These pictures were taken this morning of bridges in the Thayer area.
Sorry about the poor quality of these pictures. My camera is cheap and I never claimed to be a crack photographer.
These first two were taken at the Warm Fork Park, looking up at the bridge that spans over it.
In this one, look through the second sideways triangle of the cross beams, next to the big center beam. You can see a couple of patches where the concrete is missing.
In this one, look at how the concrete around second and third drainage holes (the rectangles) from the left is falling away from the bottom up.
The last four were taken on the Highway 19 bridge between Front Street and Wyandotte, over the railroad tracks.
Again, the pictures are not great -- I had to stand on a rickety pedestrian walkway on the side of the bridge with some boards that felt a little too springy for
this acrophobic. So when I felt a panic attack coming on, I tucked my tail between my legs and headed back to the car. The last place I want to have a panic attack is on a rickety walkway on the side of a bridge I'm estimating some thirty feet over the railroad tracks.
Here you see the concrete completely gone around the two drainage holes in the middle.
Here, at the seam, you see one end of the concrete worn away. What you might not be able to see clearly are the ends of a couple of pieces of rebar sticking out.
Here is the "near" side of the same seam. If you look through the chain-link you can see the concrete worn away on this side too.
You have to look closely on this one, but on the other side of the chain link, you can see that the concrete has fallen away from the bottom up almost all the way through to the roadway.
Granted, it's unlikely a bridge collapse here would be on the same scale as the one in Minneapolis. But it's not that unusual to find ten cars at a time on that first bridge.
Labels: bridge collaps
# posted by The Last American @ 2:10 PM
