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KF5JRV > TODAY 25.11.19 14:48l 48 Lines 2626 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 18799_KF5JRV
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Nov 25
Path: IW8PGT<I3XTY<GB7COW<GB7YEW<VA7RBP<KF5JRV
Sent: 191125/1246Z 18799@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQK6.0.18
After a howling wind- and rainstorm on Thanksgiving Day, Washington
state’s historic floating Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge breaks apart
and sinks to the bottom of Lake Washington, between Seattle and its
suburbs to the east. Because the bridge’s disintegration happened
relatively slowly, news crews were able to capture the whole thing on
camera, broadcasting it to a rapt audience across western Washington.
“It looked like a big old battleship that had been hit by enemy fire and
was sinking into the briny deep,ö said one observer. (He added: “It was
awesome.ö)
The Murrow Bridge was the brainchild of engineer Homer Hadley, who in
1921 proposed a “floating concrete highway, permanent and
indestructible, across Lake Washington.ö Figuring out a way to cross
that lake, between up-and-coming Seattle and its (at that time) sleepy
small-town neighbors to the east, was a particular challenge because an
ordinary “fixed-pierö bridge was out of the question: The lake was too
deep, and its bottom was too mushy. Still, people scoffed at what they
called “Hadley’s Follyö (one civic organization declared that his “chain
of scows across Lake Washington would stand out as a municipal
eyesoreö), but eventually, mostly because they had no other options,
they came around to his way of thinking. Construction began on the
bridge, named after the state highways director (and brother of famous
newsman Edward R. Murrow), in 1939; it was completed 18 months later.
On November 25, 1990, the 6,600-foot-long bridge, made of 22 floating
bolted-together pontoons, was in the process of being converted from a
two-way road to a one-way road. (A parallel bridge had been completed
the year before, effectively doubling the amount of traffic that could
cross the lake.) The state highway department alleged that construction
crews had left the pontoons’ hatches open, leaving them vulnerable to
the weekend’s heavy rains and large waves. (For its part, the
construction company refused to accept responsibility for the disaster,
countering that “the probable cause of the failure was progressive bond
slip at lapped splices in the bottom slab…due to failure in bond.ö It
did eventually agree to pay the state $20 million, however.) For
whatever reason, at midday on November 25, the center pontoons began to
sink. As they disappeared under the water, they pulled more and more of
the crumbling roadway down with them. By the end of the day, the bridge
was gone.
Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident. The Murrow Bridge was
soon rebuilt.
73, Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV @ KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
Email: KF5JRV@GMAIL.com
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