Exemplification Essay: The Silver Bridge Collapse

1586 Words4 Pages

Steven Hermosillo
Professor Wallace
Fire Tech 105
15 November 2015
Silver Bridge Collapse According to Wikipedia, Forty-six people were killed in the silver-bridge collapse and another nine people were injured. “The Silver Bridge was an eye-bar-chain suspension bridge built in 1928 and named for the color of its aluminum paint. The bridge connected Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio, over the Ohio River” (Wikipedia). This was a highly used bridge serving thousands of cars a day before the collapse. “It was designed with a twenty-two foot roadway and one five-foot sidewalk” (Silver). The silver bridge was a very long bridge. “An eye-bar is a long steel plate having large circular ends with an "eye" or hole through which a
“Following an inspection in 1965, some $30,000 in recommended repairs was completed. Two more inspections were done in the summer of 1967” (Silver). After about forty years from being built, the silver bridge needed repairs that obviously were expensive. Several inspections were made, but a problem still occurred with the collapse. Heather L. Salasky states that “The fracture was due to the development of a flaw over the course of the life of the bridge resulting from stress corrosion and corrosion fatigue.” The eye-bar was corroded due to the weather and the corrosion caused a fracture of the eye-bar. “When the lower side of the eye-bar failed, all the load was transferred to the other side of the eyebar, which then failed by ductile overload. The joint was then held together only by three eye-bars, and another slipped off the pin at the center of the bearing, so the chain was completely severed” (Wikipedia). There was much pressure caused by the collapse on the lower side of the bridge that the upper side of the bridge collapsed right after. The bridge could not handle the weight caused by collapse that the

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