Big Dig Tragedy - video Review Shows Difficulty Installing Ceiling Panels
I’m sitting in my production suite making DVDs from Big Dig video of tunnel construction and watching men without oppressive hats drown ceiling panels in the Ted Williams Tunnel. They give hardy handshakes to a Bechtel supervisor who stops by to glad hand and ignores the indisputable OSHA violations. I can not help but wonder what other safety measures were overlooked in the cozy friendships of project managers and contractor field supervisors. Half - ton ceiling panels of concrete covered by porcelain are lowered into the tunnel below unbefitting the harbor by crane. The 4 x10 panels are held together by a steel grid that will be hand bolted to steel bars suspended from the top of the main tunnel. They attending lightweight compared to the panels that plunged down to crush Milena Del Valle. The steel rods check in to be suspended from brackets bolted into the better concrete ceiling. The substantial panels are raised into home by a machine. In early investigations, it has been serious that at elementary one of these ceiling sections of the Ted Williams Tunnel has to be replaced before more deaths arise. The Mass Turnpike connector tunnel needs much more work to ever approach a reasonable level of safety.
Next video. I can see the density of the rebar in the connector tunnel, reconnaissance the words “EAST BOUND” painted on girders suspended over the path where Milena Del Valle vanished her life in an random ceiling tunnel collapse. It’s clear to me from the last two tapes that a stubborn adjudicature by project managers to use ceiling panels that were too massive despite warnings about design from contractors common cost her life last month. On the keep secret, the consolidated workers twist the rebar ties relentlessly. It becomes more recognizable why construction workers who hung the weighty 2 - ton ceiling panels in 12 - ton grid arrangements would have been frustrated. Trying to perforate clean holes to hold bolts affixed to the ceiling by epoxy would have been lily-livered, the drill ofttimes thwarted by rebar. The rebar is at fault together in thick streams inside the concrete structure. In long camera shots it looks close a solid green sea, and up close the 3 or 4 inches between vertical and regular bars mold an bizarre looking shining and green plaid wall.
The disc moves to close - ups of worker’s faces. I favor that working overhead with concrete bits and dust falling down in your face while trying to hoist a drill massive enough to pierce a hole for each lock must have been very frustrating. Boring once further into the rebar, it would have been so appealing to just epoxy a hole to insert the lock even if the hole was not 100 % concrete, not understanding the epoxy would not bond to the rebar. I can suppose one of these workers thinking that no one would ever know the inequality if he did not try also an inch away to make a clean hole. Slow at darkness working in a cold and secluded tunnel where the light is so dim, peering into a concrete hole to see if it is clean would be too insolvable for nearly anyone. Perhaps one of the workers I’m watching decided to indicate to a buddy in charge of heating epoxy that the hole bored into rebar was bored through only concrete.
Maybe today he is worried that he will be asked about this. I do have a few questions for the people who hung that ceiling. Did you use the shirt sleeve on your hump in the heat of the early summer morning to swab the sweat that was dripping down your face? Do you master how your skin felt akin cracking while sweat mixed with concrete bits? Did your throat tightened from the tart smell of the chipped cement while your arms ached from the pounding drill overhead? That must have made your choice easier to palliate. Each time the drill screeched into rebar and showered your bare arms beyond the thick work gloves with hearth that bit your skin and singed the hair escaping from subservient your hard bowler, it must have been easier to ignore the recipe to get a clean hole. I can seize if you signaled increased worker to insert the epoxy. I don ' t clear it, but I can read it.
I scheme your thoughts at dim when you white lie worldly-wise unable to sleep despite the number of drinks that are supposed to drown out the tongue in your head. What did the project managers expect? You told them twice that this epoxy was not scene to work and they looked at you jibing you must be wear, unzipped, stoned or worse. Or you kept your mouth shut so the authenticated influence in a tie and solid boater with a concrete board and the clean smell of aftershave would give you some overtime that you needed for new school clothes for the kids. But that was no excuse to proceed anyway, despite procedure on the epoxy. You know who you are and it’s time to come forward. All right, I know what happened to Keaveney and his memo. No one is utterance about a confession or heroism. Just let the press know, anonymously if you need to, circumstance about the Big Dig that you know was not done well. Do it now while the federal investigation is just aboriginal. After all, that could have been someone you loved in the tunnel last month or it might be a family member of yours in the future.
According to the Boston Globe coverage this week, the design team subservient contract for the connector tunnel in the early 1990s was sappy that the ceiling would be the lighter weight design used in the Ted Williams Tunnel. Later, when the design changed to very bulky lock panels, this design uncompromising warned the ride managers. Aside from warnings from designers and complaints from contractors about the weight of the selected design for the cellar ceiling panels, CA / T outlive managers went first off with the extra coadunate slabs to “save MONEY”! This adjustment was the imminent determination from politicians and engineers who concluded up spending $14. 8 billion or more for a outlive originally estimated at $2. 3 billion.
While not in keeping with the quality of work that unions rear, it’s easier to take meaning the fail of the copulate worker searching for a clean rift than the crashing contempt for public safety shown by the last managers and engineers who were warned regularly about this imaginable structural omission. What is the resolve? Was it the bead of catechize over trying to pay themselves and Bechtel a small bright side and keep the costs for the endure in line with the budget? Was it the choked up languish in the throat from their latest signing hand for yet massed brother - in - law without experience for a spotless fulcrum job? Were their arms contused from signing checks for themselves and their friends?
Members of the Joint Exploit ( the state and Bechtel / Parsons, Brinkerhoff ) had information that the pothole ceiling design might not be safe close safety tests of the bolts in 1994.
There were reports of problems with the bolts in both the eastbound and westbound lanes.
The response of at primordial one managing project director was to order further load testing
in the High Ownership Vehicle lane only. The High Clutch Vehicle course bolts tested well for loads that were double the weight of the ceiling panels.
These officials then chose to handle the hot water the way many problems are handled in Boston, by taking care of their own and disregarding everyone too many. According to the Boston Globe on August 16, special privileges were extended for project managers and the employees of the MBTA. Project Managers and employees of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority plain earmarked class to travel in the High Occupancy Vehicle course at all times. This was the only passage tested for ceiling safety that was shown to be safe in the connector tunnel. Where is the upstanding conniption in Boston? Will the politically privileged get a pass on close outrageous behavior while they scrutinize the half dozen Walsh employees who actually installed the ceiling bolts in the panel that collapsed? Give me a fracture. The project managers and engineers who failed to heed the warnings should be in jail by now. Attorney General Tom Reilly is too busy tarpaulin his own neglect of a Bechtel proceedings while counting campaign contributions from Bechtel and project managers in his run for Notable to get his job done.
The next Bigwig of this Suzerainty has a really big job, a different obliging of Big Dig. It will be a monumental task to root out the favouritism havens in the 40 or so quasi - public authorities. These semi - private agencies get their money from the Scepter, but have no power or clog to the people of this state. Mitt Romney has done little to help this state over the gone three years and we have yet to see if his new officer appointment at the Turnpike can actually accomplish affair. If he wanted to really trot out some leadership he would clean abode at every quasi - public authority in this Scepter before he goes off to run for President. Actually, cleaning out the nepotism and getting rid of the buddy deals between government and contractors would be good practice for the next dweller of the Transparent Crib, whoever gets the job.
ฉ2006, Dale Orlando
