Galloping Gertie

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Thu December 9th, 2010, 12:24 am

[quote=""MLE""]Yes, the pontoon bridge over Hood's Canal flipped in a storm, didn't it? I got to know that one pretty intimately in my Vietnam-war protesting days, trying to block the munitions freighters going out of Bangor. Ah, youth and stupidity.[/quote]

You were there? Sometimes I forget how much military presense we have up here. Outside of Lewis/McCord, the casual observer would hardly know they're there.

Yeah, I can't recall the specifics but the Hood Canal's had at least two issues and two over Lake Washington as well. Maybe not full collapses/failures but enough to shut the puppies down for a while and screw everything up.

MLE (Emily Cotton) · Post by **MLE (Emily Cotton)** » Thu December 9th, 2010, 1:52 am

I wasn't there when it flipped, if that's what you mean. I spent the summer of '72 camping on the banks at either end with a whole crazy group of peace-sign-flashing hippies, and every time they tried to get one of the freighters out, we'd take our rag-tag collections of canoes and kyaks and block the sliding opening until the Port Angeles Coast guard got there and beat us all off with the stream from fire hoses.

I got so fond of the coast guard, I later decided to join them. (plus it made half my college debt go away--National defense student loans)

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Thu December 9th, 2010, 2:11 am

I got so fond of the coast guard, I later decided to join them.

They are quite something, especially some of the video I've seen of the training station at the mouth of the Columbia. I'll stay dry-docked thankyouverymuch.

MLE (Emily Cotton) · Post by **MLE (Emily Cotton)** » Thu December 9th, 2010, 2:30 am

Yup, the SAR (Search and Rescue) school at Cape D. I was stationed across the bridge at airstation Astoria-- our group was responsible for all the sonars and radars of the rescue boats from Gray's Harbor to Tillamook. Lots of driving the coast highway. Plus keeping that old dinosaur of a lightship functioning and off the rocks.

I think they finally figured out how to keep a light buoy in place despite the Columbia. Or maybe now with GPS ships don't need light so much.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Thu December 9th, 2010, 3:12 am

[quote=""MLE""]Yup, the SAR (Search and Rescue) school at Cape D. I was stationed across the bridge at airstation Astoria-- our group was responsible for all the sonars and radars of the rescue boats from Gray's Harbor to Tillamook. Lots of driving the coast highway. Plus keeping that old dinosaur of a lightship functioning and off the rocks.

I think they finally figured out how to keep a light buoy in place despite the Columbia. Or maybe now with GPS ships don't need light so much.[/quote]

Astoria has a very nice maritme museum now with a big nod to the Coast Guard. Everything I've read about the waters at the mouth of the Columbia says that is treacherous stuff indeed.

MLE (Emily Cotton) · Post by **MLE (Emily Cotton)** » Thu December 9th, 2010, 3:37 am

That maritime museum used to have the three remaining copies of the WWI radio built into the lightship. Whenever we wanted a part, we had to get the curator to let us in to go cannibalize the other radios. Tubes the size of light bulbs. (remember tubes in electronic equipment?) Once we had to get the poor man up in the middle of the night...

N. Gemini Sasson · Post by **N. Gemini Sasson** » Mon December 13th, 2010, 2:05 am

[quote=""Ariadne""]I remember seeing that clip in high school physics class![/quote]

I was about to say that!

Ken · Post by **Ken** » Mon December 13th, 2010, 2:22 pm

[quote=""MLE""]They showed that in my engineering classes-- an example of what happens if you don't space the supports to interrupt and damp the harmonic wave. That first version of the bridge had piers positioned exactly such that each wave was reflected back down the span, gathering energy as they went.

That film is used in every engineering class that I know of. The other is a collapsing three-storey walkway in a Kansas City hotel where some clever budget-cutter decided that the whole could rest on one bottom nut and spacers, instead of the three that the design called for. (said budget cutting multiplied across many hundreds of walkway hanging rods.)[/quote]

Congratulations on remembering your structures classes,MLE! I am a retired structural engineer and we were all subjected to videos and analyses of why the Tacoma collapsed and what we would have done to prevent it happening, etc.
However, not everyone took notice as the following video will show. The architects wanted (and the engineers let them!), to build a suspension bridge where the suspension cables were horizontal to the bridge deck! It was closed for 2 years and cost millions to put right with much egg on faces all round. What beats me is that when they saw that it was swaying with only a few pedestrians aboard, more and more people joined them until there was some 2000 people on it. A (belatedly) wise engineer got them to evacuate safely and closed it down.

http://www.downloadvideo.net/video/eAXV ... ridge.html