I-10 eastbound near Desert Center collapsed

[Dave1]

Wow!
( dead link removed )

[big_load]

Yikes! Infrastructure is so vulnerable in the desert.

[azbackpackr]

I pass that place a few times a year and in fact was right there a week ago! Same with Cajon Pass on the 15, I had passed through there about 3 days before that fire that burned a bunch of cars. Glad I missed all the action!

[chumley]

If they built a small ramp, I bet JJ's Mercedes could clear it Dukes of Hazzard style. :wlift:

[chumley]

NWS PHX issued a report on this. A couple of the photos are impressive. Over 5 inches of rain fell in the Desert Center area as storms sat nearly stationary over I-10 in that area. Not only did Tex Wash wash out the eastbound bridge and undermine the stability of the westbound bridge, but flood waters actually ran OVER I-10. Wowsers.
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/psr/pns/2015/Ju ... _flood.php

[SpiderLegs]

So I guess no more quick trips for C2C are planned anytime soon.

[War247]

Crazy stuff. Pretty scary, I drive over this often when I visit my brothers in California.

[Dave1]

@SpiderLegs
If the Ragsdale Road bridge is ok, it could be used as a bypass. Wouldn't add much more driving. Probably won't support big rigs though.

[trekkin_gecko]

our PHX driver swaps trailers with the LAX driver at desert center twice a day
be interesting to see what they do with the freight

[chumley]

@Dave1Can it handle 20,000-47,000 vehicles per day? (The range of normal traffic I've read from different sources).

[sbkelley]

Yep, looks like the AADT is ~24,000 (in 2014), at least according to the state DOT.

http://traffic-counts....

Looks like I-8 & I-40 will be getting a heavier dose of truck traffic to/from LA until the bridge is repaired!

[RowdyandMe]

I think I would take hwy 62 to Parker and down from there

[chumley]

Nerd Alert! :whistle:

Just did some map work. The Tex Wash drains ~4.7 square miles (3000 acres) of the Chuckwalla Mtns south of I-10. That's it! Not a huge drainage at all. But the drainage begins at the high point of the range, 2500 feet above the I-10 bridge. So water probably drains pretty fast once the ground is saturated.

5 inches of rain over 4.7 square miles is 54.6 million cubic feet of water. That's 1250 acre feet or about 400 million gallons.
For reference, Tempe Town Lake holds 977 million gallons of water.

So imagine half of TTL draining down this little wash over the course of a few hours.

</nerd alert>

[joebartels]

So imagine half of TTL draining down this little wash over the course of a few hours.

that actually happened, where is MARLIN btw

[chumley]

Looks like the collapsed bridge was one of the highest rated bridges.

Hiker Notice: One of the two most structurally deficient bridges on I-10 crosses the PCT.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... /30428515/

[big_load]

Looks like the collapsed bridge was one of the highest rated bridges.
/

Building a bridge in that area that would survive such a flood seems all but impossible.

[chumley]

@big_load
If you look at the topo map, there area actually dikes built to direct runoff under the interstate where the bridges are built. The USAT article makes it sound like the channel shifted and undermined the bridge supports from the side. It doesn't look like there was a dike built adjacent to this particular wash.

[big_load]

The dikes can only help so much. With enough flow, even they are vulnerable. The first area to get undermined would be the channel end, but if it topped the dike, the whole downstream side could scour out. I figure that's a lot more likely in such poorly consolidated sediments than for structures like wing dams in the Mississippi. Even then, there are some good examples in SE Iowa where the 2011 flood took out many bridges and control structures along tributaries that had been rebuilt after the 1993 flood. In some places, main bridge decks and pylons stood undamaged, but the banks were eaten out far back from where they previously stood.

There are few things I respect as much as moving water.

[JasonCleghorn]

I'm from FL where we had to worry about hurricanes. Wind damages, water(storm surges) destroys.

[gummo]

Looks like the collapsed bridge was one of the highest rated bridges.

Yeah right. That's like when they said that the Twin Towers were designed to be strong enough to withstand a plane crash. I guess you can't know until it happens.

Nonetheless, I am not an engineer, but I would think that a stronger bridge would have oval, egg-shaped, or football-shaped pillar under it for support than the block-like rectangular pillars. Oval shapes are stronger than rectangles. That's why VW bugs are safer than other cars their size.