John Upton San Francisco Profiles Bay Bridge eyebar fix→ Hetch Hetchy series Earthquake anniversary Cosco Busan oil spill Power plant debate Radioactive air pollution Gas pipeline safety johnupton@gmail.com			Bay Bridge eyebar fix A cracked beam was discovered on the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge during a scheduled Labor Day weekend bridge closure. Car chaos forecast for bridge re-repair  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 8, 2009 Nighttime traffic jams will delay Bay Bridge commuters throughout the holiday season, as Caltrans closes lanes to replace repairs to a cracked support beam. Though a portion of the nearly 280,000 drivers who use the span on a typical weekday will be affected by the partial overnight closures, the latest repair to the eastern section of the span will avoid the complete shutdown that was originally planned. Caltrans, the state agency that oversees bridge operations, on Monday urged motorists to consider using other Bay Area bridges at night to avoid delays that are scheduled to begin this weekend and continue for at least three weeks. The overnight repairs will depend on weather conditions, according to Caltrans. Three of the five westbound lanes and one eastbound lane will close on the eastern span at various times, expected between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m., Caltrans documents show. The agency also may need to close lanes at future dates for five weeks. The lane closures will allow Caltrans and its contractors to replace a trouble-plagued repair to a cracked eyebar, which was discovered during a scheduled bridge closure Labor Day weekend. The original repair - completed Labor Day weekend - was hurriedly drafted, and its flawed design caused pieces of steel to plummet onto the roadway Oct. 27 during high winds. The damage led to a nearly weeklong bridge closure that hampered hundreds of thousands of commuters' travel. That second repair, which features steel rods that carry the weight load the damaged eyebar was supposed to support, was characterized by Caltrans as a short-term fix. The new repair will see the damaged eyebar section cut out of the bridge and replaced. After that's replaced, the current repair pieces will be removed. Then, Caltrans will monitor the work to determine whether an additional eyebar needs to be incorporated into the design, Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney said. "The new repair will have more than enough capacity to carry the load designed for the original eyebar," he said. "It will not necessarily be as strong, given that holes and bolts have been driven through the remaining steel portion of the bar. In this case, though, this repair may actually be stronger than the individual eyebar if it's determined to have had a flaw in its original fabrication." The repair effort will cost California up to $14 million, and it will be undertaken by the same joint-venture team that is building a self-anchored suspension bridge to help replace the Bay Bridge's seismically vulnerable eastern span, Ney said. The joint venture, between Fluor and American Bridge, only had limited involvement in earlier eyebar repair efforts. Take two: Bay Bridge repair withstanding strong wind gusts  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 30, 2009 Enhanced repairs to a cracked Bay Bridge support beam withstood strong weekend wind gusts. The Bay Bridge was closed in late October after massive steel pieces, which were installed during Labor Day weekend to patch a cracked eyebar, rained down on rush-hour traffic. Caltrans had failed to design the fix to withstand wind gusts, and the bridge was closed for nearly a week as the state transportation agency redesigned and reinstalled the repair. The enhanced design appears to be withstanding strong winds. Gusts of up to 25 knots were recorded at an Oakland-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather monitoring station Oct. 27, when the original repair failed. Wind gusts exceeding 30 knots were recorded Nov. 20 and on Saturday afternoon at the same weather station, which is located near the Bay Bridge. The California Highway Patrol issued a high-wind advisory for the bridge and three others Saturday. Wind gusts exceeding 30 knots also were recorded in the weeks leading up to the Oct. 27 incident, which may have weakened the repair and led to vibration-related metal fatigue. "The repair has shown no signs of fatigue in wind," Caltrans spokesman Mark DeSio said Sunday. Caltrans is currently designing a permanent fix that might be based on successful repairs to a similar Carquinez Bridge span. Feds never checked bridge fix  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 12, 2009 The Bay Bridge fix that halted traffic across the span for more than five days was not inspected by federal authorities, The Examiner learned, despite public promises from the state agency that oversees the structure. During a scheduled shutdown of the bridge during Labor Day weekend, a cracked load-bearing beam, called an eyebar, was discovered, leading to a fast fix using improvised steel components. Seven weeks later, on Oct. 27, the repair failed - due in part to strong wind gusts - and steel rained down on rush-hour traffic. The span was shuttered until the morning of Nov. 2 while Caltrans completed repairs. On Oct. 29, in response to questions about the safety of the repairs, Caltrans Director Randell Iwasaki and California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency Secretary Dale Bonner said publicly that the repairs would be inspected by the Federal Highway Administration, the Seismic Safety Review Board and other outside experts. "The other thing that we're going to do this time is we are working with the [Federal Highway Administration] and some additional outside inspectors that are not only looking at the work as we're doing it but they're going to be looking at the work when it's completed," Bonner said during a news conference. "They'll be inspecting everything just to make sure there are outside experts who will be providing some additional assurance that the bridge is completely safe, that the repairs were completed appropriately, and that it is appropriate to open the bridge to traffic." But the federal highway agency says it was not involved in the final inspections. "Inspected is not the appropriate characterization," spokeswoman Nancy Singer said Wednesday. "We provided technical assistance and support to Caltrans." Caltrans spokespeople Bart Ney and Lauren Wonder did not reply to e-mails or repeated phone calls seeking comment Wednesday about the role of inspectors in the repair process. In addition, Frieder Seible, the chair of a seismic advisory board established by Caltrans, previously told The Examiner that he signed off on the repair from San Diego, where he serves as dean of the UC San Diego School of Engineering. On the day the bridge reopened, Seible said he had visited it during the repair efforts and signed off remotely. After Caltrans completed the repairs on the cracked eyebar last week, the agency increased inspections on the work, which were described as temporary. The new Bay Bridge repair may cause another days-long bridge closure before February, Caltrans said Wednesday. Bridge repair seen as stopgap  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 3, 2009 The Bay Bridge could be closed again in the coming months to allow Caltrans to replace a trouble-plagued repair to a cracked support beam. The bridge reopened to traffic Monday morning after a historic near-weeklong closure. The span was closed Oct. 27 when steel components broke loose in strong wind gusts and fell onto traffic during the evening rush hour. The recent repairs replaced and reinforced a failed fix of a support beam, called an eyebar, which had been completed during the scheduled Labor Day weekend closure. The latest work was characterized by Caltrans officials Monday as a short-term repair that will require exhaustive ongoing monitoring and maintenance. On Sunday, Caltrans had been close to giving up on the repair and pursuing a new design after at least six exhaustive efforts to tense four tie rods failed to achieve 320,000 pounds of pressure. "We've taken care of what we believe are the big issues that led to this failure," said Rick Land, chief engineer for Caltrans. According to Land, the tweaked fix will lessen vibrations better. But he offered no assurances that the fix could withstand an earthquake and he said no tests are available to predict the strength of wind gusts it could withstand. "We spent a lot of time with three or four different sets of people going up and looking at the damper apparatus to see how we could move it around by hand," Land said. "It's pretty solid." He said the repair is a short-term fix and Caltrans will craft a permanent repair. That could use additional eyebars stacked on the cracked eyebar, or it could mean replacing the eyebar entirely, according to Land. The short-term repair will be inspected daily for two weeks and a long-term repair could be ready within four months, he said. It's unclear how long the bridge will need to be closed for repairs, but Land said a scheduled shutdown could minimize traffic impacts. Until Sunday, Caltrans resisted calls to redesign the failed repair. The design was hurriedly sketched on butcher paper during Labor Day weekend and the fabricated pieces failed to fit together properly until a heavy steel spacer was added. "This does not reflect a flaw," California Business, Transportation and Housing Agency Director Dale Bonner said Monday. "It's the difference between what you look at in a laboratory in a controlled environment and what actually happens in real life conditions." Flawed bridge part may need redesign  original / top By John Upton and Tamara Barak Aparton San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 2, 2009 A trouble-plagued repair to a cracked Bay Bridge support beam might be redesigned after the hurriedly drafted fix failed weekend safety tests, Caltrans announced Sunday. The damaged piece still needs several rounds of approval before two independent agencies conduct inspections. Caltrans had previously resisted calls for it to redesign the repair from scratch, with bridge spokesman Bart Ney telling reporters Wednesday that could create "tit-for-tat" disputes about the new design and could lead to a weeks-long bridge closure. "For something like this, simple is often the best," Ney said Wednesday. "We have our best minds working on it." But Sunday - five days after the bridge was closed to traffic - Ney gave the first vague indications to reporters that the agency is finally willing to consider overhauling the design if the latest round of testing fails. "To replace the original eyebar is not in our plans at this point," Ney said Sunday evening, announcing that the bridge would not reopen in time for this morning's commute because the repair had not passed safety tests. "We're considering other possibilities - it's possible that it'll be something new." It is unclear how long it would take to draft and execute a new repair plan, but the flawed first plan took nearly three days to design, fabricate and implement. The about-face came Sunday after crews were forced to temporarily abandon repair efforts because they ran into trouble while tensioning rods, Caltrans spokeswoman Lauren Wonder said. Workers were sent home around midnight Saturday and resumed work at 7 a.m. Sunday after working around the clock for four days, according to Wonder. "It was just a question of fatigue and taking a look at the adjustments to the tensioning project," Wonder said. The epic repair snafu, which has led to the longest Bay Bridge closure since the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, began over Labor Day weekend when the bridge was closed to allow work to proceed on a replacement span. During the scheduled closure, Caltrans discovered a rusty crack in a load-bearing eyebar. Caltrans engineers sketched makeshift repair plans to reinforce the area around the eyebar, but the steel components failed to fit together properly. That prompted an additional chunk of steel, called a spacer, to be incorporated into the design. Because of the design flaw, the scheduled bridge closure was extended by several hours. Adding to the debacle, the engineers failed to design the repair to withstand wind gusts, which are common on the Bay. After the fix was implemented, Caltrans discovered that it was vibrating in the wind. The vibration problem was not addressed before it snapped a two-inch support rod Tuesday, causing massive pieces of steel from the repairs to fall onto evening rush-hour traffic. Bay Bridge breakdown caused by known flaw  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 29, 2009 Damage to the Bay Bridge that led to pieces of steel plummeting onto the roadway during rush hour Tuesday was known to officials, who neglected to make the repairs. The bridge is now being fixed with many of the same pieces of failed equipment as well as the structural designs that led to an unexpected shutdown of the span. Problems with the bridge began Labor Day weekend, when an inspection during a scheduled closure - for the building of a new self-anchored suspension bridge span - uncovered a rusted beam. Caltrans, the agency that oversees the bridge, strengthened the surrounding area of the rusted beam, called an eyebar, with improvised steel components. But the repair blueprints were hastily sketched on butcher paper by engineers working out in the field and were flawed. After steel repair components failed to fit properly, Caltrans used a massive steel box to hold the components in place. As the components vibrated in strong winds during the past seven weeks, it led to a steel tie rod holding a brace in place to snap Tuesday. That brace dragged a second tie rod onto the crowded roadway, according to Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney. Wind-related vibration problems with a recent bridge repair had been identified last weekend, according to Ney. However, the problems were not deemed serious enough to prompt closure of the bridge, Ney added. Caltrans on Wednesday was still designing enhancements for the repairs and would not say when the bridge would reopen, but the agency announced it was sticking by its basic original design. Ney said Caltrans officials followed all protocols for repairing the eyebar and weekly maintenance inspections have taken place. But he also said Caltrans failed to account for wind impacts when designing the repair. "Wind is something that should have been accounted for. Something should have been done to dampen the vibrations," Ney said. "There was a massive number of engineering projects going on." To better protect the repairs from strong winds, a strap will be wrapped around the repairs to reduce vibrations, according to Ney. Additionally, shaking of tie rods that hold the repair in place will be reduced by nestling the nuts at the ends into newly scooped steel divots, he said. Other enhancements may also be developed. Asked why Caltrans doesn't redesign the flawed fix from scratch, Ney said that would lead to "tit-for-tat" disputes about the design. "For something like this, simple is often the best," he said. "We have our best minds working on it." UC Berkeley engineering professor Abdolhassan Astaneh-Asl said repair efforts should start from scratch. "Caltrans should do it correctly," he said. "It's in complete violation of safety guidelines." Fallen chunk installed during Labor Day repairs  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Oct. 28, 2009 A chunk of cable-entwined steel that fell on the Bay Bridge on Tuesday was a load-bearing brace installed last month during trouble-plagued repairs to replace a damaged support beam. That beam, called an eyebar, was discovered in a fractured and corroded state while the bridge was closed for scheduled work over Labor Day weekend. Damage to the load-bearing eyebar was so serious that Caltrans officials said the bridge would have been shut for emergency repairs if it had been discovered earlier. They said the bridge had last been inspected two years earlier. Engineers hurriedly drafted blueprints for a makeshift repair job, and replacement steel parts were fabricated in Arizona, then raced to San Francisco for installation. But as reported exclusively by The Examiner, the engineers made a blunder during the design process and the replacement parts did not fit together properly. To complete the repairs, a 1,600-ton rectangular chunk of steel, called a spacer, was hurriedly fabricated in Oakland and installed as an improvised solution to help keep some of the new bridge components separated, prompting Caltrans to keep the bridge closed hours longer than scheduled. The piece of steel that fell Tuesday, called a saddle, was installed during the eyebar repairs to help strengthen the bridge, according to Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney. Tuesday's incident raises fresh questions about the makeshift repair and about Caltrans inspection practices. "These things don't break suddenly," said UC Berkeley engineering professor Abdolhassan Astaneh-Asl, an expert on the bridge. Astaneh-Asl said Caltrans will need to thoroughly inspect the entire eastern span of the bridge because Tuesday's damage suddenly caused the bridge's weight to be carried by other eyebars. Flawed bridge repair plans led to delay, confusion  original / top By John Upton San Francisco Examiner, Sep. 9, 2009 Traffic and transit havoc wrought Tuesday morning by flawed warnings that the Bay Bridge could be closed all day was caused by flawed bridge-repair plans. The bridge closure was scheduled from Thursday evening until 5 a.m. Tuesday while Caltrans, which is rebuilding a portion of the 1930s-era bridge, replaced a chunk of the eastern span. But after discovering a dangerous crack in a steel column - called an eyebar - in the eastern span during an inspection Saturday, the agency warned bridge users on Monday to make alternative transportation arrangements the next morning because the scheduled reopening could be delayed an additional 24 hours. The revised delay opening was expected to create commuter chaos as roughly 300,000 people sought last-minute transit alternatives. BART and other agencies scrambled to increase service and adjust schedules, with officials even warning commuters to stay home to avoid the expected mass transit mess. But the bridge reopened at 7 a.m. Tuesday, 22 hours earlier than the revised reopening time, to the relief and frustration of Bay Area commuters. Officials on Tuesday blamed uncertainty about the repairs for the exaggerated warnings, but Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney did not return phone calls or e-mails asking why the estimates were so wildly inaccurate. Other Caltrans officials said they were not authorized to discuss the matter. The Examiner learned that the delays were anticipated after a major flaw was discovered Monday in the repair blueprints that were hurriedly drafted after the crack was discovered. On Saturday, Caltrans officials determined that bridge parts surrounding the rusty crack needed to be replaced. They drafted repair plans without the luxury of three-dimensional computer simulations. "This was on butcher paper, designing out there in the field," Ney said. Replacement parts were fabricated in Arizona, rushed to Oakland Airport and escorted to the Bay Bridge by the California Highway Patrol by 1 p.m. Sunday. But on Monday morning, with one day remaining before the scheduled reopening, officials discovered the parts did not fit properly and determined that a suitcase-shaped metal spacer was needed. Three experienced ironworkers were called in Monday morning to fabricate the 40-inch spacer in the Oakland-based shop of American Bridge/Fluor Enterprises, which has been working on the bridge project. The fabrication task involved cutting steel pieces and welding them together. At about 5 p.m. Monday, Caltrans announced that the bridge opening could be delayed until Wednesday morning or later and asked commuters to be patient and brace for traffic jams the next morning. At about the same time of the announcement, the agency sent spacer specifications to the Oakland shop, which began cutting 21 pieces of steel needed for the job, according to Project Director Michael Flowers. By 10 p.m., the steel had been cut and welded into shape and driven to the project site in a pickup truck, according to Flowers. "We were able to do it very quickly and very efficiently," he added. Dan Himick, president of lead contractor C.C. Myers, told reporters early Tuesday that they were unaware of how fast the fabrication of the extra piece would take. "How many things in life go perfectly?" Himick said. Despite the inconvenience of the false warnings, the economic impact was likely minimal, according to Sean Randolph, executive of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. "Some people might have stayed home to telecommute and a few might have taken the day off," Randolph said. Poor planning Caltrans officials sent commuters and transit agencies scrambling Labor Day when it announced that the Bay Bridge would not open Tuesday morning and would be delayed until Wednesday morning. The estimates for reopening the bridge were wildly miscalculated. - Thursday evening: Bridge shut down, planned to reopen 5 a.m. Tuesday - Saturday afternoon: Significant crack discovered on eastern span - Saturday evening: Caltrans warns repair work could delay planned reopening - Sunday afternoon: Steel parts for repairs delivered to Bay Bridge repair site - Monday morning: Caltrans discovered another steel part, called a spacer, was needed - Monday afternoon: Caltrans warned commuters that bridge reopening would be delayed - Monday evening: New part delivered to bridge and placed in position - Tuesday morning: Bridge reopened two hours late but 22 hours before revised estimate top				← Car chaos forecast for bridge re-repair, Dec. 8, 2009 ← Take two: Bay Bridge repair withstanding strong wind gusts, Nov. 30, 2009 ← Feds never checked bridge fix, Nov. 12, 2009 ← Bridge repair seen as stopgap, Nov. 3, 2009 ← Flawed bridge part may need redesign, Nov. 2, 2009 ← Bay Bridge breakdown caused by known flaw, Oct. 29, 2009 ← Fallen chunk installed during Labor Day, Oct. 28, 2009 ← Flawed bridge repair plans led to delay, confusion, Sep. 9, 2009