A few years ago, maybe 10 or 15, I was watching a cable show about the Narrows Tacoma bridge collapse. This was better than the usual 15 second clip we see; this was a video documenting the collapse from the beginning wobbles, on through the final collapse. Of course, there were the usual edits to talk with an engineer, or somebody who was there that day, but, there was a substantial length of actual footage. IIRC, more than can be found on youtube, even.
Does anybody know where I can get a copy, or what the name of the video is?
You’re probably talking about the 4 minute long clip from the Stillman Fires archives. One of the craziest things is you can see a guy walk across it right before it finally collapses!
(I’m a stock footage researcher and we have this tape in our database.)
IIRC, he was the driver of the car that was stuck on the bridge. Trying to drive across while it was bucking says something about his sanity, but he wasn’t out for a stroll.
That clip right there has more footage than I’ve ever seen before. Most times you see it, it just has clips of the bridge opening ceremony, swaying, the swaying with the car, sometimes the guy walking, and the bit where the deck comes down. And there always seems to be a gap where they show the swaying, and then the deck is in already in mid-fall.
Also, I notice that in this clip, the deck appears to break up and heave up to the left of the frame, while the shot of the deck falling shows the supports on the left and the deck falling off to the right.
In all the other clips I’ve seen, I’ve never seen the heave shot, the supports were always extreme right in the shot, and the deck was always falling to the left of the supports.
I’ve always thought that was film from the San Francisco Quake! Can someone give me a link to the story of this collapse? It’s a pain from my iPod. Thanks!
I learned the resonance story as an undergraduate, but the link you provided (and others) actually point toward something different, aerodynamic flutter (something I hadn’t heard of before today). As I understand it (and I probably don’t) the wind constantly created torsion in the bridge, which would normally dissipate. But under unusually heavy wind the torsion was unable to dissipate, and instead increased until the bridge twisted itself apart.
I went college not too far from there. Someone I knew bought an old camera that he claimed (or the guy who sold it to him claimed) that it was the one that took that footage of the bridge.
The way I heard it, the bridge always moved in a strong wind (earning the nickname “Galloping Gertie”), but it moved in different ways. Before the collapse, it would move up and down only. (That is, as you moved along the bridge, you’d be going uphil, then downhill, as the bridge oscillated.) I think the twisting motion was new on the day it came down.
I always thought it was amusing that an insurance agent had pocketed the premiums for the insurance on the bridge. I mean, he must have thought “how could a bridge collapse?"
Huh, that’s a neat video. I admit I thought it’d collapsed a hell of a lot more recently than 1940. The Narrows still makes me nervous, even though I’ve driven across it without incident and the old one collapsed way before I was born.
On preview: Ha! I just realized I was born on the 44th anniversary of it’s collapse. Maybe that’s why I get nervous… :eek:
Aye. That bridge was flexing way beyond what seems possible. I mean fucking hell it eventually collapsed, but imagine the strain on the cables. And there’s a chap walking back from his car! Run, dude, run!
From accounts I’ve read, the car belonged to a reporter who abandoned it when the bridge’s motion got too violent. His dog, Tubby, was in the car and was too frightened to come out.
An engineering professor, F.B. Farquharson (I am not making that name up!), who had been studying the bridge since its construction was the man seen walking off the bridge in the film footage, just before it fell. He had tried to rescue Tubby from the car, but was unsuccessful. Tubby was the only casualty of the bridge’s collapse.
Does anyone remember the Pioneer commercial from about 15 years ago, where a guy in a convertible is driving across a bridge and he puts a CD in his Pioneer car stereo and cranks the volume up? The next shot is a clip of the Tacoma Narrows bridge in full oscillation. Then the next shot is of the guy turning his stereo down. He looks around sheepishly and says, “Sorry!.”
At the Point Defiance Zoo (in Tacoma) they have a piece of the original wreckage in the aquarium, with information about the animals that live on and around it. More than once I have heard parents telling their kids about how the bridge came down in an earthquake. :smack:
