The final report put forward by the National
Transportation Safety Board on the collapse of the I-35W bridge in
Minneapolis has concluded that: (1)
the steel gusset plates originally designed in the mid-1960s to
reinforce the bridge's joints were half an inch too thin; (2) the
probable causes for the collapse were additional modifications to the
original design, which added substantial weight to the bridge, and the
weight added by construction materials placed on the bridge by a
contractor just prior to the collapse. But construction
expert Barry B. LePatner says there is more to it than that.
"The NTSB is severely neglecting its duty to protect Americans," says LePatner, coauthor of Structural & Foundation Failures (McGraw-Hill, 1982, coauthored with Sidney M. Johnson, P.E.) and author of Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry (The University of Chicago Press, October 2007, ISBN-13: 978-0-226-47267-6, ISBN-10: 0-226-47267-1, $25.00). "By placing the sole blame for the bridge collapse on the gusset plates and the added weight factor, the Board has ignored the inefficiency and irresponsibility among the government agencies responsible for the bridge, which also contributed to the disaster."For more, see AmericanSurveyor.com.
