This is in trying to stop the loss, failed.
For those with FB this is the collapse as occurred. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1421517684665532
Who's the supervisor that didn't stand tall? The guy who should have said "I'm not sending two of my guys and equipment out on the bridge, to try to clear a impossible to clear log jam!" The river is going to take what it wants. They might have had a chance if it was a few trees, but there were trees stacked out a quarter mile from the bridge. I don't know that I would have been standing that close to the rails when it went either, unless the rails were cut/ untied at the joint (which it looks like they were). I'll never forget looking at a derailment when I was young and saw rails bowed out 100' from where the line was, pushed there by the cars, in a big S shape. There is a lot of stored energy in a bent steel rail.
Stupid sending guys out there......the small crane couldn't grab squat it was packed so tight. No chance at all in saving that bridge. Ed
Somewhere there is a video of a guy with a torch getting launched by a rail that was involved in a derailment.
My reaction was: " No way in Hell I would be going out there with this ^%$%$ Crane!"
Just because hindsight is 20/20, would they have been better off to cut the beams of the bridge loose, blast them off like they do when they demo a steel bridge? If the steel had been gone, they could have probably saved the pilings, then to fix it, all they would have needed was new bridge girders. Probably hard to set up in a crisis situation, call the army and have them do it as a "training exercise". Plus that's a pretty gutsy call to make, "blow the bridge", not likely to happen in a corporate structure, no one willing to make a decision like that. I think with the steel gone, they might have saved the rest, now its a job to rebuild.
Of course. If they had the foresight to cut out one section and get a crane on either side, I bet they could have herded that backup through.
should of had a track hoe with a grapple instead of a cable rig with a clamshell bucket
Sorry to say for rail its run what you brung Very ugly incident
Hate to say it but they were trying to bail out the Titanic with a Dixie Cup.
Just like BP and their oil rig. It's always safety first until it starts costing real money. Then its just do the job and management only watches the checkbook.