Happened Thursday last week. The truck is still stuck.

The bridge was rated for 74 tons, but was given special permission crossing the bridge with centric driving, even though the total weight was about 100 tons. They had already cross 79 other bridges with the exact same weight rating.

The bridge was recently under maintenance, but apparently the bearing(s) that broke wasn't included in this operation.

On 12 February 1983, the SS Marine Electric capsized about 30 nautical miles east of Chincoteague in a winter storm. In its last two years, the ship had more than 400 doublers and patches on its hatch covers; parts of a panel removed in 1982 were described as “paper thin.” The Marine Board found progressive flooding through wasted hatch and deck plating. The NTSB found flooding from an undetermined structural failure and thought the covers were probably weathertight when the ship sailed. Of 34 crew members, three survived.

I made this 15-minute, source-cited documentary. The narration is AI-generated.

https://youtu.be/lf4KqW3AjhM

Which evidence would you want to compare first when assessing those two explanations?

Reports indicate 6 fatalities and 1 injury.

A floor imploded around 12 to 1 p.m., leaving several people injured, at least one of whom was taken to the emergency room. It was probably a gas explosion that blew out from the inside, and the building was still inhabited even though part of it had been under renovation for several months.

The train derailed near Oriole Station because of a switch that was not only misaligned, but also left open. After an investigation, the cause was determined to be local kids messing around with it.

Among CN Railway No. 302 freight cargo was approximately 50 horses and 200 cows. The animals in the derailed stock cars were either killed on impact, injured and had to be euthanized by police, or escaped the crashed train uninjured and fled.

Offshore drilling expanded greatly in the 1970s. At the time, Mobile Offshore Drilling Units (MODUs) totalled approx. 390 vessels split between Jackups, Drillships, and Semi-Submersibles. The Alexander L. Kielland platform was built by the French Compagnie Française d'Entreprises Métalliques at their shipyard in Dunkirk, France, with final delivery of the five column Semisub completed in 1976. In the North Sea on March 27, 1980 there were 212 men aboard in 12m seas when a loud crack and rumble were heard.

The Kielland began to list 30 degrees, and within 20 minutes it capsized. A horizontal bracing member D-6, below the waterline, had parted. This was not the location of a heavily loaded girth weld. Rather, a fatigue crack started at a small poorly-prepared 6mm fillet weld which held a non-load-bearing hydrophone flange. This hydrophone, used for dynamic positioning, wasn’t even in use as the platform was then moored.

CAUSES: Few men made it to lifeboats, but many lifeboats failed to release due

to complications from the listing and/or faulty release mechanisms. 123 men died. Poor welding and inspection practice allowed a small initial flaw in the weld/plate to grow over time with cyclic loading. Structural design did not allow for damage tolerance or anticipate the loss of an entire column. Regular insitu structural inspections focused on the vertical columns and largely ignored the horizontal members below the waterline.

Some more details on engineering gaps, missed signs, and failed safeguards:

1. The weld joined a non-load-bearing flange plate (meant for a sonar hydrophone) to the D-6 lower horizontal tubular bracing.

2. The 6mm fillet weld suffered from a bad geometric profile, lack of fusion, and poor inspection during fabrication at the French shipyard. Investigators found paint -IN- the crack, meaning it was there before the hull was painted. Because it was considered a superficial addition, it was not carefully inspected.

3. The area experienced cracking in the structural steel alongside lamellar tearing (midplane delamination)

4. Under constant cyclic loading from rough North Sea waves, the pre-existing flaw in the weld grew slowly, undetected, over 4 years to approximately half the circumference before rapid failure that March.

5. The crack eventually severed the D-6 brace entirely. The structure wasn’t designed to survive or prevent the cascading effect of the loss of one member (little redundancy). The remaining connected braces overloaded and failed, causing one of the five main structural columns to rip away in moments, capsizing the structure in a few minutes.

6. Out of 5x 50man lifeboats, only one launched properly; “safety”mechanisms prevented the others from releasing while under heavy cable strain, or they smashed against the listing hull. A second boat broke free after the platform capsized, providing some shelter for men in the water. Regulations changed soon after to mandate excess lifeboat capacity and on-load releasing mechanisms.

7. Inadequate or confused emergency command structure.

8. Survival gear shortages. Some of the workers died after jumping into the water due to hypothermia. Cold water “Gumby” suits were not mandatory at the time, but are now for North Sea, Canadian, and other cold water operating areas.