Mississipi Bridge Collapse
Just after 2 months of collapse of Jiujiang Bridge in Guangdong, China, another similar tragedy happened today in another side of the world, on Mississipi river of USA. The difference of both accidents is that the Mississipi bridge collapsed probably because of fatigue of the girder while the Jiujiang bridge was brought down by a careless pilot. The simlarity of both could be the lack of awareness and measure of the covered weakness of bridge.
Lesson to us, the collapsed bridge in Mississipi was built in 1967, 40 years old. In China, there are many bridges built on 1980s, they will soon arrive at there middle age of 30. Even if the materials we used in our bridges are comparable to those used in USA in term of quality and durability, we need to evaluate the safety of each bridge and set up a good daily monitoring system on the brdiges. Otherwise, we will by no means avoid the same senario.
