Fiery Crash Melts Calif. Bridge Interchange - washingtonpost.com
OAKLAND, Calif., April 29 — A heavily traveled section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames, authorities said.
Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck’s driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.
I’m glad this never happened, because it could not have happened. It is, in fact, impossible for it to happen. I have it on the best authority. Some obese, unfunny, dumbass comedian assured us all that, as she and everybody else knows, it is impossible for fire to melt steel.
Chuck Simmins has more.
If it actually did happen, my guess is that GWB personally set the explosives. Or had Condi do it. After all, she’s familiar with the area.
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Clearly, this was done to discredit the 9/11 truthers.
From a Dept of Homeland Security special bulletin: There is no credible evidence that this was a terrorist act. Any use of the word terrorist is sheer hysteria.
(Lest anyone be misled: I made up the “special bulletin”. At least, I sure hope this announcement hasn’t already been made.)
The trucker’s name was Mosqueda, which might raise a few eyebrows, but apparently the name is spanish in origin.
Bill, I’m disappointed in this unusual faulty bit of analysis on your part. This is obviously the work of Cheney. Hello?! Tanker Truck. Halliburton.
In the early ’80’s there was a tanker turnover on the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, but no fuel spill or fire. The bridge is a two mile long hump, 240 feet above the bay in the middle (so navy ships can pass under it), and state engineers realized that if there had been a spill, the fuel would flow down into oncoming traffic.
The engineers decided on a pipeline the fire trucks could tap into to wash away the fuel, or if it ignited, break up the wall of flame. That installation was held up for two years because environmentalists didn’t want any fuel washed into the bay (I’m not making this up).
In the meantime, it was decided to ban tanker trucks from using the bridge. The problem was that an existing law was used, and it set the fine at 75 bucks. that was a lot in the ’40’s, but for an 8,000 gallon tanker, it was less than a penny a gallon, and shippers just added it to the charges, rather than travel all the way around the bay.
Before the ban there were 5-7 tankers crossing per week, and after the ban, there were 4-5. The CHP stopped that by ticketing the tankers on the Coronado side, and then making them go back across the bridge and go around the bay. The tanker traffic dropped to about one a month.
Once the public found out, there was outrage all around, but fortunately, the enviros accepted a drainage system that channeled runoff to filtration tanks at both ends of the bridge. By the time the public learned of the u-turn technique the drainage system and pipeline were ready to be used.
When a road passes under a bridge, there’s no way to make that bridge fireproof, whether it’s steel or pre-stressed concrete. The expansion joints of that upper bridge section that failed will probably be modified, but the solution is probably going to involve a waterline, automatic or manual sprinklers/jets, environmentalist demands and a lot of money. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to be implemented.
The trucker’s name was Mosqueda, which might raise a few eyebrows, but apparently the name is spanish in origin.
What I found rather puzzling was the guy’s behavior - it was said he walked away from the mishap down to a gas station and called a cab to take him to a hospital. I don’t see why that would have been necessary, given the ubiquity of the cell phone. And then there’s the little problem of an involved party leaving the scene of a wreck…