So our glorious leader Trump spent $100 million sending messages with missiles and the mother of all bombs in the last couple weeks. Now he’s sending three carrier groups to North Korea. I’m sure that’s a cheap excursion paid for by taxpayers.
Meanwhile, a crackhead was able to collapse an Atlanta interstate with a lighter and some government drones blew up another interstate yesterday. Atlanta is normally gridlocked, but now they are in the midst of a disaster. The lost productivity is surely in the tens of millions.
Why is Trump off starting wars when he promised to fix our infrastructure, cut taxes and replace Obamacare? I guess it’s easier to bomb the shit out of other countries infrastructure than fix our own.
Atlanta traffic made worse after section of I-20 buckles
A section of westbound I-20 is closed after a large portion of it buckled, causing a huge bump in the roadway.
Atlanta’s running out of interstates.
The metropolitan area is served by four interstates. Last month, a five-lane section of one collapsed during rush hour and took part of that highway out of commission.
Monday afternoon, things just got worse. Way worse.
A section of another interstate buckled due to an underground gas leak, and now a portion of that freeway is shut down too.
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Atlantans, ever-reliant on their cars for even the shortest of errands, are now down to two undamaged interstates — and one major headache.
An underground gas leak
Here are the details as we know them:
Officials shut down all lanes of the westbound section of I-20 on Monday morning after a gas leak caused the concrete road to give way.
DeKalb County spokesman S.R. Fore told CNN that crews were pressure testing the empty gas pipe with air when a leak caused the air to push upward and damage the road.
The pictures are jaw-dropping. It looks like the Hulk tried to punch through the road.
“What a coincidence, another highway decided to explode,” wrote Lidia Debas on Instagram, next to a photo of the damaged road. “I wonder what route I’m going to take now.”
Police said a motorcyclist hit the buckle and was thrown off, but they didn’t know how severe his injuries were.
“I was driving and a man told me the motorcyclist flew over it and wrecked,” motorist Lisa Pangborn William told CNN.
Crews immediately diverted traffic to I-285. That, if you’re keeping count, is one of two interstates fully functioning.
The other damaged highway
I-285 is already straining under the weight of the additional cars it’s had to take on since March 30 since a section of I-85 collapsed after a fire broke out under it.
Interstate 85 is a major artery. And Atlantans were slowly beginning to adjust to their new commuting reality when the I-20 incident happened.
Now, many of them will have to revise their plans all over again.
Greetings,
I’ve told the lefties that any rebellion they could conjure up would be shut down in all of 15 minutes once the major traffic arteries were rendered useless.
At this point, were someone to hack into the traffic light controllers and have every light in the city flash yellow then that would be the ultimate spectacle to watch. Atlanta would just shut down – simply shut down.
To be fair, such a move would shut down EVERY city in America, not just the ATL. And evidence from European cities that have gotten rid of traffic lights completely, indicates that once everyone knows that everyone needs to stop and work things out, traffic generally flows a LOT better than when the worthless government was “in charge” of how things were going to flow through intersections, etc. Of course completely crappy design of intersections, roads, etc. takes a lot more to overcome, and those problems plague every city as well.
Change all stop signs to yield signs.
Quick-raise the minimum wage to $25.
Local governments STEAL and STEAL and STEAL, and STEAL – all because they CLAIM that ONLY THEY are competent enough to handle “critical” things like infrastructure, roads, etc. Yet the money they STEAL is always spent on something that gets press attention. Nobody comes to a ribbon cutting ceremony for a repaired sewer line, roadway, bridge, etc. Occasionally they put up giant orange signs with federal government project names on them when they want to praise themselves for their waste on their “shovel-ready” repaving of major arteries (that were only repaved a few years earlier – while less traveled adjacent roads CONTINUE to be filled with potholes and other damage but wouldn’t get the sign visibility if they were repaired). The theft always benefits the “general fund,” while the claims of “government necessity” always focus on the critical elements of society rather than all the crap they actually waste the money on. Atlanta has been fined tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars for its combined stormwater-sewer lines that have yet to be fully segregated (and that are over 100 years old in places). The result is sewage flowing into the Chattahoochee River and pipes so old that routine water main breaks and sewer line breaks disrupt traffic and waste millions of gallons of fresh water on an annual basis. It is funny that on yesterday’s Atlanta news broadcast they talked about this “rupture” of the roadway saying that it was the kind of thing you would expect to see in Los Angeles. Well, as someone who lived the first 35 years of his life in LA, I can assure you that ONLY in the rare situation of a major earthquake did you see anything even close, while at least once a month I see a story of some road collapse, water main break (and accompanying sinkhole, road “eruption”, or similar) here on the news in ATLANTA and have seen such every month of every year of the past 20 years here in the glorious ATL. Infrastructure projects are universally one of the most corrupt sectors of government “oversite.” Cost overruns, shoddy materials, theft of materials, etc. are the hallmark of these projects. The common denominator – the 100% lack of accountability on the part of BOTH government and the contractors who benefit from the non-stop government theft machine.
A friend living north of Atlanta told me that while I-85 was originally going to be shut down until completion of the repairs sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the contractor, C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., Inc. is targeting a June 15 completion date. If that date is met, Matthews will receive an additional 40 million dollar incentive. Matthews, working on a cost-plus basis will be using expensive accelerated curing concrete and expensive, more modern beams that were not available at the time of the 1980s design.
Crews will work 24/7 with excess labor to be used when others are on lunch, dinner or break. The work will not stop until complete. Looks like old C-Dub hit the big one. I wonder if Basil Eleby will get a small cut.
Here is the new and improved version of Ludacris’ “Welcome to Atlanta”
Welcome to Atlanta where the players play and the highways collapse like everyday.
I live in ATL.. it is a shitshow.
Friend works for the company that makes bridges.. he sent the designs in for the i85 replacement.. said it COULD be ready by June if they doubled manpower and worked overtime.
Niglanta at its finest!
Sink hole in midtown ATL!
http://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/sinkhole-closes-5th-street-midtown-reopening-uncertain/lk5K8U1GOex0SorkHIE6UP/
For those keeping score, we have had the following occur in ATL in the last month.
I85 collapse
I20 buckling
sinkhole in midtown
I’m hesitant to put on my tinfoil hat here – but can someone tell me how in the hell a crackhead’s fire caused a steel and concrete bridge to collapse in under an hour?
thermite
That’s awesome. And no doubt they found the crackhead’s passport nearby so they knew who did it right away.
They will never admit it but I know it’s true. There was fuel stored under that bridge. It was for the DOT Hero Unit roadside assistance trucks. Grapevine tells me they were using offroad diesel to avoid tax. I’ve seen the tanks. There was rolls of orange pvc conduit that burned that they blames it on. Stuffs been there for over 10 years….
The deranged crackhead nigger that was insanely trying to burn out the other urban outdoors people is supposed to be release on 10,000 bond as early as today.
Agree with the expand and contract post, but also remember, it was a crackhead burning a chair under a bride that contained 55 gallon barrels of something. I saw one photograph of a couple of police cars in front of the fire under the bridge. I saw the barrels in the photo, that explains why the city had tom have two foam trucks from the airport respond to the fire. The city blames some PVC electrical conduit for catching on fire. I believe there was some type of petroleum materials stored under the over pass. Why, I have no idea. But the use of foam trucks need further explanation.
Well, obviously the crackhead’s initial fire found an additional fuel source (see T’s comment elsewhere here). But like the Twin Towers, all the fire had to do was get hot enough to change the temper of the steel, which then weakened under the load.
Rosie O’Donnell aside, the fire didn’t “melt” the steel, it merely changed its temper.
Concrete is tough under COMPRESSION, steel is tough under TENSION. Once the fire gets hot enough, the steel EXPANDS from the heat and puts the concrete under internal TENSION. The concrete shears apart, and the steel fails from the COMPRESSIVE load exerted by the concrete (remnants).
Steel-reinforced concrete is great for lots of structures: the steel gives the concrete tensile strength to resist the loads a heavy truck puts on it, and the concrete gives the steel the compressive strength to resist buckling from weight loads. However, nothing is perfect; steel-reinforced concrete will crack from freeze-thaw cycles (the reason for expansion joints in roads). Also, concrete can be subject to attack from chemicals (think road salt) and whatever noxious liquids are being hauled in tanker trucks.
Steel-reinforced concrete is cheap, cost-effective and durable under most conditions. Normally you don’t get a fire UNDERNEATH a road, or even bridges: I-85 was an exception. It just came about due to someone’s stupidity, and all ATL has to bear the brunt.
Thanks, that helps. So in your opinion this makes sense even though Atlanta has so few freeze/thaw cycles and almost never gets road salt?
Uhh, I never said the ATL bridge failed due to freeze / thaw cycles or road salt: it failed because the fire beneath it caused thermal degradation of the concrete and thermal expansion of the steel, which occurred faster / to a greater degree than the concrete could accommodate the increased stress.
Bridges and roads up north are more subject to freeze / thaw and road salt attack. Corrosion can also eat away at the steel, if the right conditions are present (they almost always are).
so…what temperatures would have to be reached and for how long to both heat through a couple feet of concrete to then heat the steel to force an expansion to the point of failure?
Too many variables – how thick (exactly) was the concrete, what alloy was the steel, which hydrocarbons were burned beneath it, was there wind?
For a hint, methane burns around 1963 deg C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_flame_temperature
Other hydrocarbons burn hotter, typically. Kerosene is listed at 2093 deg C.
Given that what you are trying to do is destroy the bonding (connection) between the concrete and the steel, I would think an hour would be plenty, since the flames were directly underneath the bridge.
[Three physical characteristics give reinforced concrete its special properties:
The coefficient of thermal expansion of concrete is similar to that of steel, eliminating large internal stresses due to differences in thermal expansion or contraction.
When the cement paste within the concrete hardens, this conforms to the surface details of the steel, permitting any stress to be transmitted efficiently between the different materials. Usually steel bars are roughened or corrugated to further improve the bond or cohesion between the concrete and steel.
The alkaline chemical environment provided by the alkali reserve (KOH, NaOH) and the portlandite (calcium hydroxide) contained in the hardened cement paste causes a passivating film to form on the surface of the steel, making it much more resistant to corrosion than it would be in neutral or acidic conditions. When the cement paste is exposed to the air and meteoric water reacts with the atmospheric CO2, portlandite and the calcium silicate hydrate (CSH) of the hardened cement paste become progressively carbonated and the high pH gradually decreases from 13.5 – 12.5 to 8.5, the pH of water in equilibrium with calcite (calcium carbonate) and the steel is no longer passivated.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete
I hate the morans that routed every major highway through Afrolanta and there is no way around Craptown that doesn’t have ten red lights per mile (unless you like the views of the Detroit of the South).
Their mass-transit agency, MARTA, is going to play this to the hilt. “We need more tax $$$$ to expand the gravy train.”
MARTA= Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta