Overpass Collapse in Laval, Quebec

[August1991]

Laval is a suburb on an island in the St. Lawrence River just north of the island of Montreal. It's suburban, bland and filled with shopping malls, car dealerships and expressways.

Twice in the past few years, it has had expressways collapse killing people in cars beneath. (There have been other such collapses in Quebec. Last year, the Highway 40 collapsed near Trois-Rivieres and in the 1990s, a woman was killed driving under a bridge when a chunk of cement fell on her car.)

This is the most recent example:

Six people are injured and at least two feared dead after an overpass collapsed in Laval, Que.

Officials feared the worst for the occupants of the cars, who were trapped when a pedestrian sidewalk and three eastbound lanes of Boulevard de la Concorde in Laval collapsed onto Highway 19 at around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.

CTV

What makes this one disturbing is that drivers noticed falling cement about an hour before the collapse and notified Transport Quebec. This is what Transport Quebec did:

Ça s'appelle une « ligne » de communication. En relations publiques, une ligne est le message que le relationniste doit faire passer, en le répétant aux journalistes, lors d'un point de presse. Et la « ligne » de Transports Québec, dans l'affaire du viaduc de Laval, c'est ceci :

« Transports Québec dit en avoir avisé le public et les médias avec des communications par téléphone cellulaire. »

Blogue

----

This will turn into a scandal in Quebec concerning deteriorating infrastructure, public sector cuts, taxes and what government does. Sadly, I don't think it will force a re-examination of why Quebec is the highest taxed jurisdiction in North America and yet it has government bridges that fall down and kill people. Instead, it will eventually turn into a debate about sovereignty.

[B. Max]

Laval is a suburb on an island in the St. Lawrence River just north of the island of Montreal. It's suburban, bland and filled with shopping malls, car dealerships and expressways.

Twice in the past few years, it has had expressways collapse killing people in cars beneath. (There have been other such collapses in Quebec. Last year, the Highway 40 collapsed near Trois-Rivieres and in the 1990s, a woman was killed driving under a bridge when a chunk of cement fell on her car.)

This is the most recent example:

Six people are injured and at least two feared dead after an overpass collapsed in Laval, Que.

Officials feared the worst for the occupants of the cars, who were trapped when a pedestrian sidewalk and three eastbound lanes of Boulevard de la Concorde in Laval collapsed onto Highway 19 at around 12:30 p.m. on Saturday.

CTV

What makes this one disturbing is that drivers noticed falling cement about an hour before the collapse and notified Transport Quebec. This is what Transport Quebec did:

Ça s'appelle une « ligne » de communication. En relations publiques, une ligne est le message que le relationniste doit faire passer, en le répétant aux journalistes, lors d'un point de presse. Et la « ligne » de Transports Québec, dans l'affaire du viaduc de Laval, c'est ceci :

« Transports Québec dit en avoir avisé le public et les médias avec des communications par téléphone cellulaire. »

Blogue

----

This will turn into a scandal in Quebec concerning deteriorating infrastructure, public sector cuts, taxes and what government does. Sadly, I don't think it will force a re-examination of why Quebec is the highest taxed jurisdiction in North America and yet it has government bridges that fall down and kill people. Instead, it will eventually turn into a debate about sovereignty.

They are saying on the news this morning that this overpass had a life expectancy of seventy years. Right off the bat I'm inclined to suspect corruption during some phase of construction. How many others are waiting to fall down.

[sharkman]

I had no idea this has been going on for a few years. Pathetic. I think it will turn into a blame game, with the federal government being the culprit.

[betsy]

I suspect corruption too.

[Rue]

I think the following will be blamed whether there is a link or not;

1-federal government

2-provincial government

3-municipal government

4-trade unions

5-politicians on all 3 levels

6-people for driving cars

7-the greenhouse effect and acid rain

8-Mike Robiero and that is why he was traded from the Habs yesterday

[August1991]

One of the problems is that the collapsed overpass crossed over a main thoroughfare into Montreal since it leads to a bridge to the island. Traffic will be a mess for several months and this will stay in everyone's minds.

To make matters worse, Transport Quebec engineers inspected the overpass in May 2005 and passed it.

Montreal has other gargantuan cement bridges (ie. Turcot interchange) with noticeable cracks and exposed reinforced steel.

[Borg]

Horrible accident.

Look up when you are under the overpasses in Quebec. Many are in real bad shape - never liked being stopped under them.

Borg

[geoffrey]

I never thought I'd be comforted by the fact that Calgary is years behind on overpass development. I prefer my traffic lights now I guess.

My sympathies to the families that lost loved ones in this tradegy.

I really dislike how the media's first steps after such an event is to chase down every possible person that may be responsible. I sure wouldn't want to be falsely accused of having a hand in such an event. I hope the media offers restraint and eventually we'll fix the system, but we won't by wanton blame placing.

[Charles Anthony]

I really dislike how the media's first steps after such an event is to chase down every possible person that may be responsible.

I disagree. I hope the media hounds everybody down.

Otherwise, who will get to the bottom of it? the government?

[geoffrey]

I really dislike how the media's first steps after such an event is to chase down every possible person that may be responsible.

I disagree. I hope the media hounds everybody down.

Otherwise, who will get to the bottom of it? the government?

Judicial inquires are pretty effective. Media is just making money off it, you really overestimate their moral dedication to the job. They don't even find stories anymore, just report to press conferences and tell us what's said anyways. These aren't really noble leaders of justice, more just like whores to commerical spots and bleeds it leads headlines.

[Charles Anthony]

Media is just making money off it, you really overestimate their moral dedication to the job.

I do not give a damn about their morals.

Making money is a great motivator. They will get to the bottom of it without using tax dollars. Furthermore, their success depends on something dear: freedom (press, speech and markets).

[by the way, is it not odd that we spell "speech" with a double-E while we spell "speak" with an E-A diphthong?

Not very intuitive.]

These aren't really noble leaders of justice, more just like whores to commerical spots and bleeds it leads headlines.

Who cares about justice?? You will never get justice -- there are dead victims.

I would rather get information and prevent things from getting brushed under the rug.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear Charles Anthony,

I do not give a damn about their morals.

Making money is a great motivator

Then you must agree that morals have no place in business. Whomever was responsible should then have the option to outbid potential sales to keep the culpability quiet. If we had true 'free enterprise' in an anarchist system, we would lkikely have tragedies like this on a daily basis. The only question to be asked would be 'Was this still profitable for the person who built it'?

[Chrissy1979]

I prefer my traffic lights now I guess.

Until you get T-boned by a drunk driver.

[geoffrey]

I prefer my traffic lights now I guess.

Until you get T-boned by a drunk driver.

That was unneccesarily pessimistic.

[Charles Anthony]

That was unneccesarily pessimistic.

I disagree. I think it is wisely prudent.

Overpasses make traffic run much smoother and can handle more volume. We have no choice but to make them more reliable. Go ahead and trust your government to do its judicial inquires.

I do not give a damn about their morals.

Making money is a great motivator

Then you must agree that morals have no place in business.

No, I must not agree.

I have been granted the gift of serenity to accept the things I can not change. Since I can not change their morals, I do not give a damn about them.

Your conclusion does not follow my statement. Why must I agree with your statement?

Saying "morals have no place in business" can be misconstrued to mean anything. What does it mean, anyway?

Whomever was responsible should then have the option to outbid potential sales to keep the culpability quiet.

Sure! Why not?!?

If a bridge-building business can afford to buy out all of the news outlets AND continue to make profit (AND, I might add, if all of the people are stupid enough to elect government officials who repeatedly hire the same dangerous builders), why have they not already done so?!?!? On second thought, maybe they already have!!!

Maybe that is why all of the Quebec-government-bridges are collapsing repeatedly and nobody gets to the bottom of it! We had better get to work to stop it! Otherwise, we will be reduced to anarchy! Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If we had true 'free enterprise' in an anarchist system, we would lkikely have tragedies like this on a daily basis.

That statement is unwise -- to put it mildly.

All of the victims of the Quebec-government-bridge-building-business are privy to more than one hypothetically immoral news outlet. Buying off a news outlet creates an incentive to other news outlets to investigate and get to the bottom of the stories -- because they can sell more papers -- leading them to make more profit.

How many more bridge victims do we need in Quebec before they get picked up by your hysterical "tragedies like this on a daily basis" radar?

The only question to be asked would be 'Was this still profitable for the person who built it'?

Asked by whom? people who live in a country with state-run media?

[August1991]

Liberal Leader Jean Charest was blindsided during the leaders' debate Tuesday night by an allegation that his government had neglected to follow up on a memo warning of problems with a suburban highway overpass two years before it collapsed killing five people.

Action démocratique du Québec Leader Mario Dumont said he had a June, 2004, memo from the Transport Department warning of cracks and crumbling in the Concorde Bridge overpass.

“Damages seen near the external sides lead us to suspect the existence of a problem of important crumbling of the supports,” he said, reading from a document.

...

“I've never seen this document,” Mr. Charest said, trying then to move the discussion on to Quebec's debt.

“I'm not talking about the debt. I am talking about an overpass, an important tragedy — you had a responsibility,” Mr. Dumont shot back.

“You're pulling a rabbit out of a hat on a document no one has seen,” Mr. Charest said.

G & M

[Bakunin]

This is the funniest thing of the debate, the memo is not much important or compromising but in an electoral campain it doesn't matter, on the cyberpresse website they are already calling it "mr dumont's nuclear bomb" and i think the journalist will play the 2003 game, even if its not compromising, evrywhere charest will go the journalist will only talk about that and it will hurt his campain just like he did to bernard landry in 2003.

Mario dumont successfully shifted the campain, now lets wait and see the result in the next polls.

[Charles Anthony]

Whether there is an election in Quebec again this year or not, maybe this issue will be indirectly resurrected in the minds of Quebeckers.

Arcand looking to his future

In Days of Darkness, Denys Arcand's Cannes Film Festival entry, Montreal is shown in near-future decay. Inept government agencies have moved into the vast expanses of the Olympic Stadium to impose a bureaucratic nightmare upon the populace.

"It's a wasteland," Arcand said yesterday about the facility, which he deliberately meant to satirize as a disaster for the Quebec people.

"To me," he told Canadian reporters in Cannes, "that is one of the examples of the absurdity of modern society. You build a $1-billion stadium for a 20-minute ceremony -- the opening and closing of the Olympic games. It has been made just for that. You can't play baseball in it; you can't play football; there's nothing you can do with it. And you can't even demolish it."

Arcand said studies have shown that it would take another billion to tear it down, piece by piece, because blowing it up with dynamite would not work with a structure made of reinforced concrete.

The Big O symbolizes how dysfunctional Montreal is becoming as a city, in his view, Arcand said. But Quebecers should not take it personally, he said, because the satire is meant for all large cities in decline.

"Toronto doesn't work either," he said.

Canoe

GeofFrey,

Maybe the director, Denys Arcand, shares your desire for media restraint....

Denys Arcand stays two steps ahead of retirement

It is slightly disconcerting to talk to Denys Arcand about his new movie L’Age des tenebres — officially Days of Darkness in English — and realize that it was inspired by an interview much like you’re doing at the time.

“It started when I gave one zillion interviews for Barbarian Invasions,” Arcand was saying Friday over a lunch of salad followed by salad at a beachside restaurant on the Croisette that appeared to specialize in salads. “I was totally disgusted and I couldn’t face another camera. I wanted to puke at the end.”

That got Arcand to thinking about an imaginary person who would love to be in his shoes, who would love to face another interview — to be talking to the press in Cannes, in fact. Arcand started building the character until he became Jean-Marc Leblanc, the Quebec civil servant with an active fantasy life who is the hero of Days of Darkness, which is the closing night film at the Cannes festival.

---SNIP---

Days of Darkness is filled with many references that were painstakingly researched by Arcand as he wrote the screenplay. His hero works for a fictional commission of human rights, but the hard luck stories he hears — such as the tale of a man whose legs were amputated after a car accident and was then charged by the City of Montreal for repair of the lamppost he hit — are all true.

CanWest

...but do you think he shares your optimism over fixing the system through judicial inquiries or the like?

60th EDITION OF CANNES IS COMING TO AN END

Days of Darkness is arguably Arcand's most depressing film. Yet it's also one of his greatest and, in a strange way, his most uplifting. He truly understands the tangles of the human condition. We can all smile at the brutal honesty of a civil servant who stands up and shouts what we all suspect about governments: "We have no answers for you! Your lives are too complicated!"

TheRecord.com -- Kitchener

Probably not.

[Leafless]

"Pleading with Quebecers not to panic, Transport Department officials made public yesterday a list of 135 bridges, overpasses and ramps that it has targeted for special inspection because of concerns they could collapse."

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Why is it you do not hear of of major problems with bridges, overpasses and ramps in other provinces.

I can't help but notice in the province I live in, especially notice, by inconvenience, and detours, preventive maintenance and large scale repairs being done to bridges, overpasses and ramps.

Why is Quebec so unable to deal with infrastructure work and repairs of this type while in other provinces it carries on this type of work on a regular basis?

It seems Quebec Transport Department is totally oblivious to preventive maintenance and only wake up when it is to late.

[Leafless]

"Pleading with Quebecers not to panic, Transport Department officials made public yesterday a list of 135 bridges, overpasses and ramps that it has targeted for special inspection because of concerns they could collapse."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why is it you do not hear of of major problems with bridges, overpasses and ramps in other provinces.

I can't help but notice in the province I live in, especially notice, by inconvenience, and detours, preventive maintenance and large scale repairs being done to bridges, overpasses and ramps.

Why is Quebec so unable to deal with infrastructure work and repairs of this type while in other provinces it carries on this type of work on a regular basis?

It seems Quebec Transport Department is totally oblivious to preventive maintenance and only wake up when it is to late.

I realize the above post does not make any sense without a link, something I could not edit, as it was posted as a separate and new entity from this thread, but Charles Anthony for reasons unknown decided to merge it with this thread.

Anyways, here is the link to the story I posted.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/stor...9c8b1b6&k=60520

[jefferiah]

I think the following will be blamed whether there is a link or not;

1-federal government

2-provincial government

3-municipal government

4-trade unions

5-politicians on all 3 levels

6-people for driving cars

7-the greenhouse effect and acid rain

8-Mike Robiero and that is why he was traded from the Habs yesterday

Ribiero was traded a year ago.

[jefferiah]

ooooops. my mistake. I didnt realize we were on a year old thread here.

Sorry Rue.

And I should have realized from the topic.

[Leafless]

I think the following will be blamed whether there is a link or not;

1-federal government

2-provincial government

3-municipal government

4-trade unions

5-politicians on all 3 levels

6-people for driving cars

7-the greenhouse effect and acid rain

8-Mike Robiero and that is why he was traded from the Habs yesterday

Sounds like you are trying to blame many for the incompetency of the Quebec Department of Transport for failing to carry out, for what should be, scheduled preventive maintenance and associated repairs.

But the question is, in the final analysis, will the federal government and the tax payers of Canada be left holding the bag or will Quebec accept its responsibility, stop crying the blues and forge ahead with the necessary repairs.

[August1991]

Why is it you do not hear of of major problems with bridges, overpasses and ramps in other provinces.

Forty-five years of corrosive road salt draining onto one side of an overpass and a history of trucks hitting its underside likely caused a 53-foot-long, 60-ton concrete beam to come crashing onto Interstate 70 in Washington County Tuesday evening.

That probable cause emerged after Pennsylvania Department of Transportation engineers examined the site in South Strabane yesterday.

Link

[Leafless]

Why is it you do not hear of of major problems with bridges, overpasses and ramps in other provinces.

Forty-five years of corrosive road salt draining onto one side of an overpass and a history of trucks hitting its underside likely caused a 53-foot-long, 60-ton concrete beam to come crashing onto Interstate 70 in Washington County Tuesday evening.

That probable cause emerged after Pennsylvania Department of Transportation engineers examined the site in South Strabane yesterday.

Link

Notice I said provinces in Canada and not a foreign country with winters with much less snow than we have here in Canada.

The point is: " Pleading with Quebecers not to panic, Transport Department officials made public yesterday a list of 135 bridges, overpasses and ramps that it has targeted for special inspection because of concerns they could collapse."

This clearly represents an abnormal situation and one that could point to plain neglect or incompetency relating to normal maintenance.