Big Dig Tragedy - video Review Shows Difficulty Installing Ceiling Panels

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 insolvable hats take ceiling panels in the Ted Williams Tunnel. They give hardy handshakes to a Bechtel supervisor who stops by to glad hand and ignores the transparent 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 subterranean beneath 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 conduit tunnel. They double o lightweight compared to the panels that plunged down to crush Milena Del Valle. The steel rods clock in to be suspended from brackets bolted into the most concrete ceiling. The bulky panels are raised into locale by a machine. In early investigations, it has been set that at primeval one of these ceiling sections of the Ted Williams Tunnel has to be replaced before more deaths materialize. The Mass Turnpike connector tunnel needs much more work to ever approach a unbiased level of safety.
Next recording. I can see the density of the rebar in the connector tunnel, stare the words “EAST BOUND” painted on girders suspended over the pathway where Milena Del Valle kiss goodbye her life in an accidental ceiling tunnel collapse. It’s shiny to me from the last two tapes that a stubborn showdown by project managers to use ceiling panels that were too heavy despite warnings about design from contractors monotonous cost her life last month. On the smuggle, the adamantine workers twist the rebar ties relentlessly. It becomes more barefaced why construction workers who hung the heavy 2 - ton ceiling panels in 12 - ton grid arrangements would have been frustrated. Trying to pierce clean holes to hold bolts affixed to the ceiling by epoxy would have been pusillanimous, the drill often thwarted by rebar. The rebar is in control together in thick streams inside the concrete structure. In long camera shots it looks approximative a solid green sea, and up close the 3 or 4 inches between vertical and uninterrupted bars construction an bizarre looking unclouded and green plaid wall.
The record moves to close - ups of worker’s faces. I provide for that working overhead with concrete bits and dust falling down in your face while trying to hoist a drill heavy enough to pierce a hole for each lock must have been very frustrating. Boring once and into the rebar, it would have been so appealing to just epoxy a hole to insert the fastening even if the hole was not 100 % concrete, not understanding the epoxy would not bond to the rebar. I can imagine one of these workers thinking that no one would ever know the characteristic if he did not try and an inch away to make a clean hole. Slow at blackness working in a cold and unattended tunnel where the light is so dim, peering into a concrete hole to see if it is clean would be too insolvable for halfway anyone. Maybe 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 shlep in the heat of the early summer morning to wipe the sweat that was dripping down your face? Do you revoke how your skin felt equal cracking while sweat mixed with concrete bits? Did your throat tightened from the pungent smell of the chipped cement while your arms ached from the pounding drill overhead? That must have made your determination easier to plead. Each time the drill screeched into rebar and showered your bare arms beyond the thick work gloves with scorching that bit your skin and singed the hair escaping from unbefitting your insoluble trilby, it must have been easier to ignore the system to get a clean hole. I can possess if you signaled likewise worker to insert the epoxy. I don ' t vindicate it, but I can sense it.
I project your thoughts at dark when you white lie tuned in unable to sleep despite the number of drinks that are supposed to drown out the sound in your head. What did the project managers expect? You told them twice that this epoxy was not vivacity to work and they looked at you jibing you must be unready, mad, stoned or worse. Or you kept your mouth shut so the authorized manipulate in a tie and tough bowler with a span 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. Okay, 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, device about the Big Dig that you know was not done well. Do it now while the federal investigation is just autochthonous. 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 unschooled that the ceiling would be the lighter weight design used in the Ted Williams Den. Following, when the design changed to very hefty combine panels, this design resolute warned the stand managers. Aside from warnings from designers and complaints from contractors about the weight of the selected design for the cavity ceiling panels, CA / T draw out managers went headmost with the higher juxtapose slabs to “save MONEY”! This accord was the booked result from politicians and engineers who on ice up spending $14. 8 billion or more for a stick to originally estimated at $2. 3 billion.
While not in keeping with the quality of work that unions lecture, it’s easier to seize the fail of the adhere worker searching for a clean disjunction than the boisterous contempt for public safety shown by the progress managers and engineers who were warned generally about this prepatent structural oversight. What is the spell out? Was it the bead of strike over trying to pay themselves and Bechtel a small aspiration and keep the costs for the linger in line with the budget? Was it the choked up crave in the throat from their latest signing bonus for yet exceeding brother - in - law without experience for a pallid stay job? Were their arms zinged from signing checks for themselves and their friends?
Members of the Joint Exploit ( the state and Bechtel / Parsons, Brinkerhoff ) had information that the den ceiling design might not be safe proximate 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 smallest one managing project director was to order further load testing
in the High Clutch Vehicle track only. The High Clench Vehicle course bolts tested well for loads that were double the weight of the ceiling panels.
These officials then chose to handle the question the way many problems are handled in Boston, by taking care of their own and disregarding everyone other. According to the Boston Globe on August 16, uncommon privileges were extended for project managers and the employees of the MBTA. Project Managers and employees of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority familiar set rank to travel in the High Hold Vehicle track at all times. This was the only track tested for ceiling safety that was shown to be safe in the connector tunnel. Where is the ethical irascibility in Boston? Will the politically privileged get a pass on identical sappy behavior while they scrutinize the half dozen Walsh employees who actually installed the ceiling bolts in the panel that collapsed? Give me a break. The project managers and engineers who failed to heed the warnings should be in jail by now. Attorney General Tom Reilly is too busy cope his own neglect of a Bechtel litigation while counting campaign contributions from Bechtel and project managers in his run for Controller to get his job done.
The next Dignitary of this Country has a really big job, a different clement of Big Dig. It will be a monumental task to root out the nepotism havens in the 40 or so quasi - public authorities. These semi - private agencies get their money from the Commonwealth, but have no incumbency or blame 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 general appointment at the Turnpike can actually accomplish item. If he wanted to really evidence some leadership he would clean box at every quasi - public authority in this County 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 Pearly Homestead, whoever gets the job.
ฉ2006, Dale Orlando