(I read the Challenger memos too.)
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There must be cables inside the âdiagonalsâ which are then connected with the suspension cables. You can see bolts in the top surface of the âroofâ. So they were tuning the tensioning of those, when it went south.
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Hey, I remember that from an engineering course. I was in college when it happened (Hyatt Regency, the internet says). What I remember from way back then was that the field modification was necessary, because the design wasnât something that could be built. You probably know the full story, and anyone else interested can look it up, so Iâll stop there. Odd, the things that last decades in your memory.
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It will be a major lawsuit with many cross-complaints. They will all settle with each other, construction company and sub-contractors, and the settlements will all be confidential. Hopefully the families of those who died will sue them all.
It happened during the baseball strike in 1981. A baseball player was tending bar when it occurred. Why do I waste brain cells remembering that? My son was 12 at the time and baseball was his passion.
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Hyatt Regency is correct. I should have gone with âMultistory Atrium Hotelâ, which is the safe reference when you canât remember which name is the right one.
[quote=âcub_calloway, post:68, topic:69647, full:trueâ]The negligence of one person who failed to review a field modification that seemed innocuous at the time led directly to the collapse of the Marriott bridges in Kansas City.
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These things donât happen due to the negligence of one person - but of several people, and the organization they worked for.
With the Hyatt Regency disaster there several problems with how things were handled, preliminary plans that were take for final, and the fact that the engineering firm approved the modification over the phone without even looking at the proposed modification, much less doing even elementary estimates of the effects.
The engineering company lost its license and closed down - which was richly deserved. The company had gotten sloppy in a number of ways.
This is a common situation in engineering disasters. There should be redundant safeguards in the system against errors. But most of the time disasters donât happen, and people get sloppy, so the safeguards arenât really there in practice.
That led to this (fortunately non-fatal) near disaster:
And in both Space Shuttle losses obvious problems, commented on repeatedly by engineers, were ignored because they had not (yet) caused a disaster, so safety margins kept getting trimmed, and observed potential problems were left unaddressed.
All those safety margins and redundancies obviously were overkill, because nothing bad had happenedâŚyet.
The precautions are insurance, and humans find it difficult to hold an analytical view of insurance. Itâs best if you never need your insurance, but we tend to think of âunusedâ insurance as wasted money. If you donât spend the money, however, you set yourself up for the worst-case situation of needing insurance and not having it.
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One of the few people to notice the rendering. There was nothing wrong with the âdesignâ of the bridge. The problem appears to have been means and methods. They put up the span first, and the towers were to follow. This is the opposite of what a suspension bridge construction process is. The towers go in first, then the span, but they were trying to save time and money. As to the means and methods, the contractor would make the suggestion on how they want to do it. Municipal engineers might allow it, but only if the contractorsâs engineer puts their stamp on the process. That engineer will be seeing an enormous increase in their errors and omissions insurance. This is a big time screw up. Now, itâs possible that the temp span was strong enough and some other factor lead to collapse, but right now my money is on flawed means and methods.