New York City building crack near George Washington Bridge

Nine-foot crack in a nine-foot web of a similar bridge girder; brittle fracture initiated at bottom flange weld, propagated up through web, stopped at top flange. Closed lanes for six months.

I had a similar failure for the George Washington Bridge in New York. It was a nine-foot crack in a nine-foot web, but it didn't fracture the top flange of the I-beam. It started at the weld. Where did it start? It started at the bottom flange. The brittle fracture ran all the way up through the web, and because it was deflection limited it didn't break all the way through. But they closed off one or two of the lanes from the George Washington Bridge coming into New York City for six months and created a lot of havoc.

---

Travel narrative begun but not completed in this segment. Thirty- to forty-story apartment building near the George Washington Bridge approach, ten-foot-tall structural beam web with a crack. Tom is called in. Narrative breaks off mid-knock.

I had another example in New York City once. Everybody knows the George Washington Bridge into New York City. You come over the bridge and then it goes underneath the highway, the other highway. One time there was this thirty- or forty-story apartment building. They said, we've got a crack in one of the structural beams — ten-foot-tall web, holding up this twenty-story building. This is the beam that, if you were driving through the tunnel, you'd look up and that would be the beam holding up the building. And there's a crack in it. I said, give me an address. The taxi speeds off out of that neighborhood. I look around — everything's bolted up — and I go and knock —

20-story residential high-rise near the George Washington Bridge approach. Nine-foot crack in an 8-foot beam supporting the building over a highway. Bottom flange and web fully cracked; only top flange intact. Tom inspected it. Includes anecdote about drug capsules on sidewalk and "where could they go get some of that crack in the basement" joke from tenants' meeting.

I had one in New York City once. It was the underpinning of a 20-story high-rise that — if you come into New York City on the George Washington Bridge, you go underneath some buildings. I got to be right up there above the highway, because they found a nine-foot crack in an 8-foot beam. The bottom flange of the beam had cracked, the whole web at flat crack — it was basically only the top flange holding this together. It was sort of an interesting area of New York City. I remember being dropped off there by the cabbie, and he just buzzes away, and I'm sitting there with my camera bag with five thousand dollars worth of equipment, and I look down and see all these little capsules, empty capsules, on the sidewalk. I decided that's why the cab driver got out of that area so quickly. And here I am, not looking like one of the natives, carrying five thousand dollars with the camera.