"M" bridge over Mississippi closed

Phil Swift and his flex-paste can fix that up in a jiffy

 

Maybe a few of those barge tows will head up the Tenn-Tom Waterway. It's smaller and slower, but it will get you around Memphis and into the Tennessee River.

 

J. B. Weld!!

 

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/steel/pubs/hif13020/hif13020.pdf

 

Rains shut it down in 2019.May now too.
TTW | Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway

 

here's a good picture. Now they're saying up to a year
Expert: Hernando DeSoto Bridge design contributed to separation, fix could take up to a year

 

river traffic is reopened
Coast Guard reopens Mississippi River to vessel traffic after bridge crack halts barges

 

Well,, im going to put it like this ,,, that's not a crack ,,, that's a full blown break.
But I think a a big thanks needs to go out the inspector that caught that , and immediately got that bridge shut down. I don't know how long it had been broken,, but ,, he for sure saved a few lives ,, that could have been pretty bad ,,, if it continued to have gone unfound . Although, it looks like just about anyone floating under that bridge,, could've just looked up and seen it.
But luckily, it was caught before tragedy happened.

 

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- River traffic has reopened on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee, three days after it was closed when a crack was discovered in the Interstate 40 bridge that connects Tennessee and Arkansas, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday.

The Arkansas Department of Transportation, meanwhile, said a video taken by an inspector two years ago found “significant rust and the beginning of a crack" in the same area as the fracture that prompted the bridge's shutdown this week.

More than 60 tugboats hauling more than 1,000 barges were in line Friday to cross under the Hernando De Soto Bridge, the Coast Guard said.

 

If they were to wrap that crack with plastic bags and put gasoline on it ???

 

You would think that they would have been doing continuous monitoring and developing a work around before now...

 

You would think....


But you would be wrong. At every level the bureaucracy is more than broken, it is actively dysfunctional

 

DOT said it should be ready for the monday morning commute.

 

What the hell is going on here ?

 

I heard that the inspector that inspected that bridge last year has been fired . As he pretty well should be .
Is that beam on the other side cracking also ?? That bridge won't be in service for quite a while , I suspect.

 

Looks like a crack starting, Probably cheap chinese steel

 

My son's aircraft structural maintenance friends came up with this

 

You know ,,, I said this a few years ago when we were getting all of our steel from other countries. I told a guy ,, unless we are doing structural tests on the steel we were importing ,, we could quite possibly be seeing our buildings and bridges failing in a few years . That bridge was built in 1973,, so it may be mainly built with hopefully good ole American steel.

 

couple of come-alongs and a bunch of mending plates and some joker down there with a tombstone buzz box will have that all fixed up in no time.