‘Sickening that Republicans are now blaming Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill for this bridge accident. The sheer gall and naked opportunism and idiocy,’ epidemiologist says
Republicans are facing criticism for attempting to blame the Baltimore Bridge collapse on President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on Tuesday after a cargo ship crashed into it. Six construction workers are presumed dead.
South Carolina Representative Nancy Maceappeared on the rightwing channel Newsmax on Tuesday when she was asked why there are still old bridges and roads in the US after the passing of legislation to upgrade them.
It’s Biden’s fault.
It’s the Black mayor’s fault.
It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that a ship crashed into and structurally compromised it until it failed. Nothing at all. That played no role.
Should we design our bridges to be able to withstand these types of incidents? Ok - sounds like we’re gonna have to raise the budget for…checks notes infrastructure. Has anyone thought of that recently? Anyone at all?
But do you have any proof that Biden wasn’t the one who crashed the ship?
Oh on a serious note I don’t know the exact design specifics for this bridge but often they are designed to take some impact. But the Francis Scott key bridge was designed in the 70s when container ships were much smaller. The ship that hit it was finished in 2015. It is a Neo-Panamax and about 3 times larger than ships of the 70s.
Yeah, you’d struggle to design a foundation that could take a hit like that, it would be something like a 20m diameter cofferdam full of concrete. The ship that hit it was about 100,000DWT so the impact load will be something like 300MN.
The bridge did have some small dolphins / navigation guides in front of the piers but they were likely designed for a very small impact load from a small vessel losing control.
Right, and that’s my point - it could be done, we just choose not to, but leave it to Republicans to blame whoever they don’t like and say whatever awful thing they can that day to outdo whoever said the most awful other thing the day before because that’s what shitty people do.
Meanwhile during 4 years of Trump, every week was Infrastructure Week, nothing got done then, none of the people saying the dumb things now have any real solutions to these absolutely real problems nor do they even care to, and so here we are.
And yes I’m preaching to the choir, screaming into the void, but it’s the hypocrisy - it’s the constant hypocrisy. It just never ends. Sorry, thanks for letting me vent lol