News re inspection:
The crews deployed to inspect all manhole covers, sewer grates, and electrical panel covers on Boston’s highways and ramps did not find anything any structures to be insecure or “to indicate a threat to public safety,” according to the state Department of Transportation.
Crews deployed for the inspections did visual inspections, drove their vehicles over and struck each metal cover with various tools to see if there would be any give or shift. At the smallest amount of movement, crews took action in welding covers. No covers at any of the 919 locations were deemed possible for immediate failure.
the same mountainbike: The school teacher losing her life in a freak accident was tragic. It can and does happen. The infamous “bolt from the blue” being struck by lightning under a clear sky. The “golden BB” portrayed in the film “Air America” where the elderly VC takes a pot shot with a turn of the 20th century Russian rifle at a C-123 and hits an engine. The plane crashes and burns upon landing. I experienced 2 lightning strikes while flying. One military and one commercial. The first was military returning to Astoria airport located at the mouth of the Columbia river in the dark. The thunderstorms were 30 miles North. Our windscreen and wipers suddenly glowed with St Elmo’s fire. My pilot was one of our best. He was a former USAF F-86D Saber pilot with many hours in bad weather. He showed me how to write and draw with my finger on the windscreen. It reminded me of Captain Ahab holding the glowing harpoon in Moby Dick. Suddenly WHAM! A blue/green flash and most electronics dead. Visibility was good and we could easily follow the big river to the airport. The main problem was UHF, VHF, and HF radios being inoperative. FM still worked. We were able to contact our flight operations who telephoned tower and declared our emergency clearing runways and airspace. We made an uneventful landing and the OV-1D Mohawk had a pencil size burned penetration of the central vertical fin and a slightly larger burn hole in the horizontal stabilizer. The next day the aircraft was cleared for an 80 mile one time VFR (Visual Flight Rules) flight by our maintenance officer to our base/maintenance facility. It provided over 2 weeks of gainful employment for our avionics and airframe technicians. The commercial flight was a twin turboprop commuter 10 years later from Atlanta, GA to Dothan, AL. They where at the destination airport and descended through a thunderstorm cell. Another blue/green flash but safe landing with (CORRECTION: no apparent) lightning damage to the airplane.
@sgtrock21 Incredible story! Just want to have you appreciate what I saw at GFAFB air show while I was assistant manager of the Officers club, number 1 SAC base at the time. Sure we had dignitaries, and fun bands.
A group of helicopter pilots, Canadian possibly, called the dragonflies doing maneuvers in helicopters such as all 4 flying to a point and peeling off in near 360’s, incredible, I think it was an f15 approached the runway at 450 mph, pulled a complete 180, full afterburners and landed on the runway!
Sarge, that young woman’s death definitely was a freak accident. However, I’m guessing from many of the posts that many of the posters don’t believe that Jennerhole covers do come loose, that the support rings and substructures don’t break down and occasionally break under the weight and effects of snowplows and tractor-trailers. And, occasionally, this results in a freak and serious accident. There are countless thousands of these things on old broken down secondary highways located right under the tracks where the tires roll. It’s a wonder more don’t come up.
Unfortunately, nothing can be made 100% safe. Things happen that cannot be prevented no matter how hard we try.
You and Barky are bringing back a lot of great memories. Barky, I was stationed at GFAFB from early '71 to early '74. I looked it up recently on a satellite view website and it broke my heart… it’s virtually empty now, except for BUFF and KC135 “gate guards” (gutted display planes framing the main gates) and a few other gutted displays. The trailers many of us single guys lived in along with all the planes are gone. So many bases have been shut down, and the military has been so badly cut back, that it’s hard not to be heartbroken.
An EMP (electro magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear weapon) would make those aircraft, aircrap.
Surprised that lightning was able to do so much damage.
But such is the capricious nature of lightning.
One thing to consider was that the manhole cover was within the Big-Dig…which was proven to be a huge quality control problem. The rare occasions I drive into Boston I try to stay away from any of the Big-Dig construction.
Did you see the shape of the cover in question? I could see how that got tipped up and flung. Not hard to imagine it wedging between tires and body to be flung upward. Fact is, it went through the windshield so it HAD to be airborne.
Anyone that drives in the Boston area see dozens of manhole covers that are sunken on one side or other settling/age anomalies that could contribute to dislodging.
I saw a soda can dropped from a car in front of me that hit the pavement just right and bounced up OVER my car on the expressway. It was astounding how high it bounced. I bet you could try to do that for the rest of your life and not repeat it…
You’re I classy company. When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry, they knew that an insulating tile had broken off the nose and the engineers from NASA and the contractor claimed that could not have damaged the wing. All their calculations showed that the tile would disintegrate. However, when they ran actual tests with a wing and a tile, the tile blew a hole the size of a basketball in the wing’s leading edge.
Even engineers fully versed in the laws involved stunned. It’s very easy to underestimate the forces involved.
Actually one engineer did figure it out…but no one believed him. F = MA. The mass of the Styrofoam piece that broke off had very little Mass…but it did have a lot of acceleration.
Actually, the shuttle ran into the tile. The shuttle had the acceleration, the tile fragment was slowing down the moment it departed the shuttle.
Have you seen the damage a floating paint chip can do to the shuttle on orbit or even the ISS? Like you pointed out, low mass, high speed differential…
Not unlike a stone thrown up by a car in front. The real damage happens when your car runs into the stone
Actually, the shuttle ran into the tile. The shuttle had the acceleration, the tile fragment was slowing down the moment it departed the shuttle.
From a physcis point of view, it’s utterly irelevant which item is treated as “in motion,” and simply a matter of perspective. The Earth rotates at slightly more than Mach 1 at temperate latitudes. If someone fired a gun, Westward, at a target, we wouldn’t say, “the target ran into the (stationary) bullet,” but we COULD, and the physics work out the same, regardless.
