Tacoma Narrows Bridge

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was finished building and was open to the public on June 1st, 1940 in Tacoma, Washington. The bridge was very useful because it had cut the travel time from about 2 and ½ hour drive from Tacoma to the Kitsap Peninsula to about 10 to 15 minutes. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third longest bridge at the time with the length of 1.4 miles. Not even a year after the opening of the bridge on November 7th, 1940, it had collapsed taking no human lives. The exact cause of the bridge failure has been debated among engineers since the disaster but there are a few plausible explanations.
The engineer that had designed the bridge originally was Clark Eldridge. His design came with a large price tag of $11 million which was …show more content…
At the end of the day Gertie collapsed after dropping large chunks of concrete in the water and cables snapping, the only lives that were lost was the dog that was left in the car after refusing to get out. The day after the collapse of Gertie, Clark Eldridge blamed the disaster on the federal authorities for requiring “the employment of Eastern engineers”. Moisseiff stated that he was completely confused to the reason why the bridge collapsed considering the testing model of the bridge at the University of Washington that had convinced him the span would be permanent. Moisseiff told reporters that a “peculiar wind condition” hit Gertie at an unfortunate angle. The unfortunate event was caused by aeroelastic flutter. With enough wind speed Gertie twisted to a greater height than normal and with gravity and the tension of the bridge pulling down, the other side of the bridge began to twist higher and it continued to twist higher and higher until Gertie could not withstand the height any