This time from real life.
“A heavily traveled section of freeway that funnels traffic off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed early Sunday after a gasoline tanker truck overturned and erupted into flames, authorities said.
Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck’s driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Officer Trent Cross of the California Highway Patrol said of the crumpled interchange. “I’m looking at this thinking, ‘Wow, no one died ‚Äî that’s amazing. It’s just very fortunate.”
Of course as you may know the 9/11 conspiracy theorist have said that there is no way that the towers could have collasped merely from burning jet fuel. But once again this is proven wrong as it was when Popular Mechanics produced it’s investigation back in 2005 and showed conclusively that such theories were baseless.
Won’t stop the Rosie O’Donnell’s from dreaming, but then do we really care what Rosie thinks?
No Response
Specter
April 30th, 2007 at 8:55 am
1This is not the first time this has happened either. A bridge on I-95 in CT was partially collapsed last year when a tanker caught fire. It, too, melted the metal of the bridge structure causing the collapse.
perdogg
April 30th, 2007 at 10:08 am
2The only thing Rosie thinks about are tacos,muffins,and doughnuts.
crosspatch
April 30th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
3People who have even a basic understanding of metal know that when it is heated it begins to lose strength. It doesn’t need to melt, it simply needs to weaken to the point of being unable to support the load that is placed on it.
Once that happened at World Trade, the portion above the weak area began to sag. Once it sagged to the point where weight was applied to the floor below, it was only a matter of time before that floor gave way. Removing that support in an instant allowed the section above the failure to drop quickly causing the entire stack to fall. No steel needed to “melt”, it only needed to weaken and bend.
At the temperatures that fire reached, those columns were not stronger than soft iron.
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