CHP probes Bay Bridge welding controversy

[alp227]

Source: Sacramento Bee

The California Highway Patrol has opened an administrative investigation into the handling of welding problems that affected some sections of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge fabricated in China.

“When the Transportation Agency heard serious allegations during a recent committee hearing, it asked the CHP to see if the facts show something more than a professional disagreement five years ago,” Gareth Lacy, spokesman for the state Transportation Agency, which oversees the California Department of Transportation, said in an email. “This is an administrative inquiry, not a criminal probe. Accountability matters, so if anything improper occurred, we will act accordingly.”

Caltrans spokeswoman Tamie McGowen said that her department was cooperating with the investigation, but otherwise had no comment.

Lisa Thomas, a metallurgical and materials Engineer at the Berkeley Research Company, a testing and consulting laboratory, told The Sacramento Bee that she had been contacted for information by a CHP sergeant for his probe, sparked by testimony at a Jan. 24 hearing of the California Senate Transportation and Housing Committee.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/03/14/6237922/chp-probes-bay-bridge-welding.html

[yourout]

1. Hmm.....nowhere to get the steel here in the US?

[tomm2thumbs]

2. 'inspectors found hundreds of cracked welds in roadway box girders which were fabricated in China'

Those are just the ones they found

[XemaSab]

3. Half the people who worked on that bridge should be fired

and the other half should be in jail.

[JoeyT]

4. The upper management, and the people in charge of purchasing, certainly.

The welds that were cracking were the ones that were already on the bridge. If someone hired in as a welder over here, they took a test...either a bend/pressure test, or a radiograph test. If a bunch of people pass bend/xrays and the welds are still breaking, something is wrong with the steel.