July 23, 2013
State of Emergency in Hinsdale NH over Route 119 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 Hampshire. 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 fundamental 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 organizations 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.
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.
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 cheaply 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 facilitative 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 “hanging
by thread”severely degraded 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 Brattleboro 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.
Environmental Assessment
“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
1-603-336-8320
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
