Witch Hunts Continue?

Since the initial shock of the 35W bridge collapse wore off, Senator Steve Murphy and our friends on Portland Avenue have been looking for someone to blame for the collapse. Their target, almost from day one, has been Lt. Governor and MNDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau. The partisan feeding frenzy has been especially harried in the days leading up to the start of the new legislative session (Feb. 13) with elected officials on both sides of the aisle preparing for a battle over "re-confirmation" hearings. Well The New York Times is reporting today that the NTSB is releasing a preliminary report into the cause of the bridge collapse and if their findings are correct, Senator Murphy et al may have been a little premature in their placing of blame.

Investigators said Monday that the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, killing 13, came down because of a flaw in its design.
The designers had specified a metal plate that was too thin to serve as a junction of several girders, investigators say.
The bridge was designed in the 1960s and lasted 40 years. But like most other bridges, it gradually gained weight during that period, as workers installed concrete structures to separate eastbound and westbound lanes and made other changes, adding strain to the weak spot. At the time of the collapse, crews had brought tons of equipment and material onto the deck for a repair job...“This is not a bridge-inspection thing,” said one investigator, “It’s calculating loads and looking at designs.” The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the investigators’ findings before the announcement Tuesday.

Emphasis mine. Even though the investigator said it was not a "bridge inspection thing" the Star Tribune, in its reporting on the preliminary report goes back to bridge inspections.

In 1993, a state inspector found that the half-inch gusset plate had lost nearly half of its thickness in some spots because of corrosion along an 18-inch line, but no repairs were ordered, according to Minnesota Department of Transportation records combed by the Star Tribune.

Now my memory is not as good as it once was, but I am fairly certain that back in 1993 (the year we moved to Minnesota) Carol Molnau was not Lt. Governor. I believe that she had just been elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives the year before and that Arne Carlson was governor at the time......

However, if the esteemed Senator and our dear friends on Portland Avenue are really determined to "place blame" for this tragedy, the Times suggests where they might be able to place the real blame for the collapse.

The I-35W bridge was of a type called “fracture critical,” meaning that the failure of any major member would cause a collapse, because it had no redundancy. The design is lighter and less expensive to build, but has gradually fallen out of favor with highway departments.

Emphasis mine...

As I said earlier, Tim Pawlenty and Carol Molnau were not even in politics at the time this bridge was designed, approved by MNDOT and built. They simply are not to blame for this tragedy. The inital designers maybe....those who approved that the design be built maybe, but no one who ever served in the Governors Office, the Legislature or MNDOT for the last 20 years should be saddled with the "blame" for this bridge coming down.

Rather than gunning after Lt. Gov. Molnau, maybe Senator Murphy should remember his remarks from an August 6, 2007 televised press conference when he said that he bore some blame for the collapse as his committee had oversight over MNDOT. But then again, that would spoil a perfectly good partisan witch hunt and we wouldn't want to do that now, would we?????