Third Avenue Bridge, which connects New York’s the Bronx to Manhattan, got stuck in an open position due to the high heat on Monday.
FDNY officers arrived in boats and fired water at the structure to try and cool down the metal, which expanded after high temperatures in the city, officials say.
The incident caused major traffic delays during one of the hottest days of the year in New York but reopened on the same day.
Not a bridge expert, or really any kind of expert, really. But railroad rails are laid with a little gap to account for thermal expansion of the rail on hot days. If the expansion is more than designed for, you get buckling like this. This bridge was probably also designed to account for thermal expansion to a certain degree. It seems like more and more of our infrastructure is starting to fail, encountering heat levels it was never expected to encounter. I wonder if failures like this and worse are going to become a common headline