Trains Resume On Crimea Bridge Hit By Blast: Russian Operator

[flashman13]

23. I am a civil enginer with experience in concrete design.

While the video quality isn't the best, I have been studying a fairly decent one of the railroad bridge in profile. There is a place where there was a very hot fire directly over one of the piers right at the joint of two bridge sections. I think, emphasizing less than great images, there appears to be structural damage at that point with some displacement downward. That bridge is concrete (cheaper than steel - go figure) made up of multiple longitudinal sections. Even if only the outer member is damaged, the bridge is compromised. At best they made a quickie inspection. I would not sign off on its usability without some serious testing.

In another video, a second set of pictures looking up at another pier, clearly shows, over a substantial area, that the outer layers of concrete has peeled off exposing the entire rebar grid. That's not a good sign. High heats can severely compromise concrete. Some of the earlier pictures show entire areas of the bridge ringed with flames. I would definitely advise that trains proceed very slowly over that entire damaged area.

Also, in another video, looking down the center line of the remaining road span, you can see that the outer edge of the structure has a large inward buckle. Depending whether other adjacent members are also buckled, that could be a sign of sever damage. More importantly, it appears that the bridge deck from which the picture was take has displaced vertically downward along its full width. I could be wrong here. Again the quality isn't great. But if there is that sort of significant displacement there is very serious damage which will significantly limit the usability of that span.

All in all, the bridges received significant damage. Someone got an extremely large bang for their buck. I don't believe a word of the truck bomb explosion theory. My guess is that it was a broadside hit from an anti-ship missile fired from a small boat. We already know the Ukrainians are very resourceful.