ALERT Memphis bridge closed

[pauldingbabe]

DC ingrates have no idea how important that river traffic is to guts of this country.

I try really hard to be a glass half full kind of gal.

Well on the bright side, that grain can't be exported to China if the barges can't get it to the gulf.

Sorry I'm really trying to find a bright side in a world filled with darkness. I'm failing more and more.

 

[LibertyMom]

I have been following this story as I have family in the area and drove across the bridge twice last week. I hadn’t intended to post, but some of the questions and supposals warrant a few words.

The bridge is inspected every 24 months. This was its bi-annual check-up when the cracks were found.

Traffic was IMMEDIATELY shut down and even inspection crews were cleared from the bridge as soon as the crack(s) were spotted.

It is not currently known precisely when the cracks appeared, but rusting indicates at least a week ago.

Barge traffic will resume once structural engineers have determined whether the bridge will support its own weight.

A concrete bridge is held up by compression, but a steel bridge is held up by (pulling) tension. So a crack in the steel needs immediate attention to determine severity.

It is my understanding that there are multiple cracks. The photo they keep showing is the most dramatic.

As someone mentioned earlier, it was fitted with updated seismic something-or-other several years ago. None of those fittings appear stressed so it does not seem to be a result of seismic activity.

There is not currently an indication that either vehicular or river accidents caused the cracks.

This bridge gets TONS of traffic every day, all year long. I heard the number 50,000 as opposed to 30,000 for the nearby I-55 bridge. Now the I-55 bridge will be taking a good bit of that load (as well as some of the others significantly further north and south)

The I-55 bridge was inspected on schedule (can’t remember if they said last year or two years ago) and was in good shape.

The state of Arkansas is responsible for the structural investigation. The state of Tennessee is responsible for repairs. (State line is near the middle of the bridge.)

In addition to the inconvenience, some businesses between Memphis, TN and West Memphis, AR are struggling.

 

[helen]

USGS earthquakes

All magnitudes for the last 30 days, run five minutes ago.

 

[Millwright]

Sorry I'm really trying to find a bright side in a world filled with darkness. I'm failing more and more.

 

[helen]

Back in the nineties, before the internet, one of the elders directed me to research the New Madrid earthquake over 200 years ago.

I found projected damage with the same magnitude would crack foundations in Wagoner, Oklahoma.

I wonder if earthquake clusters to the west of the New Madrid fault are feeding ground movement back to the fault? It took force to break that steel beam, but it could have been cumulative. They inspect the bridge often enough to call the break recent.

 

[MrsClaus]

Were they able to inspect the entire bridge or did they stop everything when the fracture was found?

 

[bw]

Were they able to inspect the entire bridge or did they stop everything when the fracture was found?

If people aren't climbing all over it, I bet there are drones that are doing the job. They aren't just standing well back waiting for it to fall.

 

[John Deere Girl]

Delete

 

[night driver]

https://s29755.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/I-40-bridge-Memphis-768x432.jpg

The close-ups are butt puckering, but this pic is what slammed MY butt closed. As you look at the closeups, the optical illusion is that the steel is supported.
THIS view shows tha tthere are NO supports for that beam. Those 2 ends are hanging out in space.

 

[Millwright]

https://s29755.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/I-40-bridge-Memphis-768x432.jpg

The close-ups are butt puckering, but this pic is what slammed MY butt closed. As you look at the closeups, the optical illusion is that the steel is supported.
THIS view shows tha tthere are NO supports for that beam. Those 2 ends are hanging out in space.

 

[fi103r]

Back in the nineties, before the internet, one of the elders directed me to research the New Madrid earthquake over 200 years ago.

I found projected damage with the same magnitude would crack foundations in Wagoner, Oklahoma.

I wonder if earthquake clusters to the west of the New Madrid fault are feeding ground movement back to the fault? It took force to break that steel beam, but it could have been cumulative. They inspect the bridge often enough to call the break recent.

look at that string of quakes in the Mississippi valley ding ding ding something shifted

 

[goosebeans]

Does steel usually fracture so cleanly?

 

[Millwright]

Does steel usually fracture so cleanly?

It could have started with a minor flaw.

 

[goosebeans]

It could have started with a minor flaw.

Thanks, Millwright. I was looking at the close up that was posted earlier and the horizontal crack across the top of the beam looks to be perfectly, ruler straight . It just surprised me. I guess there's a "grain" that it's following.

 

[LibertyMom]

Were they able to inspect the entire bridge or did they stop everything when the fracture was found?

They stopped and cleared the bridge, then conducted additional inspections with drones. I didn’t hear any updates this afternoon so not sure whether they have allowed crews back onto the bridge yet.

 

[night driver]

Thanks mill. I tried 5 ways and none of em worked for me.

That whole "out in space" is the scarey part. They right now TRULY have NO idea how that bridge is standing.

Question. IF it is actually just hanging out there being held together by paint and angels, would welding another box around the break give them enough cohesion that they could actually go in and load repair machinery and equipment to repair/replace that 900 foot beam??

 

[Wildwood]

Please don't bash me for my ignorant musings but I am curious if the bitterly cold weather we had in this region in February could have contributed by making the steel much more brittle than usual and if there was a flaw or weakness in that spot, could it have pushed it over the edge. The one night was the coldest night we've had in at least a few decades.

Add to that the much heavier traffic in the last ten or fifteen years and it makes me wonder. Cold weather aside, I also have to wonder if that bridge was constructed for the increased volume of traffic it gets now compared to when it was first built. Having crossed it regularly in the seventies and comparing that to the huge increase in traffic when we go back for a visit now, I'd say it's probably at least doubled with a much larger proportion of eighteen wheelers.

That I-55 bridge makes me a nervous wreck and always has but I have bridge phobia any way. I much prefer the Helena bridge and we often get off the interstate before we get to Memphis and go that way since our destination is south of Memphis. I always make DH top off the gas tank as soon we got to his hometown in case a disaster hits and we need to get back to Arkansas. I know y'all understand that even if they all think I'm crazy. You'd think living on the New Madrid fault they would want to be prepared to evacuate.

 

[night driver]

Would have to go down WELL below -60F before you get to brittleness issues with steel.

Sophomore Physics question:

"Peyton Hall (the Physics building) is 350 feet long. Summer temps here are 95-105* F and winter temps are -50 to -60 *F. How much expansion/contraction must be dealt with the full length of the building? Steel expansion/contraction coeficients are biggetyboggetyboo in *C."


My MEMORY of that was about 27 inches of expansion/contraction. MUCH more a problem than brittleness.
(This explained the 5 6-9" rubber expansion points in the building, by the way. Yes, Potsdam is fun in the winter.)

 

[bw]

"Peyton Hall (the Physics building) is 350 feet long. Summer temps here are 95-105* F and winter temps are -50 to -60 *F.

That qualifies as a chilly winter, even for Minnesota. It sort of sounds like my high school.

 

[night driver]

Look up how much of Canada is SOUTH of Potsdam NY.

 

[Walrus]

Does steel usually fracture so cleanly?

Short answer: Yes, especially when it's stressed past its shear value due to dynamic loads (think of a bridge load of 18-wheelers bouncing along the bridge in the summertime).

Somewhere the design safety factors - which are supposed to be WAY above reality - were exceeded, which caused the stress failure. That's a classic shear stress picture.

I don't know the specs of the steel used but I suspect it'd need to be fairly ductile to avoid the necessity of stress relieving when its components are welded together (not bolted together as the stringers would be). My totally uneducated guess would be in the range under 80 ksi. This could be higher-strength steel than that; the deal is that higher-strength steels fracture way more cleanly than do more ductile (less brittle) steels. I just don't know bridges, so I need to talk to a civil engineering buddy who knows them well.

 

[Walrus]

Not a steel worker, but how would it crack like that...seems there would have been a bend in the metal? Or is that what a stress fracture looks like.

That is exactly what a classic stress fracture looks like.

 

[Satanta]

I'd have to look at a map but pretty sure that the one I drove a Ryder towing my Jeep on a trailer across. I could see missing pavement, rebar and water below.

So they are closing for a crack huh?

 

[Walrus]

I'd have to look at a map but pretty sure that the one I drove a Ryder towing my Jeep on a trailer across. I could see missing pavement, rebar and water below.

So they are closing for a crack huh?

The good news is, is that there's this gal in Florida who used to design pedestrian walkways over highways who's available for consultation at a good rate for any necessary upgrades/repairs. Chances are it'll pass muster after a welder gets down there and dobs on a bunch of rod to it.

 

[Walrus]

According to ARDOT, 2 of the 900 ft. support spans are broken on the Hernando DeSoto bridge.
The breaks are near the state line, so AR and TN will work together and share the cost to repair.
This repair would take a year if only one state was involved. Now we have two.

Local news is reporting that it is taking one hour to drive the seven miles from West Memphis to Memphis because of the back up. The Memphis-Arkansas bridge is only 2 lanes in each direction. Crossing from Arkansas, there is only one lane that will put you back on the interstate.

Memphis-Arkansas bridge was built back in the 1920's and is structurally in better shape than the Hernando DeSoto bridge built in the 1970's. Go figure.

That's the difference between slide rules and computers .... in other words, engineers who knew what they were doing instead of letting black-box computers spit out numbers. To be fair, the computers used at the time needed punchcards, though.

 

[vestige]

That's the difference between slide rules and computers .... in other words, engineers who knew what they were doing instead of letting black-box computers spit out numbers. To be fair, the computers used at the time needed punchcards, though.

STRUDL

 

[night driver]

GOOD friend of mine used to work for O(hio)DOT as their designated Bridge Guy. He developed for them (and then took it private with bells n whistles) a Bill-of-Materials program that asked how long and what weights and a bunch of other needed data and then gave you your whole Bill-of-Materials including steel and concrete and bolt-n-nut specs etc. ODOT indicated he saved them a TONNE of money on their bridges. And none of his have crashed...

T. J. Powell is his name. yeah he has a few initials after his name, like PE and such.

 

[bw]

I'd have to look at a map but pretty sure that the one I drove a Ryder towing my Jeep on a trailer across. I could see missing pavement, rebar and water below.

So they are closing for a crack huh?

Sounds like you were driving over grating. Lots of bridges use it.

 

[hiwall]

That crack and others might have been there for a year or more. Think of all the traffic that went over that bridge even if the crack had been there only a week before being shut down.

 

[jward]

Nearly 800 Barges Stuck In Lower Mississippi River From Bridge Crack
by Tyler Durden

3 minutes


Earlier this week, in a routine bridge inspection, an engineer climbed onto the section of the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River and spotted a massive fracture in the frame that resulted in the immediate shutdown of the bridge on Wednesday. Traffic is being rerouted to Interstate 55 Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, creating traffic jams in the Memphis area. On the Mississippi River, the situation is much worse. Hundreds of barrages are piling up on either side of the bridge as the US Coast Guard has closed the critical waterway.
After a routine inspection, officials with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) announced that the Hernando de Soto Bridge would be closed due to a crack on the bottom side of the bridge truss.

Here's a diagram of the bridge and where the fracture in the beam occurred.

A picture of the massive fractured beam. The repair could take weeks, if not months, to fix.

While road traffic is chaotic in the Memphis metro area, a much larger and possibly underreported story is the closure of the lower Mississippi River that is a critical waterway for the transportation of farm goods.
Reuters reports as of Thursday, the logjam of barrages swelled to 771. Coast guard officials closed the waterway Wednesday, preventing any vessel from passing underneath the bridge.
"At the spot where the river is closed, 26 vessels with 430 barges are waiting to pass north, and 21 vessels with 341 barges are in the queue to go south, said Petty Officer Carlos Galarza," a Coast Guard spokesman told Reuters.

Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, citing USDA data, told Bloomberg that agricultural supplies on barges north of Memphis were 84% corn and about 13% soybeans.
Galarza said a decision to reopen the waterway would occur when the TDOT completes their investigation of the fractured bridge.

TDOT officials may "have a decision for river traffic" either today or in the coming days.
At mile markers 736 and 737 on the lower Mississippi, the closure creates a logistical nightmare for vessels loaded with farm goods and destined for Gulf of Mexico export facilities to be loaded on large bulk carriers or other large ships for transport worldwide.

NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX
Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

 

[jward]

Aww. : (
Hope yer feelin' better. don't forget, ya have a wedding coming up, and that might bring baby carriages...
and and and kitties
and red wine
and sun dried linen
and fresh mown grass
and... it's all good: try as he might, the dark side can't jigger with that immutable law.

I try really hard to be a glass half full kind of gal.

Well on the bright side, that grain can't be exported to China if the barges can't get it to the gulf.

Sorry I'm really trying to find a bright side in a world filled with darkness. I'm failing more and more.

 

[Walrus]

Thanks for posting that article, jward; I'd wondered exactly where on the bridge the fracture occurred.

You know, a quick glance at the location on the bridge of that failure and the vertical displacement that it shows, almost says to me that the problem was maybe below the bridge instead of above it. In other words, not overloaded by the weight of traffic but a slight settling in that main support column which is supposed to be set down in bedrock.

Could be a combination of things: slight movement of the bedrock itself (think of the bubble of seismic events which helen posted earlier), the support column being kissed by one too many barges while the bridge was full of heavy traffic and the water was high - I guess only God knows for sure. I know I'm sure specumalating my own self, but that picture strikes me as odd considering where it is and what that failure looks like.

Whatever the cause, THAT, my friends, makes this a knotty problem to resolve. As a buddy who was raised in a Corps of Engineers family said yesterday, "Glad it's not my battle to fight".

 

[goosebeans]

I've been wracking my brains over which movie this scene was in, can't believe it popped up with just "bridge scene" search on YT

Anyway, for what it's worth, run time about 3.5 mins:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8Mc-38C88g

 

[tiredude]

Back in the nineties, before the internet, one of the elders directed me to research the New Madrid earthquake over 200 years ago.

I found projected damage with the same magnitude would crack foundations in Wagoner, Oklahoma.

I wonder if earthquake clusters to the west of the New Madrid fault are feeding ground movement back to the fault? It took force to break that steel beam, but it could have been cumulative. They inspect the bridge often enough to call the break recent.

a buddy of mine is in the military (officer) was asked to do a study on the new madrid quake....a damage assessment if it went of again. He said it would be hell on earth in the area ......nothing would walk away untouched or undamaged.......i live in the questionable area.......

 

[GingerN]

a buddy of mine is in the military (officer) was asked to do a study on the new madrid quake....a damage assessment if it went of again. He said it would be hell on earth in the area ......nothing would walk away untouched or undamaged.......i live in the questionable area.......

I wrote insurance in that area in the 90's. No one blinked an eye about putting flood and earthquake coverages on houses. They may grumble about the flood prices, but no one declined it. Too much risk not to have it.

 

[tiredude]

I wrote insurance in that area in the 90's. No one blinked an eye about putting flood and earthquake coverages on houses. They may grumble about the flood prices, but no one declined it. Too much risk not to have it.

i dont believe they offer earthquake insurance anymore.....or maybe it has become too expensive.......

 

[WalknTrot]

Coast Guard Reopens Lower Mississippi River After Closure Sparks Massive Barge Jam

by Tyler Durden
Friday, May 14, 2021 - 08:56 AM
Coast Guard Reopens Lower Mississippi River After Closure Sparks Massive Barge Jam | ZeroHedge


Update (1327ET): The US Coast Guard has reopened part of the lower Mississippi River to vessel traffic near Memphis Friday afternoon after being shut down for two days following the discovery of a bridge crack.


The river's closure created a logistical shitshow as more than1,000 barges filled with farm goods were unable to traverse the waterway.

"Based on the information provided to us by the Tennessee Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard has determined that transit under the I-40 bridge is safe for maritime traffic," said Coast Guard Capt. Ryan Rhodes, captain of the Port of Memphis.

Meanwhile, on land, with the I-40 bridge likely closed for weeks, if not months, traffic hell has been unleashed.

Traffic alert: we are stuck in this, it’s I-40 going into Memphis in West Memphis, Arkansas ⁦@FOX13Memphis⁩ pic.twitter.com/ZbxEvMRPoa
— Amy Speropoulos (@AmySperopTV) May 14, 2021

* * *
Earlier this week, in a routine bridge inspection, an engineer climbed onto the section of the Interstate 40 bridge over the Mississippi River and spotted a massive fracture in the frame that resulted in the immediate shutdown of the bridge on Wednesday. Traffic is being rerouted to Interstate 55 Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, creating traffic jams in the Memphis area. On the Mississippi River, the situation is much worse. Hundreds of barrages are piling up on either side of the bridge as the US Coast Guard has closed the critical waterway.

After a routine inspection, officials with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) announced that the Hernando de Soto Bridge would be closed due to a crack on the bottom side of the bridge truss.



Here's a diagram of the bridge and where the fracture in the beam occurred.

A picture of the massive fractured beam. The repair could take weeks, if not months, to fix.


While road traffic is chaotic in the Memphis metro area, a much larger and possibly underreported story is the closure of the lower Mississippi River that is a critical waterway for the transportation of farm goods.
Reuters reports as of Thursday, the logjam of barrages swelled to 771. Coast guard officials closed the waterway Wednesday, preventing any vessel from passing underneath the bridge.

"At the spot where the river is closed, 26 vessels with 430 barges are waiting to pass north, and 21 vessels with 341 barges are in the queue to go south, said Petty Officer Carlos Galarza," a Coast Guard spokesman told Reuters.



Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, citing USDA data, told Bloomberg that agricultural supplies on barges north of Memphis were 84% corn and about 13% soybeans.
Galarza said a decision to reopen the waterway would occur when the TDOT completes their investigation of the fractured bridge.

TDOT officials may "have a decision for river traffic" either today or in the coming days.

At mile markers 736 and 737 on the lower Mississippi, the closure creates a logistical nightmare for vessels loaded with farm goods and destined for Gulf of Mexico export facilities to be loaded on large bulk carriers or other large ships for transport worldwide.

 

[bw]

The US Coast Guard has reopened part of the lower Mississippi River to vessel traffic near Memphis Friday afternoon after being shut down for two days following the discovery of a bridge crack.

Yesterday morning I said they'd do this. They had no choice.

 

[night driver]

Well, they were going to have to open it up in some manner. It was just a wait to decide how much of the channel was going to be unblocked. which depended on how many more fractures they might have found, and how much of the bridge was in danger of getting wet suddenly.

 

[Macgyver]

She's cracked alright, that's some serious metal fatigue there

View attachment 266251

Dam
That just needs a good farmer and a 100 pounds of 6013 rods. It will be fixed before dinner.