This bridge has become an ongoing saga. RIDOT did an emergency shut down of the westbound bridge when they discovered a broken rod. RIDOT claims that it broke because of an overweight truck. But photos indicate that it broke because of corrosion. In fact, it was probably broken during previous bridge inspections. The following video explains the issue better than I can.
Casey Jones has a collection of videos about this video. I watched several of his videos as they came out, but I skipped some of them because I could not stand listening to the RIDOT guy. As Casey once observed, RIDOT seems more interested in paying lawyers than engineers. I have followed Casey for a while now, and it is worth noting that he is as quick to complement good DOTs as he is to criticize bad DOTs. In other words, he is interested in the truth, not sensationalistic clickbait. Examples of DOTs that Casey thinks did a good job handling a serious bridge problem are OhioDOT and IowaDOT.
Ken Block posted three photos with the comment:
Bridge Update: An Expert Weighs In, Part 1.One of the primary architects of the Washington Bridge wrote an opinion piece in the Providence Journal that criticized the RIDOT. He said a lot, so I decided to tackle his most important points one at a time.The architect, Lazlo Siegmund, tore into the RIDOT over the broken rod shown in the attached photos. RIDOT Director has attacked me and others over our assessments of this rod, claiming that we are not properly educated to do so. Well, Mr. Siegmund most certainly is."It was evident even to lay persons that the breakage [of the rod] was not new and RIDOT should have known that the bridge had been carrying the traffic loads with the broken rod(s) for a long period."Ridiculously, Alviti claimed that this rod had broken just before the bridge was closed, and had done so due to a "heavy truck." Alviti ignores the obvious fact that this rod had corroded through and through. This kind of decay does not happen overnight. It takes years, if not decades.Alviti has never walked back his "heavy truck" defense for why RIDOT failed to detect that the bridge was about to fail. You don't need an advanced degree in metallurgy or engineering to know that the kind of rot you see in these pictures should have been noted years before the bridge was shut down.Gov. McKee and Director Alviti have both dismissed the assessments of laypeople and outside engineers, such as Casey Jones, who have pressed for answers on how this could have possibly occurred. Siegmund's analysis cannot be as easily ignored.The "see no evil, hear no evil" duo of McKee and Alviti has spent the last year and a half deflecting accountability for this monumental government failure away from RIDOT. They cannot be allowed to succeed with this cover-up.
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| 32:12 video What the problems with bridge construction in Iowa has to do with the Washington Bridge in R.I. |
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