Bertha, the Giant Borer That Broke, May Be Sinking Seattle's Downtown (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Bertha, the Giant Borer That Broke, May Be Sinking Seattle's Downtown (2014)

npr.org

22 pointsedward8 comments

This is from last December. The latest [1] is that Bertha was successfully moved into the access pit, and they're starting to disassemble the cutter for repairs. Engineers on site did measure a ~1" sink of surrounding soil, but downtown Seattle is still standing.

[1] http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/Contents/Item/Displ...

Seattleite here, and a member of the large majority of this fair city who wanted nothing to do with this fucking mess well before the first shovel hit dirt.

I want the viaduct gone as much as the next person, because when (not if) we have a decent sized earthquake, that thing is collapsing. So it needs to go asap. But there were so many better alternatives to a massive drill that everyone knew was going to turn into this colossal mess.

As it stands now we're just lucky it wasn't stuck underneath any buildings because then what? The thing can't go backwards. There is NO contingency plan here for when that inevitably happens in the next 9/10ths of the distance it still needs to go after this initial repair.

The only good to come out of this the past 12 months was a really creative (albeit far-fetched) concept for what to do when they decide to just shut the thing down:

http://www.bornagainbertha.com/

Here's the key support for the final clause in the title: "...and which some say is damaging nearby buildings." The "some" are almost entirely made up of owners who would like to sue the state or the owners of the tunneling company. The city and state engineers have concluded that there is no evidence of such (at least not yet).

The situation is typical for any large construction project; there have been, (and will be), stultifying screw-ups, but following significant delays, it will finally be finished. See also: Bostonians love their "Big Dig" ..now.

It doesn't help that The Stranger, a local newspaper, has an entire staff of people who are sitting around waiting to write yet another the-sky-is-falling article anytime anybody so much as farts in the tunnel. Those guys are just dying for the project to be a major disaster.

Except, how has it not been a major disaster so far? It seems like the epitome of "everything that could go wrong has gone wrong".

One of those is your own submission, from today, linking to a similarly outdated article, which is weird

This is oldish news but worth noting that it wasn't Bertha herself that was sinking anything. The current best guess is it was the result of pumping out a huge amount of groundwater while digging a new pit to rescue her. Hopefully now that Bertha has entered the rescue pit this won't be a problem anymore.

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