Risk Assessment for the Silver Bridge

Running Head: RISK ASSESSMENT FOR THE SILVER BRIDGE
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November 1
2018

RISK ASSESSMENT FOR THE SILVER BRIDGE
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Introduction
Risk assessment includes the overall process to identify risk and hazards. And hazard is
something that could be dangerous to an individual, to an individual’s health and safety and to
the company’s or an individual’s reputation. According to Occupational Safety, and Health
(OSH), “hazard is a condition that poses a level of potential risk (Burke, Scheurer & Meredith,
2007).
In the non-building sector, the bridge is the biggest growth segment also the highly
impacted in the bridge collapsed (U.S. Bridge, 2018). On the afternoon of December 15, 1967,
the Silver Bridge collapsed while handling the load of heavy traffic and killed around 46 people
and many others were injured. Around 5’o clock in the evening, the chain on the upriver side
suddenly snapped. The roadway started to incline; cars started falling into the river 80 feet
below. There was one witness who told to Time magazine, "The Bridge just capsized over,
starting slowly on the Ohio side and then folding like a deck of cards to the West Virginia side."
The bridge provided crossing for US route 35 over the Ohio River and connected to Columbus,
Charleston, and West Virginia. The bridge was built by the American bridge company of
Pittsburgh. According to the National Transportation Safety Board report, “The accident was
caused by a fractured eye bar”. The government eventually improved the way bridges were
examined to ensure safety and functionality. If the proper risk assessment was implemented then
the whole incident was avoidable (Johnston, 2007).
The safety breaches that led to the incident

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At the time of construction of any infrastructure it is important to keep one thing in mind that
can because of harm by exposure to risk, for example, accidents of workers and the general
public, damage of property, loss of money on agreements, loss of time, production, reputation,
and future business for example, “A properly implemented risk assessment could save the life of
46 people if Silver bridge incident has not happened”. To protect these risks it is important to
have a planned descriptive risk assessment and strategies that can easily identify future hazards
(KarimiAzari, Mousavi, Mousavi, & Hosseini, 2011).
1. Design and construction errors: The Bridge was formed with an eye bar design, with
the cables fastened to inflexible metal rods. Instead of the outmoded wire chains and
chain-link anchors of most postponement bridges (Johnston, 2007).
2. Overloading: Engineers had designed the bridge of the Model-T Ford that could weight
up about 1500 pounds. And the regularly traveled vehicle such as trucks carries as much
as 60,000 pounds on the Silver’s span (Johnston, 2007).
3. A cleavage fracture in the lower limb of eye-bar: This was the main reason for the
breakage of the silver bridge, there was a minor crack in the eye bar and it was formed
with the suspension chain. The failed eye bar was of number 330 and is positioned at the
Ohio end of the bridge (Johnston, 2007).
4. Corrosion: The failure of the entire structure had happened because of the crack in the
eye bar and the stress corrosion and the corrosion fatigue was the reason that allowed it to
get grow. The material that engineers have used for the bridge construction was not
aware of the durability and subduing to corrosion fatigue and stress corrosion. (Johnston,
2007).

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5. Collision: Collision happens because of vessel impact and it causes severe damages to
bridges. Many collapses in bridges started by the local component failure (Johnston,
2007).
6. Lack of inspection and maintenance: Bridges are constructed to serve a long period of
time for at least 100 years or more. And in service bridges are not just constantly handle
loads but also handle the environmental attack. It is important to do the inspection and
maintenance work in a timely manner otherwise it could lead to serious damage same that
happened with the silver bridge (Johnston, 2007).
7. Incomplete designs and poorly defined scope: Having proper designs and descriptive
scope plan is important for a successfully completed infrastructure. Otherwise, a poor
vision and incomplete designs can lead to big problems such as waste of money, time and
labor efforts (Haimes, 2015).
8. Improper project controlling: It can be included the loss of time and money If the
project management will be bad at the time of construction then there is a possibility of
delay in completing the project and also can cause in result of damage of property if it is
not in a good supervision (Hopkin, 2018).