Kincardane Bridge Collapse Worrying

It's unfortunate that this news story has not received more press than it has. A bridge in Bruce County Ontario collapsed yesterday, seriously injuring at least one construction worker. My inside sources have told me that what's being reported on the TV and in the papers is not the truth of the story. Here's the story. Workers were pouring concrete on the bridge deck around noon and were almost finished. When the pour is almost finished a "screeding" machine moves across the bridge to smooth out the wet concrete. The weight of the machine moving across the bridge caused it to collapse. It appears that the pillars holding the deck up gave way under the added weight. Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of this incident was that fact that I know the person who was operating the screeding machine. I would call him an acquaintance. I've met him on a few occasions. Seems like a nice guy. He runs a business that does just that, smooths concrete on bridge decks. My family running our own bridge construction business uses his business as a near exclusive sub-contractor. He is one of the few companies that does this smoothing who actually owns... well, owned his own equipment. The machine was destroyed yesterday. He had to be airlifted to hospital with serious injuries, though what these exact injuries are I do not know yet. It is a miracle nobody was killed in the collapse.

We've been in the bridge construction business as a family for 15 years while my father has been in it for near 30 years. Not once have any of our bridges failed. It is very rare that they do. However, very few of these incidents are freak accidents. A lot goes on in the nether world of construction that most people are totally unaware of. Our business has tried to focus on quality work and maintaining steady profits rather than sheer volume. However, this sort of thinking makes us dinosaurs. A lot of outfits now focus on sheer volume of jobs, often cutting corners or using unskilled (read cheap) labour to get the job done for the lowest cost possible. These people run into nothing but trouble using this business model, falling deep into the red, using money from one contract to pay for others (which is illegal), and running jobs far behind schedule. The bridge that collapsed was already three months behind schedule and only 80% complete at the time.
I won't name names but these people know who they are. My father, who is a civil engineer, refers to these outfits as "cowboys". Unsophisticated people who have no business doing the work they're trying to do. In some cases, these companies may not even hire engineers to make sure the job is safe. They also cut corners in terms of material and men in order to reduce job costs further. This leaves a vast number of our province's bridges with a questionable safety record.

Are Ontario's bridges safe? The answer is a definite no. Ontario's bridges are a ticking time bomb. What happened in Minneapolis, Minnisota this past summer should have been a wakeup call, but it wasn't. We still have provincial and municipal governments who refuse to allocate more funds to improve our infrastructure. They choose to go for the cheapest contractors rather than investigating their quality and reliability and are surprised when they run into the issues I mentioned above. Governments are purely satisfied with shoddy construction or patch work jobs that just barely extend the life of roads and bridges a few more years. Sure, it costs them more in the long run but they don't seem to care. Owners are not properly inspecting their jobs and sleazy contractors are getting away with blue murder. To paraphrase CTV's W-Five, it's an industry built on indifference. We have decided to retire from the industry at the end of this financial year simply because we can no longer compete against these crooked contractors.

It's not a question of "if" Ontario will experience a Minneapolis style bridge collapse, it's when. In fact, I think I can say with almost certainty that it will be some part of the raised portion of Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. Perhaps the most dilapidated structure currently in heavy everyday use in the province. It is rusted with rebar supports showing through chipped and rapidly deteriorating concrete. Imagine it's Monday morning during rush hour. Traffic on the Gardiner is crawling, and so is traffic on the Lakeshore under it. You're sitting in your car on top of the highway when all of a sudden you hear a loud groan that drowns out your radio. Next thing you know your car is plummeting some 50ft to the ground below. The cars on top leave a mess of twisted metal and carnage while everyone on the Lakeshore below is crushed to death. Disturbing isn't it. Now, I'm no engineer and I know very little about bridge construction, but it doesn't take an expert to see this coming. If you think such a thing is unlikely think of it this way. They were almost finished pouring the concrete for the Bruce County job yesterday. What if they had completed it without this happening? The structure will still be too weak. A tractor trailer or dump truck or a row of cars weighs a lot more than a single concrete screeding machine. Steady traffic causes a lot more stress, particularly over time. It very well could have weakened and collapsed after it was finished when people were driving on it. I think it's time the Minister of Transportation comes up with some answers. Our governments and the contractors they are hiring are playing a dangerous game with our lives. The safety of our roads and bridges should not be left up to a craps shoot.