I was in New Orleans last night after going to a job site up the river to estimate a bid. We decided to return through New Orleans to eat dinner at Mothers, down-town. Dinner was wonderful and I highly recommend the place for authentic coon-ass chow. We decided to walk across to a micro-brewery at Herrods and visit with a friend of Chip's. When we finally started back to Mobile, traffic on I-10 was at a stand-still. There was an entire block ablaze just to the left of the highway in Elysian Fields. There were no fire-fighters there and all the surrounding buildings were catching on fire. We thought that this might be the reason for the delays but turns out, it wasn't. We were eventually directed to a detour by Military Police in urban Camo. AT every light along the detour, there were MPs in camo. Not a NO cop to be found. Someone said that a box of nails had been dropped on the bridge. After a two hour delay, we made it across the industrial canal on the causeway and got back to I-10. We were nearly to Gulfport before there was any mention of the delays on the local radio station. They claimed that the bridge had been damaged in some undescribed manner and would be out of service for several hours. A later radio announcement said the span might be out of commission for a few days. Doesn't sound like a box of nails to me and WTF is it with all the MPs?
this must be what your talkin about but there is no mention of any fires??? i live very close to new orleans and i didn't hear of anything.what you could have seen was debree burning they have been doing alot of that after the huricane . some of the tree piles are the size of football fields. and they light them up all at one time when they burn them makes a huge fire i tell you!! Traffic halted eastbound on high rise after tires slashed | News for New Orleans, Louisiana | Top Stories | News for New Orle...
The news said that some sort of iron joint came up from the bridge damaging tires and ripping out a few oil pans. The news did mention the MP's but nothing about a fire. I'm in New Orleans on business.
Stay off that bridge, guys. If dutterman's description is right, that is an expansion joint come adrift of the structural rebar. Getting ready to fail at the joint. There are a number of schemes to reinforce it temporarily, but make sure they put it in before you use it. (I don't trust state DOTs any more than I do the feds.)
