any fully loaded tractor trailer. The Vermont DOT official knows what i mean. Mr.
Mike Hedges of the VTDOT, you tell the NHDOT how powerful my pictures are. They
are going bend to my will!
So here is my list of
safety and economic concerns with the Route 119 Hinsdale bridges. They are all
pictured up on my blog. If any of these issues are missing and not explained in
detail in the past NHDOT inspection reports this is “prima facia” evidence
there is massive NHDOT bridge fraud and falsification of paperwork throughout
the state. It is NHDOT bridge illegal paperwork falsification to meet a
political and self-interested ends? My experience with organizational lying and
fraud…it doesn’t happen in one spot in the organizations. The rot is in everything
in the organization and in related organizations.
1)
A few days ago I was on
the Brattleboro side of the Route 119 Bridge and standing directly across from
the new Whetstone Station restaurant. I had my halo on and was dressed up as a
blue angel warning everyone of an impending bridge collapse. Dave, the owner of
the restaurant walked over to me. I thought he was irked that I was scaring
away his customers. He has a large bar with huge windows facing my protest area
on the Hinsdale side of the bridge. Seems, they were watching me. These huge
picture windows have a gorgeous elevated view of the Connecticut River and Wantastiquet
Mountain. I asked him if I am chasing away your customers. He said not at all.
I explained I am trying to replace this bridge. Dave said I am totally on your
side. Then he asked me, “Did you hear about the recent serious bicycling
accident on the bridge walkway?”
The
bridge wooden walkway has many loose and warped planks. It is much worse than
last year. As a bicyclist was crossing the bridge walkway, his tire flipped up
a loose plank. He did an Endo…flipped over the handle bars on the bridge. He
crashed into the railing banging his head and breaking his shoulders. He was
almost thrown into the river. He was stunned. Dave called the ambulance. The
bicyclist said he would have been dead if he was flipped into the river.
So
this spring I was interviewing my NHDOT “corn cobbling” lead bridge inspector
buddy. I got pictures of this…see my blog. I said at one point, you guys got
big problems with the bridge walkway wooden planks. Most of the planks are
loose and many warping. It is getting worst. Some planks are warping where the
middle is sticking up and many are warping where one end sticks way up in the
air. He told me, “the iron metal structure that attaches the planks by screws
to the bride is too corroded to accept the screws.” “It is all just rust down
there and all the screws just spin.” You got to wonder will the wooden walkway
collapse into the river someday. I told “Mr Corn cobbing bridge inspector”
(2013), you know, we got many disabled people with motorized wheelchairs
traveling this walkway. They complain to me about the plank bumps and the not
snow blowed walkways in the winter? They mostly go the convenience store in the
old Wal-Mart store.
“These
bridges have an increasing diabetic rotting wasting disease…”
“The
bridge underneath looks like this diabetic's rotting legs and bridge's rotting
railings and beams.”
“There is a lot of grass
over-growth into the middle of the sidewalk that rubs onto his wheelchair and
face. Robert worries a piece of metal will get pulled out into the walkway and
then he not sees it. It cuts his leg and then he can't control the infection,
or the cut won't heal. Then they have to cut off the leg. A fallen down branch
could be hidden in the overgrown grass onto the sidewalk...again he is at
extreme risk with losing a limb if it cuts or bruises him. This could easily
put him in the grave.”
“The
little spin in his wheel chair is one of the few freedoms Robert has.”
“He
has had his family fixing the ruts (sidewalk) in this asphalt sidewalk.” (So
his wheelchair wouldn’t fall over or make him stuck in place.)
…“Here
is Robert right to your face (Sept 24, 2012). You
notice the decaying bridge wood walkway planking under his wheelchair...many
loose and warped big time.”
Note: My blog and my picture (fall 2012) of
Robert’s diabetic leg and the rotting bridge railing made the NHDOT fix the
cancerous railing in the 2013 spring inspection. May god have mercy on all our
runaway monstrous Frankenstein New Hampshire souls? You see the rotting wooden
planks under the rotting railing and this poor man’s wheelchair. They
completely ignored the dangerous wooden planks and the screws that wouldn’t
catch. This unsafe walkway are well known to NHDOT for many years.
Hinsdale use to remove the snow from the
walkway with their special sidewalk plowing vehicle. They stopped because
Hinsdale figured out the machine was too heavy for the walkway and it was also scraping up the loose wooded
planks. Why can’t they drive down the road with a snow blower in a pickup? Why
can’t the state pay Hinsdale to snow blow the state walkway? How come the
bridge walkway doesn’t get snow plowed in the winter? I get it, money, money
money!
You know what I am
really trying do here; I am trying to save the soul of the state of New
Hampshire!
You see the New Hampshire monstrous
disregard for the value of human life with the Route 119 Hinsdale/ Brattleboro bridge
walkway issue. Let’s role play the NHDOT District 4 Engineer’s job. Did you see
his pathetically poverty stricken and isolated list of small towns in his area.
One can only imagine the magnitude the long list of backlogged transportation
jobs for his District. I wonder what the criteria is for shoving out NHDOT
projects in his district? I bet it is political and population density!
So
the Hinsdale Route 119 bridge walkways come to his attention. They are in
unsafe condition. He knows he just can’t put screws into the rotting wooden
planks. They pop that baby open and he knows it going to be a complete rework
of the walkway and their iron support structure. He knows if they go mucking
around the bridge deck support iron beams and severely corroded gussets might
need a lot of work. The job cost could get really big and shut the bridge
anyways. The bridge is obsolete by four times and it is breathing its death
throes. He goes spending big bucks in Hinsdale…then ten other towns in his
district are going to be looking to string him up to their worst bridge.
It makes you wonder if
we are seeing a NHDOT organizational disease. We make one of those “facilitative
assumptions” where the bridge is so dilapidated and old, why waste money in it.
A new bridge is right around the corner so shut your eyes and don’t waste money
on it. The state effectively disconnects itself from the overseeing the bridge
and doing the proper upkeep of it. A young or middle-age bridge has a huge
value in it so we will take care of it. A decrepit bridge is so ugly and
expensive…just turn away your eyes from it and don’t look. It is only human
nature. Is there something in our brain or organization that unintentionally
turns off our caring because of these affects…obscures our vision and curiosity?
The below from the most recent spring 2013
Environmental Assessment is interesting. The first Wal-Mart store forced
Hinsdale and the NHDOT to construct a sidewalk and a walkway. With the rot
going on in wooden planks and rotting iron works who won’t hold a screw or hold
on to the planks, it must be a cheapy defective design and construction of this
walkway.
You know, that is the “New Hampshire
Advantage”. It is a whole set of half ass fixes and “facilitative assumptions”.
This unseen and hidden corruption goes on for decades after decades into the
indefinite. A facilitative assumption is
when a CEO, politician and agency head…especially the professional class and
engineers…who knowingly makes a corrupt critical organizational decision based
on self-interest or a narrow interest in order to save his job and career. You
make an assumption deep under the citizenry and employees, knowingly not
aligned with the facts or the greater good in order fulfill a narrow and
shallow interest. It is dastardly hidden corruption deep behind the scenes that
screws all the innocent and good citizens. It mostly benefits the professional
class and the politicians.
There are also good faciltative
assumptions. A young man makes a mistake. You think he is just inexperience and
immature…but you give him many breaks because you know he will become a great
man. You will make him a great man. And he then does become a great man.
Heuristics is related this…
BRATTLEBORO, VT – HINSDALE, NH TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR
BRF 2000(19)SC June, 2013
…In 1993 a sidewalk was installed on the north side of
both bridges…
So the Hinsdale bridge walkway becomes
direly unsafe…the District 4 Engineer’s choices are to refurbish the walkway or
to block the walkway from further traffic. He doesn’t have the funding to do
our bridge walkways. All the pedestrians will then have to walk the bridge deck
roadway. Two opposing cars at the same time got barely enough room to pass each
other…certainly there in insufficient room for two big trucks. Can you image
the hue and cry to the District 4 Engineer and Concord if they make pedestrians
walk on the functionally obsolete bridge road bed without any safety breakdown
lane? Believe me; the daily peak traffic doesn’t have enough room to get the
cars by without a lot of time delay, with the sharp 90 degree turn and massive
public speeding.
I know the solution considering the
realities in Concord, NH and keeping my job…only one lane of traffic going
across the one bridge at one time. Here comes the New Hampshire Advantage? It
will reduce the traffic stress of the bridge to extend the bridge life and allow pedestrians
to passage the bridge without a separated walkway. Everyone will be safe. But traffic will be backed
up all the way to Putney and Winchester?
Many people and my own family have come up
to me to explain how impacted and inconvenienced they will be. Mike, if the
bridge closes, you are going to eat up between two to three hours a day with a
round trip. We are talking about 30 miles and verging on $10 bucks a day. This
is going to severely impact thousands of innocent people. Mike, you know your
town is poverty stricken and most of our community is struggling with
inadequate income and time. This is going to hurt the poor way more than anyone
else…don’t even talk about gasoline prices. Mike, you are stealing money right
out of their purses and pockets.
So you got conflicting human needs and
budgets, priories and limitations... budgets, priorities and limitations are
always extraordinarily immoral. The limitations always get concentrated in the poorest
and weakest segments of our society. The state of New Hampshire with this NH
Advantage has become a monster to our weakest and poorest. It is tax breaks for
the big boys and suffering and insecurity for the bottom half…
The bridge inspection group leader right
in front of me turned a blind eye to the deterioration of safety with the
walkway…he knew injuries and possible deaths was right around the corner. The
enormous consequences without adequate budgets for valuing human life was too
severe for the NHDOT and the Districts 4 Engineer…the known severely degraded
walkway wooden planks and the iron works that holds up the walkway. The easy
default that just defers pain and suffering…compared to shutting downing down
the bridge, walkway or gaining more funding for the NH transportation system…was
to knowingly turn a blind eye to the rotting walkway and to falsify NH and federal
documents.
As Ralph Nader once chewed us all out…he
said it was always about the least worst choice. It always about the least worst
choice. It is never about our highest or best choice. It is never about us all
being honorable men and women. The miserable and rotten system makes our lives
all about least worst choices. Our children live whole least worst lives. Did god
make a least worst Universe?
You know when an organization is near
brain dead…where they don’t appreciate paper work and the bureaucracy. Were
everyone in trained that documented observations and concerns are
extraordinarily important attributes for a learning organization. You make it
easily document their concerns in public form and you make is the issues non
erasable and searchable. You hold yourself accountable to the voter, public, and everyone.
If you ignore something or miss it then a
person can come back through the recorded document. I warned them. Here, this
is from their system…see, they got a pattern going on here. I am telling you
this is powerful stuff and it leverages experiences in the learning
organization.
Then you got the constant do nothing
complainers. You say stop that chatter, do something about it. Make a complaint
and stick with to the end. The rumor is these guys are serious with complaints
and you can change things. Right, you are talking about public participation
and the little guy gaining faith in government. But I am crazy guy at the foot
of the bridge wearing a halo and putting a cut blue sheet over my
shoulders…
It is
easily apparent to me the NHDOT increasingly is losing the organizational
ability to discriminate between little human safety risk or community well-being
risk and enormous risk of injury, death and widespread wellbeing risk to a
community. They increasingly can’t separate the background noise from an
important signals or message. The NHDOT is facing deepening troubles with NHDOT
budgets and ever increasing to-do-list of degraded roads, bridge and
infrastructure. A human’s brain or organization ability to discriminate big
problems from little problems is a wonderful gift…when a brain is forced to
discriminate too much it becomes exhausted or we call it we “become numbed”.
Becoming numb in high consequence organizations, as is in prolong driving a car
in heavy metropolitan congestion and traffic becomes extraordinarily dangerous
when you become numbed…is very dangerous. It is much like if an organization dances
around or jumps over the fire too much…you become numb to the dangers of the
fire.
I am warning you, New Hampshire is a runaway
monster without a conscience…or they have become severely numbed by an
increasing assortment of problems, financial problems and pressures. They can’t
tell right from wrong, background noise from critical warnings and information.
NH is acting as a monster…we have become monsters because we have become so
inattentive, exhausted and numbed because of insecurity, inadequate resources
and increasing needs.
2)
You got real issues with this 1921 (Brattleboro) bridge
swinging, vibrating and swaying under light load and traffic conditions. It
gets much worst increasingly with heavier traffic. Two or three cars and a
pickup truck on the bridge gets that bridge vibrating uncomfortably. Heavy
traffic, big trucks and especially semis creates stomach wrenching vibrations,
creates resonant traffic vibrations. I
am taking about swaying and up and down…plus the big vibrations. There got to
be some engineering limits or standards to this dangerous motion. Something is really wrong with that bridge.
I consider this abnormal bridge movement a
dire warning of imminent bridge collapsed and a direly weak or damaged bridge
structure. I kid everyone; you have to take your motion sickness (Dramamine) meds
if you don’t want to throw up before you get 350 feet to the other side of the
bridge.
I am
just saying, you could have a lot of unseen damage and degradation to the
bridge stiffening structural members, relatively small iron works…this could set
up this tragic heavy unnatural vibration and swaying. It just could be a poor
design for the conditions we place this 1921 bridge under with the heavier
vehicles and never anticipated heavy traffic. Traffic levels drastically are on
the way up too in the coming years…
They got
small cell phone like instrumentation and powerful accelerometers. They could
record the bridge vibration and send them the data intermittently through the
cell phone system. They got decent accurate modern computer structural
programs…they could give you a normal range of bridge vibrations. It would give
you an early indication of developing bridge problems. Did I remind you this
bridge is 93 years old?
It
is interesting thinking about the historic and future daily average traffic
going across this bridge. As I say, New Hampshire is a monster without a
conscience to think our bridge can withstand the beating of 13,000 car and
trucks per day for any length of time. Think about this increasingly severe
degradation going on in an assortment of 1921 bridge components and 13,000
vehicles traveling across the bridge in 2015. They should put the NHDOT
executives into the Retreat. You catch trend with the rate of change of
vehicles a day going over this in a very short period? How much traffic will the farm tractor supply
store and burgeoning fireworks industry bring us by 2020? My best estimate with
the politics of New Hampshire is the new bridge won’t be built for 50 years.
The 1915 “Sewalls Falls Road Bridge” in
Concord NH is another of the NHDOT’s Frankenstein monsters with allowing huge
chunks of the bridge to fall off and they say you are good to go till 2015 if you cross that bridge with your eyes
closed. Hinsdale is heading directly to the Sewalls Falls Road Bridge. ..with
huge weight restriction and lane limitations.
God help us all if the economy picks up?
2010:
7200 vehicles per day (vpd)
2012:
9700 vpd
2015:
13,000 vpd
This spring I asked my
“corn cobbling” NHDOT Bridge lead inspector buddy if this bridge is swaying and
vibrating dangerously? He said the new Navy Seabees Bridge does the same
vibrating and swinging…all modern bridge does this to minimize stresses. It
sounded good from a NHDOT bridge inspection leader, right. I wonder how much
bridge inspection training they really get and their educations levels. These
guys probable get a three week quickie course and a few days of training every
ten years. The first thing NH cuts has always been training and education.
The next thing I know I was
then standing for 2 hours in the middle of the New Route 9 Connecticut River
Seabees Bridge four miles upstream from Hinsdale in heavy traffic. It is really
a beautiful and sturdy bridge. The bridge doesn’t have any walkway, the old
bridge is the walkway…so I was standing on the unprotected spacey and gorgeous breakdown
safety lane. I mean, what was I going to tell the cops if they came? I was
trying to get a feel for the bridge vibration? They would have been taking me
to Retreat. It was solid and vibration free. It was if I standing on a granite
outcrop on the nearby Wantastiquet Mountain. I think all these NHDOT employees
are habituated into lying and telling half-truths to the stupid mushroom
public. Or just not talking when they know something…
3) What
is up with that huge anchor bolt not being attached to the concrete footing on
the Brattleboro Bridge’s southern corner side? Why is the really thick iron
plate bent that attaches the nut to the dangling anchor bolt? Why is the thick iron plate below the bent
iron plate mostly destroyed by corrosion and it is 80% delaminated? The concern
I have with seeing this picture with the original 1921 concrete, is massive
degradation of the bridge west concrete footing. The big semis would be beating
the hell out of this concrete. As with the massive unseen corrosion destruction
of the iron plates seen in my picture that is deep within the belly of this
beast, how assured can we be that the other iron structural components on or
near the footing or foundation are not destroyed.
“WSDOT Bridge Design Manual”
Obviously,
bridges cannot be built incrementally longer without eventually requiring
expansion joint devices. The incidence of approach pavement distress problems
increases markedly with increased movement that must be accommodated by the end
diaphragm pressing against the backfill. Approach pavement distress includes
pavement and backfill settlement and broken approach slab anchors.
…If some means
was not used to accommodate this, the bridge could buckle.
4) The
Brattleboro Bridge has no expansion joint. Our bridge can expand and contract
to the tune of 2 to 6 inches between the extremes of the outside seasonal
temperatures. Both sides of these bridges are hard attached by multiple large
anchor bolts to the crumbling 1921 concrete footing or foundation. The bridge
has an expansion joint on the west side…it is non-functional…the deck is hard
attached to the footing on both side. Why isn’t a lack of a functioning bridge
expansion joint leading to serious bridge degradation and an eventual bride
collapse? I think this is a critical bridge design error and it is amazing that
massive bridge damage hasn’t shown up yet…
NTSB 2007 Investigation into
the Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
“Expansion joint: A meeting point
between two parts of a structure that is designed to allow for independent
movement of the parts due to thermal expansion while protecting the parts from
damage. Expansion joints are commonly visible on a bridge deck as a hinged or
movable connection perpendicular to the roadway”
5) The
bridge rollers are frozen in place and a roller (rocker bearing) is displaced at an angle indicating severe
bridge movement. I got a feeling during prior bridge renovations and
refurbishment the NHDOT intentionally bypassed the bridge rollers by hard
connecting the bridge deck to the footing or foundation though huge anchor
bolting?
NTSB 2007 Investigation into the
Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
“Rocker
bearing: A bridge support bearing that accommodates thermal
expansion and contraction of the superstructure through a rocking action.”
This
should be damaging the bridge and leading to a bridge collapse as read in all
the bridge engineering and maintenance procedures. It leads to much more
expensive maintenance on a bridge on a not maintained bridge. It should be
noticed the traffic entrance at both ends of the bridge comes on the bridge at
an angle or not good geometry…not a straight shot across the bridge including
their entrances. It is a lot to torque (centrifugal) and stress for a bridge
with a car or heavy truck turning on the bridge at high speeds. This creates
all sorts unnatural bridge stress with the modern vehicle weights and
unimagined traffic at bridge design time that was never considered in the
initial bridge analysis. See pictures in my blog.
6) On
the west side of the Brattleboro Bridge the huge upper truss (2) iron beams
(holds up the deck) are connected to the concrete by a huge metal bracket (4).
A huge metal nut and bolt, along with metal plates, holds the critical truss to
the concrete abutment or footing. There is massive and severe corrosion going
on in all these components. The concrete footing is severely cracked and
spalled allowing road water to intrude deeply into the degraded abutment or/and
footing. I estimate the safety critical truss, bolting and brackets are more
than 70% destroyed. Stomach wrenching and throwing up disgusting pictures of
these components are on my blog. The pictures from my camera don’t near capture
how bad this area is and can’t give you
a good impression of the depth of wastage.
7) The
whole Brattleboro Bridge East entrance is subsiding and shifting. This includes the bridge abutment, footing,
foundation, masonry materials, the large granite blocks are displaced, piers
and the whole east end of the bridge. In the right weather conditions,
saturated soil the heavy truck vibrations could get massive shifting or a landside of
the entrance under soil ending with the huge bridge and its passengers calving
into the river. That includes both sided of the bridge detaching from the
foundations with its weak attachments and the bridge tipping over in the river.
We have no idea what is under the bridge foundation…it is probably river sand,
composting sentiment and compacting mud. In 1921 you can’t count on it being
rock ledge or granite bed rock. Remember “Island Park” is nothing but a
Connecticut River sand bar.
8) Let’s
play the “value of human” life hide and seek game? State NHDOT peek-a-boo. This
should take the breath away from any bridge civil engineer of any standing what-so-ever.
NTSB 2007 Investigation
into the Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
Distortion of Gusset
Plates: The
Safety Board concludes that distortion such as bowing is a sign of an
out-of-design condition that should be identified and subjected to further engineering
analysis to ensure that the appropriate level of safety is maintained.
Can
you find the bent and detaching bridge gusset on the Brattleboro Bridge? Bent
and damage bridge gussets are a severe indication of imminent bridge failure or
collapse. You blind and stupid civil engineers’ need a clue and a real life, it
is on the east side of the Brattleboro Route 119 Bridge with the subsiding
bridge entrance and its foundation, and the severe corrosion to the upper truss
connection, to the bridge crumbling foundation.
BRATTLEBORO,
VT – HINSDALE, NH TRANSPORTATION CORRIDOR BRF 2000(19)SC June, 2013
‘The
existing substructures are a mix of concrete and masonry materials. Vertical
and horizontal clearances are inadequate by current AASHTO design standards. In
1988 structural elements were replaced. In 1993 a sidewalk was installed on the
north side of both bridges. In 2003 precast concrete deck panels were installed
on both bridges. Despite ongoing maintenance efforts, both bridges are considered
seriously deteriorated due to river scouring at the foundations, concrete
spalling in the abutments and piers, and corrosion to the structural steel
framing.”
9) Towards
the west end of the Brattleboro Bridge a vertical member, maybe a diagonal
member near the road bed is severely bent and displaced. I suspect it occurred
on contact with a snow plow or it comes from a vehicle accident when this
member wasn’t protected by, maybe the 1988 installed guard rail job.
NTSB 2007 Investigation into the
Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
“Corrosion on Gusset
Plates: The
I‑35W bridge was only one of a number of steel
truss bridges that were found to have gusset plate corrosion and section loss
that had been overlooked or underestimated by State bridge inspectors. In 1996,
gusset plates on the eastbound Lake County Grand River bridge in Ohio failed
while the bridge was undergoing maintenance. The failure was attributed to
corrosion and section loss, which had completely penetrated the gusset plates
at some locations. The amount of section loss had been masked by corrosion
products to the extent that it could not be adequately assessed solely through
visual bridge inspections.”
The
below road grade gusset to which the vertical member is attached is severely
corroded and the rust is black and delaminating. It’s got two huge rust bubbles
on this gusset protruding out maybe a quarter inch on each side and thick
delaminated rust layers can clearly be seen. The gusset is below road level and
it is exposed to a lot of salt in the winter. I suspect the significant vehicle
contact bent the lower gusset in two places…this is where the cancerous rust is
growing. For all the below road grade gussets I intensely inspected, this
gusset is by far the worst…this is””way”” worse than any of the others.
NTSB 2007 Investigation into the
Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
Finding #21
“The
Safety Board therefore concludes that because visual bridge inspections alone,
regardless of their frequency, are inadequate to always detect corrosion on
gusset plates or to accurately assess the extent or progression of that
corrosion, inspectors should employ appropriate nondestructive evaluation
technologies when evaluating gusset plates.”
I
believe bending this gusset in a vehicle collision intensified the corrosion
process and poor inspection allowed this condition to fester. This corrosion is
so thick there just in no way to access the metal integrity underneath it. The
thickness of the metal plate could be severely degraded and we have no idea if
there are cracks developing in the gusset underneath the member damage and
severely delaminating rust. This half inch gusset looks like it is an “inch” thick
looking at it from the side.
NTSB 2007 Investigation
into the Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
Probable Cause
The
National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the
collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was the inadequate load
capacity, due to a design error by Sverdrup & Parcel and Associates, Inc.,
of the gusset plates at the U10 nodes, which failed under a combination of (1)
substantial increases in the weight of the bridge, which resulted from previous
bridge modifications, and (2) the traffic and concentrated construction loads
on the bridge on the day of the collapse. Contributing to the design error was
the failure of Sverdrup & Parcel’s quality control procedures to ensure
that the appropriate main truss gusset plate calculations were performed for
the I-35W bridge and the inadequate design review by Federal and State
transportation officials.
>>>Contributing
to the accident was the generally accepted practice among Federal and State
transportation officials of giving inadequate attention to gusset plates during
inspections for conditions of distortion, such as bowing, and of excluding gusset
plates in load rating analyses.<<<
It doesn’t look like the
NHDOT did their mandatory gusset inspection of every similar style bridge
coming out of the 2007 NTSB Minneapolis I 35 bridge collapse investigation…
NTSB 2007 Investigation
into the Minneapolis I35 Bridge Collapse
Gusset
plate: A metal plate used to unite multiple structural members of
a truss.
I
believe the ‘Environmental Assessment BRATTLEBORO, VT – HINSDALE, NH TRANSPORTATION
CORRIDOR BRF 2000(19)SC “ is severely incomplete and has a serious lack of
granularity. The Environment Assessment report wasn’t observant enough with truck
and car bridge interactions. They are keying off the NHDOT who have falsified
their reports and they haven’t done independent evaluations of the structural
condition of both bridges.
I
will submit to you, there is way more tractor trailers and giant logging
tractor trailers trucks than cement trucks.
This
is how it should have been stated the truck and car interaction. The local population
who crosses these bridges know what I am saying is accurate. Typically only one
large semi and no cars can passage critical choke points at the same times. If
the assessment is so incomplete with traffic interactions, why isn’t other
assessment and analysis incomplete?
Typically
on both entrances of the Brattleboro Bridge, the vast majority of the semis
stop before he enters the bridge. He is waiting for all the traffic to clear
before he jumps onto the bridge. He is also waiting for a polite vehicle on the
other side of the bridge to stop before enters the bridge. At multiple points,
his cab has to jump into the opposing traffic lane so he can get his big butt “way
back there” to make it around the protruding corner of the bridge. It take him
many feet to get his big rig straighten out on the bridge. A lot of these semis,
once on the bridge, ride in the middle of bridge straddling both lanes. He
doesn’t want anyone on the bridge with him. Then he has to put his cab in the
opposing traffic lane so his butt “way back there” will be able to make it
around the corner. The sides of the bridge have drastically inadequate
height…he could damage the trailer and bridge because the trailer is too high
if he drive too close to the outside of the road. He drives in both lanes of
traffic so his trailer won’t be damaged. So that is another reason these semis take up
the two lanes of this two lane bridge. They even do that on the Hinsdale Bridge
even with no sharp corners and a straight approach in both directions. Even
small trucks and the semis know the small truck can’t be on the bridge with the
semi.
You
can see the guard railing damage on both sides of the bridge when a semi driver
misjudges this maneuver…it happens a lot.
I am saying this report severely minimizes the
truck traffic and car problems with their passage through the critical choke
points on the Hinsdale Route 119 bridges. They just weren’t very observant with
their reporting. They are severely downplaying the condition of the bridge.
“Simultaneous
passage of two large trucks at this curve, and on the bridges, is
difficult.”
We
are in a Town and locale emergency…it is a huge emergency. This report doesn’t
state that clearly. We could lose the bridge at any moment…get draconian
vehicle restrictions in the next second…lose lives in a bridge collapse. These could hurt tens of thousands of people
and many businesses. We are in a state NHDOT hurricane Katrina or Superstorm
Sandy emergency…our New Hampshire state government has caught on fire and
nobody has called 911 and the fire department yet.
I am
available to give tours explaining my pictures…especially for executives and
engineers with the NHDOT, any government officials and the media. I will teach
you a lot. You should bring Dramamine
and wear old jeans. Some areas would need you to be a little gutsy and you
shouldn’t be too afraid of heights. Just give me a call or throw me email.
Mike Mulligan, Hinsdale, NH
16033368320 (fixed)
steamshovel2002@yahoo.com
I
was the instigator of one of the largest fraud criminal cases in the State of
New Hampshire ($500 million -$600 million dollars and many people going to jail)
.
God
only gives me the impossible cases….the problems everyone has given up on. They
bring me into a problem when all hope is lost. I take the cases nobody else will
touch. I am the prince of the improbable and the impossibility.
Sincerely,
Mike
Mulligan
PO
161
Hinsdale,
NH
