He would also like to assure everybody that the collapse has nothing to do with the sand mining activities 100m upstream, which he didn't know about and was properly licensed anyway.
The Vietnamese Cabbage (think the Onion) is pleased to report the district has created this bridge for Valentines Day, so that lovers separated on either side can have romantic photographs taken.
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
*peers close* I don't see any real structural support... it looks like the entire thing was made of concrete... which is doable, but it'd have to be tensioned to stand up under even its own weight. And if heavy rains could bring the thing down.. how did anyone cross it?
"I subsist on 3 things: Sugar, Caffeine, and Hatred." -Baffalo late at night and hungry
"Why are you worried about the water pressure? You're near the ocean, you've got plenty of water!" -Architect to our team
Baffalo wrote:*peers close* I don't see any real structural support... it looks like the entire thing was made of concrete... which is doable, but it'd have to be tensioned to stand up under even its own weight. And if heavy rains could bring the thing down.. how did anyone cross it?
The contractors could have lied. It's pretty common in Asian rural areas outside of the developed ones, and even Japan and South Korea have their share of inept contractors.
At least no one seems to have been killed by this latest contretemps.
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
well, it was heavy rains gouged out what was left of the streambed around the central piers
Assuming they were piled (which is pretty standard here) it might be the scour hole simply went deep enough to make the exposed pile so long (and thus slender and flexible) that it snapped under the water pressure.
or the contractor lied about the pile depth.
looking very closely at the pic, there maybe rebar visible to the right of the snapped section, but to be honest I wouldn't expect to see any. It'd probably have been done as two simple precast spans, so it'd be thin pretensioned wire inside the slab.
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
To me it looks like it was an older bridge, I think I can see two worn out tire grooves on it. Also, the black stones do seem strange, it's too little to be broken tarmac - any idea what it is? Pothole repairs?
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay
Zixinus wrote:So they made a bridge that cannot be used by most cars unless they plan to fill the depth of the "v" area....
Congratulations I guess.
This is only step one of construction - after filling this foundation up, it will last centuries!
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay
Pelranius wrote:The contractors could have lied. It's pretty common in Asian rural areas outside of the developed ones, and even Japan and South Korea have their share of inept contractors.
I think you'll find that contractors who cut corners and do sloppy work in a rush, and the sort of government official who'll always hire the low bidder no matter how often it comes back to bite their department on the arse, are a truly global phenomenon.
There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)
Replace "ginger" with "n*gger," and suddenly it become a lot less funny, doesn't it?
-- fgalkin
Pelranius wrote:The contractors could have lied. It's pretty common in Asian rural areas outside of the developed ones, and even Japan and South Korea have their share of inept contractors.
I think you'll find that contractors who cut corners and do sloppy work in a rush, and the sort of government official who'll always hire the low bidder no matter how often it comes back to bite their department on the arse, are a truly global phenomenon.
While true, we see many of the most egregious examples in rapidly modernizing Asian countries.
I'm particularly reminded of the Chinese Styrofoam Bridge incident from a few months back.
the bridge was a year old - the tyre grooves are in a layer of sand on top of the bridge.
the cause of the collapse was primarily the semi-legal sand extraction going on in the stream. Bridge can't stay up when the sand under it's piers has gone.
Sand-extraction is huge over here - millions and millions of building sites, all of whom need clean sand for concrete, backfilling and raising site levels. Artificially deepening a part of a stream or river will, in effect destabilize the stream bed for 100's of meters up stream. Do it in an estuary and you get the destabilization running both ways depending on the tide.
The beach down by Hoi An is eroding at 5m a year.
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
Good news everyone! new bridge. We might have blocked half the stream width, but that's not going to be a problem until next rainy season, when the bridge will collapse (again)
fecks sake.
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
What will be really sad is that at this rate, they'll spend more money on making bad bridges than on what they would have spent if they built it only once but properly.
Credo!
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It's the fallacy that comes from sticker shock. They have the estimates for a good bridge and a bad bridge, and they think "It's so much cheaper to get this one" despite knowing that it'll probably just collapse again. It's the same fallacy that plagues some people here in the States who think that by buying an item on sale, they're saving money, and then following it up with more sales purchases and still thinking they're saving money when they've already spent far more than they've saved. In their mind, they're saving money even though they could get a better product for a bit more that will last far longer than the cheap items they've already bought.
"I subsist on 3 things: Sugar, Caffeine, and Hatred." -Baffalo late at night and hungry
"Why are you worried about the water pressure? You're near the ocean, you've got plenty of water!" -Architect to our team
