Radio NZ: http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/283284/tourists-fall-8m-as-bridge-cable-fails
Stuff: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/71747665/lake-waikaremoana-bridge-collapses-sending-trampers-plummeting
Presumably more to come. Hopefully this isn't a reflection of bridge inspections and maintenance anywhere else.
4 people fell off ?. What's usual recommendation warning per crossing ?.
Shouldn't have thought it would be a risk.
Awaiting engineers report :)
a bridge like that could be anything up to ten people as the recommended load.
if there was only four on it, you wouldnt expect that load to break the bridge.
question is did the cable snap or did the anchor point give way?
Talk about a massive slice of luck. All four of them fell 8m into deep water. Could have been a Cave Creek II.
yeah given bridges span dry riverbed as well. thats a very good outcome considering.
i wonder if there will be a wider audit of bridges now.
i think a lot of us may have walked on bridges at some stage that would have had signs on them warning not to use them, i know i did when there wasnt another safe option. the bridge I did looked OK so I took the risk and there was only me on it..
after cave creek a few bridges around teh country were disabled because they didnt come up to the new minimum standard drawn up for bridges, and the decision was made not to replace them, i wonder if that will happen again
This post has been edited by the author on 4 September 2015 at 13:37.
"i wonder if there will be a wider audit of bridges now. "
Probably DoC will wait for the original report from the senior engineered. If the cause is determined to be something that should have been picked up during inspection in June, you'd hope that DoC will be looking up everything else that person has inspected and at least returning to check it again.
"What's usual recommendation warning per crossing ?. "
One of the acknowledgements by all parties during the Cave Creek inquiry was that regardless of signage, structures should still be built to withstand the number of people who might be reasonably expected to crowd onto them on any occasion. Unless they were hacking at the cable with an axe at the time (or someone else has before they arrived), this is probably going to be pinned on a failure by DoC.
Without confirmation though, I guess it can't be ruled out that some idiot might have vandalised the thing.
If it's an inspection thing (still an If) then you'd think that previous inspections could also be suspect, instead of just the most recent one. Failing just 3 months after the last inspection on record would suggest that it could probably have failed before that, too.
Bridge has a maximum load designation of 10 people. A commercial guiding outfit uses the bridge weekly and has led groups of 10 over it.
Around the 1min 20sec mark -
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/201769407/doc-won't-check-other-suspension-bridges-after-one-fails
Has anyone come across any photos of the bridge after its failure? I'm slightly surprised that none of the news organisations seem to have driven or flown out there to get some footage of a bridge flipped over, or whatever state it's in.
you might be over rating editors if you think they will assign someone to drive or fly all the way to the middle of the ureweras to look at a broken tramping footbridge. the best you'll get is file footage. they wont bother gathering their own footage even when people die in the outdoors...
