TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2008
Federal Bridge Database Flawed
Last week, when so many of you were re-examining the issue of bridge safety on the anniversary of the Minneapolis bridge collapse,
msnbc.com was busy uncovering Federal Highway Adminstration e-mails that show the feds' bridge inventory database is flawed. It helps to explain why the government could not say, quickly, how many bridges were built like the one that failed.
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Msnbc.com says the newly released e-mails show:
- Kentucky was threatened with loss of federal funds for not turning in its bridge data.
- Iowa bridge engineers expressed frustration that they weren't certified to inspect bridges, considering that they were considered qualified enough to design them.
- Ohio was trying something new to make sure bridges were thoroughly inspected: Hiding tokens or small items on bridges, requiring inspectors to find them in a sort of treasure hunt.
- Mississippi lost federal aid funds in February for seven cities that failed to post or close unsafe bridges, a month after msnbc.com had reported on the reluctance of federal officials to withhold funds when states didn't meet inspection deadlines.
- Maine and Ohio were not assigning load limits to all bridges.
- North Dakota was waiting four years to inspect fracture-critical bridges.
- Hawaii officials, the farthest behind on inspections, asked for all training courses to be taught over the Internet; federal officials responded that you just can't teach someone how to inspect a bridge using the Internet alone.
- And again in Kentucky, often the problem child, a state official asked how he was supposed to code in the database bridges that had been recommended for closure, but which remained open.
Among the collections (mostly PDF files) that msnbc.com released were:
Posted at 12:05:00 AM
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