The Big Mess

As investigators continue to look for problems in the Big Dig, they uncover them at every turn. Nearly every single hanger, like the one that failed resulting in the death of Milena Del Valle while she and her husband were driving through the CAT, was found to be unreliable.

At the same time, Big Dig officials became so confident in the epoxy used to secure the bolt fixtures that they canceled laboratory tests to regularly check if the high-strength glue was working properly, according to documents obtained by the Globe yesterday.

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and lead management contractor Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff approved both decisions as the tunnel ceiling was built in 1999.

The massive investigation into last week's death of Milena Del Valle -- killed when concrete ceiling panels fell on her car -- has focused on the failure of the bolt-and-epoxy ceiling fixtures. Governor Mitt Romney said yesterday that tests completed over the weekend found that nearly all 1,150 bolt-and-epoxy ceiling fixtures in the I-90 connector tunnel were unreliable.

As the connector tunnel ceiling was under construction, Modern Continental Corp. workers expressed concerns after field tests indicated the bolt fixtures were unsound, law enforcement officials said.

There are reasons that those tests were required in the first place - to insure that the structure was sound. That they were cancelled shows that assumptions are the mother of all screwups. The engineers and designers on the Big Dig project assumed that everything was being built up to spec (if indeed the spec was sufficient in the first place) and that there weren't ongoing problems with the materials.

We have known for quite some time that there were problems with quality control in many areas of the project - water infiltration being the most serious to this point. Now, we have to wonder whether there are problems with other systems throughout the $14.6 billion project. How many millions more will be spent on this project, and how many millions will be lost by businesses affected by the traffic nightmare created by this problem.

UPDATE:
Gov. Romney says its worse than previously imagined. No kidding. He's putting a plan to deal with the situation in motion, including adding additional anchors for the roof sections of the type that collapsed.