Fears of failure grow for rods on Bay Bridge eastern span

By Jaxon Van Derbeken

Updated 7:20 am, Sunday, October 25, 2015

New documents raise questions about the integrity of the steel rods that hold together the Bay Bridge eastern span and point to potentially widespread problems that experts warn could lead to premature failure.

An engineer who studied tiny cracks found in flooded rods at the base of the bridge’s tower — a problem Caltrans has downplayed — discovered similar cracks in rods elsewhere on the $6.4 billion span. That cracking, experts say, could make the rods far more vulnerable to failure than the agency has acknowledged.

Separately, Caltrans now concedes that it did not inspect the new bridge’s 2,000-plus rods when they were delivered to ensure their threads met industry specifications, and has since discovered that some if not all of them fall short. It’s a problem that experts warn could weaken the rods down the line, and may have damaged some already.
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Bad rod threads

Earlier this month, the three-member panel that oversees the eastern-span project authorized $685,000 for more testing to gauge the risk from the cracks in the tower. The board also decided to spend $250,000 for inspections and tests on another tower problem — the poor quality of threads on the rods. ... The threaded ends are where nuts secure the 25-foot-long pieces of steel to the tower and its foundation. Engineers have discovered stripped threads on three rods in the tower. .... The Materials Engineering and Testing Services branch of Caltrans admitted in a report to bridge officials in April that no one checked the bridge rods’ quality during production at Vulcan Threaded Products in Alabama or after they were shipped to California in 2007. Caltrans accepted them anyway, in violation of the agency’s rules.