The NYT today:
The Onion, 22 years ago:
This is what is so infuriating about discussions of infrastructure spending. It has real fucking life implications. The number of bridges just waiting to collapse around my area is terrifying. But tax cut jeebus, you know.
Spanky
Seems somehow relevant to the topic:
It is unknown whether there were expert exorcists in the lumber aisle.
Spanky
I remember growing up in Pittsburgh in the 60s, the safety of the bridges was always discussed. Especially after the Point Pleasant (WV) bridge collapse.
Keith P.
You can see why certain folks are trying to push the domestic terrorism angle (“no one could predicted…”). Otherwise it looks like neglected, deteriorating infrastructure (“you had *one* job!”).
Spanky
Trifecta!Ahhhhh shit.
Another Scott
I skimmed some of the inspection reports that the town of Surfside recently posted. Lots of complaints about lights not being aimed so as not to attract sea turtles; an inspector’s report about cracks in concrete covered by floor tiles (so unable to be properly inspected), poorly repaired previous cracks, water getting in under patio doors; etc. I didn’t see any hair-on-fire reports (maybe I missed it).
Experts need to be listened to, but they also need to write reports in clear language that indicate the potential consequences if actions are not taken.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Low Key Swagger
Not that it matters to the unfortunate ones caught in the collapse, but I am wondering how many of those units were corporate owned STR’s. So I have two young adults i am trying to help navigate their way through today’s awful rental market, and i am astonished by how many apartments are owned by corporations and how poor a job they do with respect to maintenance and really just overall management. Everything is farmed out, no way to reach an actual person on the phone, and an application process that seems like it was designed for nuclear facilities. We are shitting on these young folks if we are ignorant or complacent about where our investment dollars go. It’s this way in nearly every rental market.
Spanky
@Another Scott: There need to be officials with the balls to condemn buildings on their inspectors’ recommendations. I’m thinking that inspectors would be more hesitant to take a bribe if they knew their bosses had their backs.
(Also, I want my unicorn.)
JoyceH
Not about structural issues, but a baffling thing. I saw an article in the news today about some guy who was talking to his wife on the phone – she was in the condo building and he was off somewhere else. Says she was on the fourth floor balcony, and she suddenly said the building was shaking and then that the pool outside collapsed into a sinkhole, and then she screamed and the line went dead.
Very tragic and affecting. But… I was just looking at a photo of the site as it is today – and the pool is still there, intact and filled with water. Is there some other pool, or did this fellow invent his touching last words with his wife?
Another Scott
In other news from the UK, …
Cheers,
Scott.
MattF
@Low Key Swagger: I read somewhere that the units in the fallen condo were 70% owned by residents and that the surrounding condos are generally higher priced. If you add in rentals, there’s not many left for corporate ownership. The building appeared to be in the desired market position of lowest price in a luxury neighborhood.
trnc
At HD, that’s more likely than experts in building materials.
Gin & Tonic
@Another Scott: I dunno, that Frank Morabito guy seemed pretty blunt.
Raoul Paste
I’m pretty sure that collapsing bridges will kill rich people and poor people alike
Similarly, the lack of a vaccination doesn’t discriminate. I sure don’t get it
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Cheeky.
Baud
@MattF:
You pay a premium for the “stays upright” feature.
Baud
“There were no warning signs that were cost free to pay attention to.”
MattF
@Baud: More to the point, the condo maintenance reserves were probably underfunded— a common problem for 40 year old condo buildings.
Chetan Murthy
@Raoul Paste: Where was it read some conservatard worthy opining that he could think of no public good that was worth having? This was, like, *right* before the pandemic. Right before.
Uncle Cosmo
Except for the bazillionaires who take helicopters everywhere.
J R in WV
@Uncle Cosmo:
Kazzillionaires like Kobe, who was killed with his daughter and friends when their exclusive helicopter flew into the ground?
Are you more dead when your helicopter flies into the ground than when your SUV falls into the river with a bridge on top of you???
WhatsMyNym
@MattF:
Your reserves are for ongoing planned maintenance, this would always be a special assessment. Even if there was enough in the bank to cover the work, the HOA would now be broke and couldn’t afford regular maintenance projects in the near future.
FlyingToaster
@JoyceH: The report was third-hand; a sister of the deceased was relating what she thought her brother-in-law said over the phone, what her sister had said at 1:36 over the phone from her balcony.
Aerial photos make it clear that there’s a ~6ft subsidence of the area between the pool and the West wing (that’s still standing, but the undertower parking looks to be unevenly sagging).
The poor woman probably saw the drop of the patio next to the pool, and seconds later the center of the north wing (straight in line with the pool) fell. 10 seconds after that, the east half of the north wing fell.
JoyceH
@FlyingToaster: Okay, that’s kind of a relief. I didn’t WANT to think the fellow made the story up, but I was surprised by that photo that showed the pool perfectly intact.
FlyingToaster
@Another Scott: Look for the 2018 inspection report (followed one of the previous lawsuits over cracks in the concrete walls). There is a section on cracks in the underground garage pillars, and a level rather than sloped slab that was accumulating water and deteriorating.
The problem (per the report) is that this was going to be an expensive series of ongoing repairs. Wapo article.
JoyceH
@Keith P.:
Who is doing that? I have been frankly surprised that you don’t see the terrorism angle being posited at all in the ‘mainstream media’, I would have thought there would be more discussion of the possibility. Those photos sure cause flashbacks to the Murrah Federal Building in this old-timer at least.
WhatsMyNym
@FlyingToaster: @JoyceH: I believe it was the first building in that area that had an underground parking lot.
JoyceH
@FlyingToaster:
Saw in the news that there’s ‘discussion’ of evacuating the ‘sister building’ to the one that went down, that’s right down the road, built at the same time by the same builder. If I lived in the sister building, I’d already be gone!
sdhays
@JoyceH: Holy shit, I would be too!
Elizabelle
@JoyceH: Your recollection was the first paragraphs of the WaPost story. To me, I suspect Cassondra was already on the phone with her husband, maybe shortly before she witnessed the damage to the pool deck. Just doesn’t seem to be enough time to dial, have the connection to go through and to have the short descriptive conversation. Again, it is a second-hand account, of a traumatic event.
L85NJGT
They were up on the roof installing anchor points for window washing the previous afternoon. Mr. building inspector was even up there and said it was all okay.
FlyingToaster
@JoyceH: There are 3: Champlain Towers South (this one); 2 buildings north, Champlain Towers East; and 3 buildings north, Champlain Towers North. All L-shaped buildings, all with a courtyard and pool in the inside of the L, all with undertower and I believe underground parking.
The hotel building between South and East — Solara Surfside? — has already been evacuated.
The brand new condo tower to the south (8701 Collins Condos, IIRC) has people leaving, but I’m not sure that it’s fully occupied, yet.
I know some of this because 19 years ago, I was stuck at the Johnson&Wales School Hotel over on Bay Harbor East and walked all over Surfside (and caught busses down to Miami Beach every day).
Joey Maloney
Her name was (almost) Cassandra? Who writes this stuff?
Matt
@FlyingToaster:
In a sane world, the building management would be staring down 120 counts of murder; would really put that “expensive” part into perspective.
opiejeanne
Dorothy Winsor this morning mentioned that her husband, an engineer, talked about the effects of salt water on reinforced concrete.
Mr opiejeanne, also an engineer, mentioned that in California ocean sand can not be used to mix with concrete, because the salt in it will cause the rebar to rust. He wondered where the contractors in Florida got their sand, and if an inspector “missed” it.
It may just be prejudice on my part, but I look at Florida and think it’s one of the three most corrupt states in the US.
FlyingToaster
@Matt: Condominium association means that all of the owners are liable. I think the dead ones have paid in full, and the live ones who’ve basically lost everything have paid for their mistake, too.
Elizabelle
How is Florida going to fund all the remediation it’s going to need from climate change, with no income tax, and a lot of part-year “residents”? Bill is coming due. At this point, I feel sorry for the Democrat who eventually wins the governorship and (a) sees the whole scope of the problems, statewide, (b) wants to do something about it, and (c) has to expend political leverage to get these free lunch paradise types to agree to and fund anything that does not immediately benefit them. Especially if them is inland.
I would guess the insurance industry is taking an even harder look at the situation, as in right now.
I’m guessing the immediate danger to the structure was not made apparent (NY Times reader mentioned no immediate bracing of the structure, while they prepared to address it), and that it may have taken 3 years plus to get the needed percentage of residents to agree to fund the repairs.
Also guessing Champlain South is the tip of the iceberg. How stable are the other tall condos built on reclaimed land?
And: 40 year recertification? Maybe 25 or at most 30 years would be better. With climate change and sea level rise, 40 years may be a luxury they no longer have.
Climate change may force their hands, earlier even than expected
ETA: Of course, this could be plain old bad design and substandard building materials/methods.
Elizabelle
@Joey Maloney: Good catch. A lot of life is like that recently, isn’t it? Would not believe it were it fiction.
Martin
Called it right after it happened. FL has good building codes, but maintenance and inspection aren’t a large part of codes, and who knows how the codes have evolved since these buildings went up. CA struggles with this as well – a lot of codes changed radically after the northridge quake and the oakland hills fire, but they struggled to find ways to apply them to existing buildings. But there was no fucking way this building fell down without a shitton of warnings that were ignored. Well, maybe not completely ignored, sounds like the HOA was engaged in a years long decision making process about how to address it.
The US has a lot of capital investment and comparatively very little ongoing investment in either maintaining or depreciating these assets. My house is also 40 years old and we have a ticking bomb in our foundation due to an inevitable slab leak. In time it’ll happen. But though I live in a million dollar house, the replacement cost of the structure is like $150K. The other $850K is just the land value. It’s not a huge stretch that to address all of the issues in the house would be cheaper to tear it down, rebuild it, and use the equity gain to finance it. And truth is, a lot of the nations infrastructure is like this – but almost all of it runs into that pesky property rights problem. A lot of the CA HSR cost is land acquisition, not construction.
Honestly, the solution to the FL condo problem is to get rid of the massive tax benefits for land owners and lean into public housing. Make units like that affordable, and put responsibility and decision making not in the hands of a collection of owners but in a single decision agent accountable to the public. Sure, you might get a Grenfell Tower situation, but accountability there was also shifted from public agents to counsil houses – with the expected results. Would also do wonders for CA housing challenges.
Martin
@Elizabelle: They won’t fund it. That’s the simple answer. A few places will – NYC, CA, and it’s going to turn into a wicked fight between the places that are investing and the ones that are fucking off and expecting the blue states to bail them out.
Tony Jay
@Another Scott:
He simply had to go. For all that Flobalob tried to kill it off by declaring “this matter is now closed to comments” it was always going to blow up in his smirking face. After all the evidence of corruption in issuing contracts, after the disastrous Covid response, after Cummings’ damning claims the other week, after the revelation that Johnson himself had called Hancock “fucking useless”, and then this deliberately leaked bullet to the head, trying to keep Hancock on board the Bad Ship Jollyhog was an exercise in futility that, more than anything else, lights a fire under the fragile edifice of bullshit and arrogance underpinning Johnson’s throne of melting wax.
What I mean by that is that now, with Hancock being forced to resign by what looks a lot like an internal Tory Party revolt, Johnson is left exposed. When he said that the issue was closed because he had accepted Hancock’s apology to him the usual course of events (since 2019) would have been for the whole Party to close ranks and the Media to take the hint that no scalps would be forthcoming. That’s what happened when (Home Secretary) Patel was found guilty of breaking the ministerial code, when (Education Secretary) Williamson fucked up exams, and when Cummings broke Covid restrictions last year. Wagons circled, phone calls made, questions dropped. This time, however, Tory MPs seem to have made it known that they were not going to put their plums on the griddle of public opinion just to keep Hancock in post so Johnson could sack him at a time more convenient for him.
If we had a functioning political media in this country it would be a feeding frenzy right now. All the questions would be getting thrown around. Did Johnson only chose to keep Hancock on because, as Cummings claimed, he wanted a convenient fall-guy for the Government’s abysmal failure to handle the pandemic? Did he refuse to fire him for using public money to hire a woman purely so he could have an affair with her because that’s exactly what Johnson himself did in the Arcuri case? Did he try so hard to ignore all the reasons any other PM would have fired a Minister because the golden chain binding Johnson’s Cabinet to him is the implicit promise that, no matter how awfully they perform or however many rules and laws they break, as long as they protect him he will protect them? Does the fact that Hancock was forced out despite Johnson saying he was staying in post mean that Johnson’s authority is irreparably broken?
I could go on (who, me?) but that’s the core of it. This is a punch right in Johnson’s corpse-white undernethers. Hancock was one of his ‘made-men’, and now he’s gone because Tory MPs feared the verdict of the electorate more than they feared the vengeance of Number 10. And, probably, because MPs know that this hit on Hancock was the work of the Murdoch Crime Family and whoever their ally is who managed to not only leak CCTV footage from inside Government buildings but also to get the Metropolitan Police to shy away from investigating said leak.
I forsee a few more wine stains on the couches in Number 10 tonight. Flobalob has seen the wolf’s ears, can the fangs be far behind?
Another Scott
@Tony Jay: Thanks muchly.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gravenstone
@FlyingToaster: Going to be rather more expensive now, come the civil lawsuits about negligence leading to deaths. Stupid fucks never include the worst case costs into their spreadsheets.
J R in WV
And a couple of things about reinforced concrete. It’s really easy to order and receive concrete with extra Portland cement in the mix. They call it 3 bag, or 4 bag, or… well you get the point, the more Portland the stronger the poured concrete. And a slump test, which is also easy, can be done when the truck pulls up, before you pour it into the job.
Good, well mixed high-strength Concrete continues to harden for a long time after it’s poured, vibrated, troweled and otherwise properly emplaced. It takes 28 days to hit nominal strength, but continues to harden after that. I know all this because our house has many, many truckloads of concrete in the footers, the slab, even the foundation is 12 inch block with rebar, filled with pea-gravel concrete. I once needed to break off some concrete that squeezed out of the block foundation, it had hardened for several months. I started with a hammer, graduated to a heavy bar, finally had to go for a Bosch hammer-drill because the sledge hammer wouldn’t chip at it. It was going to interfere with laying the slate floor…
I used to know exactly how many yards, but it was back in 1991 when it was poured. Something like 5 miles of rebar all told, and 60 or 70 yards of concrete just in the footers.
Anyway, and here’s the flip side. If the concrete isn’t that good when poured, there’s no fucking way to fix that! And it won’t improve with time, either. Regular rebar is highly susceptible to corrosion caused by salt — look at any old Interstate highway where they spread salt in the winters, with concrete broken away from swollen rusted rebar, spalling as it’s called. Thinking Ocean-Front costs extra for the view… hmmm.
This condo was probably built with under-strength weak concrete, short of Portland in the mix, poured without being vibrated to remove air bubbles, rebar not well tied and completely was not coated to resist salt corrosion. Now they make rebar that’s completely coated with a polymer to keep moisture and salt away from the iron — they made that back in the 90s but it cost extra, and I’m sure it wasn’t specified on the requirements.
They probably left out a lot of the rebar too, as tying in rebar is a slow hand task, and time is money on these construction jobs. Leaving out rebar is invisible once the concrete is poured, unless you use hi-tech tools to measure the iron bar content of the walls and columns, which no one did ever because that’s expensive too. 40 years later, bang, 20 seconds it’s a catastrophe on the ground.
New York has had serious problems with mobster influence in the building trades, and cheap crooked concrete looks just like real high-strength concrete if you don’t test it as it’s delivered. Which is usually specified in the contracts, but if you know which truck to test because THAT ONE TRUCK will pass the tests easily, although none of the other trucks will come close, well say no more, money to be made in kickbacks there too. Instead of taking 3 tests from every truck, you take 60 tests from the trucks you know are good, because those have a cute Santa Claus on the front.
Portland cement is expensive, sand and gravel is relatively cheap, but doesn’t help much with strength.
There’s a skyscraper condo tower in San Francisco where when you drop a marble on your floor (the 54th floor, just for example!) that marble scoots away over to the downhill side of your floor — it’s slowly toppling over. I hear the view is amazing if you don’t think about the many inches away from plumb the building is already. 400 Condos not worth a dime at this point.
imagine that?!?!?? They talk about fixing it — I’m thinking the only way to fix that is to remove it and do it right the second time. If that one falls over, imagine the collateral damage to the rest of the city around that collapse!
Oops!!
FlyingToaster
@J R in WV: The biggest problem (per my husband the native Floridian) is that even if you did everything right in 1980 (when this was built), simple settling could have moved the properly-laid slab to being level rather than sloped. The proximity to the Atlantic Ocean (500 feet? by eyeball) means that any cracks are going to expose the rebar to the salt water.
The vertical wall of the remaining wing along Collins shows a LOT of rebar. All of it pulled free from the wing that fell.
Kobi Karp (Miami architect) had an op-ed: CNN Link.
Betty
@opiejeanne: It is. My husband worked in the Miami- Dade water department. Lots of bribery from developers.
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV: Posted like someone smugly innocent of statistics. Do you sell meteor insurance or something? (“Yeah, I know it’s only one in a trillion, but what if you’re that one?? Don’t you want to be covered???”)
One swallow does not make a spring, and one fatal accident does not make a massacre. But you know that, you’re just being your customary pain in the arse.
oatler.
“Provided the tenants are of light build and relatively sedentary…”
Elizabelle
@FlyingToaster: That’s a good article. Thank you for labeling it as CNN.
People: I upgraded this week to Mac’s Big Sur operating system. I do not find it to be an improvement, at all, so far. Alas. It also seems to be tearing through battery life.
No longer the info on what’s in the link as I hover over it. They are all blind for me.
Does anyone know how to fix that?
Wapiti
@Martin: But though I live in a million dollar house, the replacement cost of the structure is like $150K. The other $850K is just the land value.
My brother has a house that’s about 4 blocks from a light rail station that will open this year in Seattle. The appraisal this year values his house at just $1000; the rest is the land.
Otoh, it’s a clear signal from the city that whenever they sell, they’re selling the land and shouldn’t accept a low bid.
RaflW
@MattF: A couple days ago I listened in to the HOA meeting of a new condo (2019) that I have an interest in. One of the board members said “Why should we be increasing the contribution to reserves every year?” with an exasperated sense of annoyance. She went on, “That will just make dues go up!”
Thankfully, someone not a moron said “That’s how we save for the future so we don’t surprise owners with a huge bill later that we can’t afford.” Of course no board member relishes raising dues (I did a turn on a different HOA board and I can attest), but keeping them artificially low leads to ugly special assessment surprises.
Or worse.
rikyrah
chris evans (@chris_notcapn) tweeted at 3:47 PM on Sat, Jun 26, 2021:
NEW: House Democrats have launched a PAC to fend off primary challenges to incumbents from left-wing groups like the Justice Democrats associated with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
The efforts are spearheaded by Hakeem Jeffries and Terri Sewell.
https://t.co/IJ1sSxZnFN
(https://twitter.com/chris_notcapn/status/1408889656469594114?s=03)
Penty
@JoyceH: Looking at Google Earth there were 2 pools side by side.
eachother
Surfside sea rise. Possible early sign of tomorrow land.
Kim Stanley Robinson. “New York 2140”. The climate tide is high and the buildings go bye bye.
Robinson also wrote the Red, Green and Blue Mars trilogy.
Both essentially real-estate novels.
RaflW
@Elizabelle: I was on the board of a (now) 50 year old post-tensioned concrete highrise HOA — not in FL. It is wild how long it takes to do due diligence, design & engineering, get financial buy in from the owners, secure construction and then long-term financing, and get all the permits and find a contractor with the reputation you want and a price your HOA can absorb.
We ended up taking extra time to get taxpayer financing (there’s a law in MN and some other states that allows the City to issue revenue bonds payable by the unit owners on their tax bill – so it’s not a cost to people outside the HOA but the interest rate is waaay better than a bank’s commercial mortgage, if you can even get one since the HOA technically has no assets!).
I have no idea if the HOA in Surfside was foot-dragging or just struggling to manage a complex, big project launch. I’m aghast at the consequences (if it turns out the 2018 report had warnings and problems they failed to respond to).
And I’m thankful that our HOA did the tensioning repairs and waterproofing needed some years ago for ours. Also, frankly, glad to have now moved to a townhouse HOA where the life-safety stakes are a lot lower.
Elizabelle
@RaflW:
That’s fascinating about the municipality issuing revenue bonds to a particular HOA, to make financing its upkeep more affordable. Forward-thinking.
I just ordered a copy of John MacDonald’s “Condominium”, a thriller about a collapse (hurricane involved). A lot of newspaper commenters have mentioned it. Should be interesting, as I read it from my little townhouse apartment.
NotMax
@J R in WV
You might get a chuckle from this.
Years ago at the summer camp where I worked we poured a slab (sloped) as the floor for a shower room. Never intended to last until the cockroaches take over, and no appreciable weight atop it – 2 × 4 framing on three sides (fourth side was the exterior wall of an existing structure) with T-111 tacked on the outside and a corrugated fibreglass roof. Memory guesstimate maybe 12′ × 30′ all told.
Rather than rebar we laid in old sets of bedsprings, of which plenty were tucked away in storage, left over from one of the buildings on the property which formerly had been a small early 20th century hotel.
Barbara
@FlyingToaster: My daughter is a structural engineer and she made the same point, that whatever the cause, if a horizontal (ceiling) structure sheared from vertical, the structure would likely pancake. She thought that would be something more likely to initiate from the top, but nothing could be certain at this point, and maybe never. All condos have the inherent problem of required collective action. The law definitely hasn’t kept up with this issue.
jimmiraybob
@JoyceH:
@Baud:
I believe that this premium clause was recently changed to “so far so good.”
WhatsMyNym
@Elizabelle: Townhouses have the own set of problems (that can vary by region and city).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Martin: After every major earthquake here in Southern CA over the last 100 years, the building codes have been revised. Long Beach in 1933, San Fernando in 1971, and Northridge in 1994; in each case building codes were strengthened. If you look at a lot of the older brick buildings around the area, you’ll see bots at the roofline, that’s from the changes post the Long Beach quake.
FlyingToaster
@Barbara: The report of the phone call and the security camera footage both look like an underminining. This aerial photo (WAPO) would seem to support a “support in the garage” collapse. Twitter Securicam.
Geminid
@rikyrah: The effort is being spearheaded by Hakeem Jeffries (NY-Brooklyn) and Terry Sewell (AL- Birmingham)? That is a dynamic duo. They are not just going to mess around.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: That ratio of land to improvement values is not something that is true throughout the country.
Elizabelle
The Miami Herald is running a $2 for 2 months subscription special. I signed up. Lot of interesting news to follow in the coming 60 days. It’s a good paper, and its reporters are on this.
Geminid
@J R in WV: Even if the workers placing the rebar used all that was specified, if they were not scrupulous as to placement the structural strength could be compromised. If they are sloppy, the steel may not be properly protected from water infiltration, and then you have real problems.
This is on the contractor, or maybe on the contractor and the developers, and the culture they foster. Construction workers will be careful about structural integrity if the contractors emphasize it. But if the contractor emphasizes speed over quality control, the people who set steel will work to a lower standard.
And building inspectors are stretched thin. For much of this repetitive structural work, I think it’s essentially an honor system.
Ken
Historically, every time the Florida insurance industry has taken a hard look at a situation, the state and federal governments have taken on a larger share of the liability.
Keith P.
@JoyceH: Charlie Kirk was the first that I heard of. I read another blurb on a linked blog (not here), but I’m having trouble finding it. One of those Newsmax-y sites, but it may have been taken down now that there’s plenty of documentation that this is caused by lack of maintenance.
Elizabelle
Anne Laurie has put up a new thread about the Florida condominium collapse.
Ken
Is there some reason you engineered your house so it could make an Orion launch?
The Pale Scot
@Spanky:
That was a Fortean phenomena
Mothman
mrmoshpotato
Hopefully Lady Lawsuit caves in some slumlord shitbag faces.
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Maybe you need to turn it on manually?
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: If you are using Safari, look at the preferences. There is a way to turn that on – it’s not on by default in Safari. I did it so long that I can’t tell you exactly where to look, but if you check out the various preference options, it should be fairly obvious.
When I went looking for it a year or more ago, I found it easily.
Procopius
@WhatsMyNym: The story says that the repair work was about to start. It appears the management had raised funds to do the work, but it took them three years to get the money together. Would have been good if they had felt a little more urgency, but look at the Hudson River tunnel. It’s going to collapse, and when it does the economy of the whole country is going to be devastated. New York City has a supply of food sufficient for three days, at most, and if the railroads can’t bring more in people will starve. Travel on the whole East Coast will be halted. It will be an unprecedented catastrophe, and yet Chris Christie single-handedly stopped funding to build a new tunnel and repair the old one.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack: Thank you!
@WaterGirl: And you too, WG. Really appreciate the help.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Open Safari preferences and click on the Smart search list, the second one down, Enable Quick Website Search
The with Safari preferences still open, go to the Advanced section and click the first field Smart Search Field Show full website address
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
Are Justice Democrats and Ocasio-Cortez one and the same?
Betsy
@Joey Maloney: Jane Austen, Hollywood screenwriter.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Austen_in_popular_culture
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@J R in WV: This sounds like an excellent political point of attack on corrupt businessmen is San Francisco (because back then it was all men) at this time. They may pound the table all they want, but the law is on our side, and any money the pour in is pure sunk cost for them if it falls over. Best case they tear it down, which still costs them money. Win-Win in my book.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Procopius: Which Hudson River tunnel? Holland? Lincoln? The GQP may be shorting infrastructure repair, but thankfully Manhattan doesn’t have a single point of failure in that regard.
beef
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Neither. The tunnel that brings trains into the city, under the Hudson. Holland and Lincoln tunnel s are for cars.