Boston warned tunnel ceiling wouldn’t hold

[Roon]

BOSTON - The on-site safety officer for a Big Dig highway tunnel where a motorist was crushed by falling concrete warned his superiors in 1999 that the heavy ceiling panels might collapse because the bolts could not support them, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday.

John Keaveney wrote in a two-page memo to a senior project manager for contractor Modern Continental Construction Co. that he could not “comprehend how this structure can withhold the test of time.”

“Should any innocent State Worker or member of the Public be seriously injured or even worse killed as a result, I feel that this would be something that would reflect Mentally and Emotionally upon me, and all who are trying to construct a quality Project,” he wrote.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14041020/

[babylonsister]

1. There's a lawsuit waiting to happen; cold comfort to the family of

the dead woman.:-(

[OneBlueSky]

2. kinda reminds one of the warnings to BushCo about Iraq . . . n/t

.

[BootinUp]

3. criminal. n/t

[Up2Late]

4. From what I've seen, those concrete panels look like added pork...

...to the project budget.

Why does a tunnel need a drop ceiling made of 3 ton concrete panels anyway, to hide the pipes?

Don't fix it, scrap the panels.

[HereSince1628]

7. I'm not positive about this, but I think it might be to provide a vent

that is fireproof and isolated from the public access...for emergency use in the event of a car or truck fire in the tunnel.

[Up2Late]

8. You have a good point about the fire proofing aspect, but they could have

...done it, and the ventilation thing, in several much safer ways than suspending thousands of 3 Ton panels of concrete from drilled anchor bolts.

That truly is a stupid design.

How did they do it when they build the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel? :shrug:

[sallyseven]

5. Just remember that the governors were all repukes.

Business is the best way to do anything. Don't upset us with anything that might Private sector rules. Weld, Celucci, Swift and Mittens all hate the state workers. They wouldn't listen to the information they should all be in jail. I just want mittens out of Massachusetts. He can go to Utah and get additional wives or whatever. He is too cute by one. I think less of him than I did of Nixon. He has another flunky he wants to put in. It is all about power. He makes gw look like an amateur.

[w4rma]

6. Republican governor vetoed the funds to fix it. (nt)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. And who was the senior project manager?

Why don't we get the names of those responsible?

[rman]

10. Shortly after the tunnel was finished part of a tunnel wall collapsed,

causing flooding of the tunnel. Turned out to be due to poor quality of the concrete. One can only guess how much of the rest of the tunnel is made of poor quality concrete. And there's no feasible way to replace it all without essentially rebuilding the whole thing. The initial project did cost more than the Panama canal.
source: a documentary on Discovery or National Geographic.

It's sad that such a project fails because someone was incompetent or was cutting corners.