Speaker 1: Bill Cunningham, the Great America Welcome Wednesday after him and
Speaker 1: the christ did I guess there was one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen million Americans traveling about half listening to our dulca
Speaker 1: tones this Wednesday afternoon. Thither and pro and the weather's
Speaker 1: coming may have on later Steve Rawley to talk about
Speaker 1: what's going to happen tonight and tomorrow. But until then,
Speaker 1: there was a big news conference this morning about about
Speaker 1: ten am a couple hours ago, and of course Brian
Speaker 1: Hamrick of the Power of Five was there asking most
Speaker 1: of the questions and Brian Hamrick welcome again to the
Speaker 1: Bill Cunningham showing Brian, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good? Thanks again, mister Cunningham.
Speaker 1: Can you give the American people, first of all, set
Speaker 1: the scene?
Speaker 3: Where was it? Who was there? What were their parameters
Speaker 3: if any?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they had These were the spokespersons for OH Dot.
Speaker 2: It was Matt Bruening and Kathleen Fuller. It was at
Speaker 2: their headquarters up in Lebanon, so that's where they did
Speaker 2: this today. That's the kind of odd. It almost looks
Speaker 2: like green glass building up there. So they just wanted
Speaker 2: to try and give an update on when the timeline,
Speaker 2: and that's what everybody the real main question is when
Speaker 2: is this thing going to reopen? And so they told
Speaker 2: us today that their crystal ball says they can have
Speaker 2: this thing open by early March. So a lot of
Speaker 2: that depended on the materials. That's what they were really
Speaker 2: waiting to know. Apparently the way this bridge was built,
Speaker 2: you know, despite interchangeable parts being discovered, you know, a
Speaker 2: couple of centuries ago, we didn't do that with this bridge.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen seventies when they built it. They built
Speaker 2: this thing, it was everything was custom on it. So
Speaker 2: now the parts that are damage are also customed. So
Speaker 2: now they've got to go back and you know, to
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies and refit and remake all these custom pieces.
Speaker 2: And that's what they didn't know. How long would it
Speaker 2: take to get those They're saying those should be delivered
Speaker 2: in January. The demolition will be done by then. It
Speaker 2: starts tomorrow and they'll be ready to start rebuilding in
Speaker 2: in January. Now, they did say there are a couple
Speaker 2: of factors, you know, you know, there could still be
Speaker 2: you know, problems with you know, construction when it goes
Speaker 2: up in the Big Wog card is the weather. So
Speaker 2: if the weather cooperates and everything, and they do have
Speaker 2: some downtime planned in this March reopening, but they think
Speaker 2: they can get it done by then. But they also
Speaker 2: left the caveat that it could be you know, could
Speaker 2: be a little longer. But that's the best kind of
Speaker 2: rough estimate that they have right now.
Speaker 1: Brian hemric I watched some of the news conference and
Speaker 1: a question was asked, maybe by you, how come this
Speaker 1: isn't like the Prince Spence Bridge. The fire there took
Speaker 1: place in twenty twenty, there was a collision on the bridge.
Speaker 3: All hell broke loose.
Speaker 1: It took six weeks from the accident until reopening the
Speaker 1: BS Bridge.
Speaker 3: Why is this taking many months?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, part of it is what they said is
Speaker 2: because those two far things had they had two things
Speaker 2: in common, fire and it was a bridge, and they
Speaker 2: said other than that, there was nothing that was similar. Again,
Speaker 2: the biggest part of this is trying to get these
Speaker 2: custom made steel beams. Here's the other thing. They're in competition.
Speaker 2: You know, all those major floods down in Tennessee and
Speaker 2: North Carolina, they're still rebuilding everything down there. They're in
Speaker 2: competition with that region for the resources for this steel
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing, right and the people that
Speaker 2: make this. So there's sort of a backlog right now,
Speaker 2: and a lot of it because of the floods. You know,
Speaker 2: we don't usually get into where we think about, well,
Speaker 2: that happened in a different part of the country and
Speaker 2: that was months ago. We're still rebuilding. So that's part
Speaker 2: of the effort here. And then again the idea that
Speaker 2: these pieces are not something you can just you know,
Speaker 2: order up and they come to you like you're you know,
Speaker 2: getting the Bengals jersey off of Amazon. It's going to
Speaker 2: take some time to get these things manufactured.
Speaker 1: And part of what Kathleen said was there are seven
Speaker 1: beams that are four hundred and fifty feet long, seven
Speaker 1: specially designed curve properly beams, and there's thousands. Didn't there's
Speaker 1: thousands of steel plates. Explain that to Tony Benner because
Speaker 1: he's all pissed off about going back and forth to
Speaker 1: Boone County as you are.
Speaker 3: So we got.
Speaker 1: Thousands of steel plates, We got seven four and fifty
Speaker 1: foot long beams.
Speaker 3: This is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well it is. That's the part. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was a very destructive fire. In fact, they said,
Speaker 2: you know that there was a serious danger of collapse
Speaker 2: when this thing, you know, in the early part of it,
Speaker 2: they got the shoring towers up. When I asked them,
Speaker 2: could it still collapse, they couldn't give you one hundred
Speaker 2: percent that it wouldn't, you know, So they think that
Speaker 2: they've mitigated that danger right now. But you know, the
Speaker 2: way they put it was anything's possible, but we think
Speaker 2: we have it, you know, under control, that that's not
Speaker 2: going to happen with those multiple shoring towers that they
Speaker 2: have under here. But this was a very destructive fire.
Speaker 2: And the Lynx the way they explained that as there
Speaker 2: were seven beams, there's more than five hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: two feet of steel beam, like those giant steel beams
Speaker 2: that have to be replaced in this thing. So it's
Speaker 2: a lot of steel, it's a lot of material. And
Speaker 2: that doesn't count all those plates that they have to do.
Speaker 2: And it also doesn't count the demolition. There's a two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty four page document just to tell how
Speaker 2: to take the concrete up on this thing. I'm like,
Speaker 2: this gotta be the war and piece of U Concrete
Speaker 2: bridge demolition two hundred and twenty four pages. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't think I've read a novel that long. I
Speaker 2: don't really read when the ones with pictures are really
Speaker 2: the only ones I read those, so I got doesn't count.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but so, so you're saying, forget about the steel beams,
Speaker 1: the thousands of connecting plates. There's totally twenty four pages
Speaker 1: with diagrams and schematics how to properly remove the concrete
Speaker 1: which is about eight inches thick on top of the bridge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah. Yeah, it's two hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: four pages of how to just do the demolition project
Speaker 2: on the concrete alone. That didn't count the steel or anything. Uh,
Speaker 2: that's just how to do the concrete. So and that's
Speaker 2: they have that now, because that's one of the first
Speaker 2: things they're going to have to do. They start with
Speaker 2: that tomorrow or rather Friday, they will start with the Yeah, well, what.
Speaker 3: About the northbound lanes.
Speaker 1: I find myself every now and then in Northern Kentucky.
Speaker 1: I love to go in there, meeting Rob Sanders and
Speaker 1: meeting other lawyers in Northern Kentucky, and then I come
Speaker 1: back on four to seventy one north. There's only one
Speaker 1: lane that's blocked. Am I When I was on four
Speaker 1: seventy one coming north on the Big Mac Bridge, I
Speaker 1: had the thought of my mind, is this going to collapse?
Speaker 1: Is there any any way that the other northbound lanes
Speaker 1: are affected by all the work now to be done
Speaker 1: on the southbound?
Speaker 2: Well they said they've had the bridge inspectors out there
Speaker 2: and they've looked at all that, and they're really the
Speaker 2: real dammy. The only real damage was to the was
Speaker 2: to the the other bridge, the south brown part of
Speaker 2: this destructure. They're they're confensed that the other parts. Say so,
Speaker 2: there's been really no talk of that since the early
Speaker 2: you know, when they shut that down initially.
Speaker 1: You know, I talked to Dean Gregory at the Boathouse
Speaker 1: Montgomery Boat at Montgomery and Boathouse. They're not happy at all.
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine but all the businesses and residences
Speaker 1: over there, this has caused total havoc and confusion. As
Speaker 1: far as the cost of this thing, I think you
Speaker 1: asked that question or someone.
Speaker 3: Did, Yeah, I get yeah, And do they have a
Speaker 3: budget to do this?
Speaker 2: Well, here's the way it works for today. They don't
Speaker 2: know how much it's going to cost. They just said
Speaker 2: into the millions. We don't know. They did address this though,
Speaker 2: they said that what they hope to do, Odog's going
Speaker 2: to put the bill to begin with. And then they said,
Speaker 2: because the governor has declared this an emergency, that they
Speaker 2: will be able to apply for some federal funds to
Speaker 2: hopefully get reimburshed. But right now it's going to go
Speaker 2: to odots, so you know, but it's going to be
Speaker 2: who knows how many millions millions of dollars this is
Speaker 2: going to cost.
Speaker 1: On the issue of the cause and the placement of
Speaker 1: the place set there, it was either a Channel five
Speaker 1: or nine. Had the old Cincinnati Recreation Commissioned chairman on
Speaker 1: as an old guy, had to be in his seventies,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, why did you put it there?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, it was shaded, and if it
Speaker 1: was wet, you know, it was better, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of out of the way at the time, and
Speaker 1: et cetera. And recycle tires, you know, if those things burned,
Speaker 1: they burned forever. By the way, recycled plastic the same thing.
Speaker 1: But he said, I'm pretty sure. He said, we passed
Speaker 1: it through state officials and it wasn't on the list
Speaker 1: of prohibited items.
Speaker 3: Did that come up at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, they did say that they looked at this.
Speaker 2: You know, they got a note from the Federal Highway
Speaker 2: Administration a few years ago, and it's been an ongoing
Speaker 2: concern because they've had fires. They had one in Los
Speaker 2: Angeles that burned up a bridge there because they had
Speaker 2: things stored underneath of it, and we're talking about like
Speaker 2: palettes and two being and out in californ it was
Speaker 2: like they had cars and junk, look like people have
Speaker 2: been living there and all kinds of stuff. And then
Speaker 2: they had another one that Atlanta, and it was very similar,
Speaker 2: things piled right to the roof. And so when they
Speaker 2: got this notice from the Federal Highway Administration that said, hey,
Speaker 2: look for things like this, take those things out, they
Speaker 2: said they didn't find them things like that. They found
Speaker 2: the tractor they showed us. They found some palletts. It
Speaker 2: was stuck, you know, stacked up almost to the top
Speaker 2: of one. So they found some of that and they
Speaker 2: removed it. But they saw this and no, it didn't
Speaker 2: raise a red flag. Nobody brought it up. They said nobody.
Speaker 2: They said it didn't. They said, didn't Somebody just say, hey,
Speaker 2: this is more material. And I asked them specifically, this,
Speaker 2: this looks like more material than the stuff that you
Speaker 2: did remove. Didn't that, you know, trigger a red flag
Speaker 2: in anyone's mind. And the nature was no, they couldn't
Speaker 2: find anything that this might be a problem, so they
Speaker 2: didn't remove it.
Speaker 1: It's for those who may not know, this was a
Speaker 1: large replica steamboat, a eighty A compliant made of recycled plastic,
Speaker 1: and underneath that was a flooring of recycled tires. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever I know Tony Benner used to be
Speaker 1: in the recycled tire business. If you start a tire
Speaker 1: fire somewhere in Boone County, that damn thing will burn
Speaker 1: for months because all tire is is oil.
Speaker 3: Products, that's all it is.
Speaker 1: And so this facility had fifty by one hundred feet
Speaker 1: of four inch deep recycled rubber, recycled tires so that
Speaker 1: if some kid fell down, he didn't scrape his knee.
Speaker 1: And so this was a disaster waiting to happen if
Speaker 1: a homeless guy had a started a fire there on
Speaker 1: a cold, rainy night underneath the bridge. But no one
Speaker 1: in government said, boy, that could be a problem because
Speaker 1: it wasn't on the list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it wasn't on the list. And I think
Speaker 2: they hit you know, it was just it was disguised
Speaker 2: as a as a harmless you know basically, and you know,
Speaker 2: I think we we tend to see things instead of
Speaker 2: seeing it as a problem. A stack PIWO number. They
Speaker 2: thought it as a toy, and and it didn't. It's
Speaker 2: how didn't you know it's it's a This was like
Speaker 2: a trojan horse. It didn't rattle any alarms that it
Speaker 2: should have.
Speaker 3: Really done well as far as go ahead, I find.
Speaker 2: One thing really interesting about this though. Rubber uh and
Speaker 2: uh a plastic it burns it like two thousand degrees.
Speaker 2: The wood burns that at like a thousand degrees, But
Speaker 2: it takes twenty six hundred degrees to melt steel. So
Speaker 2: you would think, even if you did the math on it,
Speaker 2: you go, well, this can't melt steel, for crying out loud,
Speaker 2: it's it's plastic, and plastic only gets to two thousand degrees.
Speaker 2: You need significant more heat to do that. But the
Speaker 2: way this worked, firefighter re Flame with his theory on it,
Speaker 2: and it was this that when that fire was underneath
Speaker 2: of that bridge, that it would it held the heat there,
Speaker 2: and it worked almost like it works in a flash
Speaker 2: over the smoke gets so hot that it actually burns
Speaker 2: the unburned particles in smoke and it becomes much hotter,
Speaker 2: and then that continues to roll under there like the
Speaker 2: confection of them, basically, And that's what heated this. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is all theory, right. Nobody said this officially, but
Speaker 2: that's that's what I believe. Probably heated this beyond what
Speaker 2: the temperatures could be that would actually melt seal, and
Speaker 2: it did it for hours that or however long that
Speaker 2: fire lasted, so you have time plus this super heated
Speaker 2: material because it had nowhere to escape underneath of that bridge.
Speaker 2: And I found that fascinating. How something that couldn't burn
Speaker 2: hot enough to burn seal could burn hot enough to
Speaker 2: burn steel.
Speaker 3: Do we know who did it? Is there anything?
Speaker 1: Of course, I've got cops sending me Texas saying it
Speaker 1: was homeless encampment, and that's somebody. I hope someone didn't
Speaker 1: intentionally do this. It was someone with a campfire at night,
Speaker 1: which you see up and down the river all the time.
Speaker 1: Any indication about that criminal investigation, it's criminal, I mean
Speaker 1: this is one hundred millions of dollars.
Speaker 3: Any indication who did it.
Speaker 2: At this point, it's going to be up to the
Speaker 2: fire department to come up with it, and they haven't
Speaker 2: given anything official. But right now, you know, we've heard
Speaker 2: all these rumors that social media just stirring up all that,
Speaker 2: but there's no way to know at this point, you know,
Speaker 2: exactly what happened. I've you know, heard from people on
Speaker 2: the inside saying, we know it's just exactly you know,
Speaker 2: this is what's going to happen and all that, but
Speaker 2: but so far there's been nothing official to tell us.
Speaker 2: Yeah that they you know, here's the evidence of what
Speaker 2: actually happened. Until we get that. I mean, I can
Speaker 2: think of several scenarios that wouldn't involve, you know, someone
Speaker 2: like that. I mean, look, there could be somebody went
Speaker 2: down there and said, hey, let's see what it looks
Speaker 2: like if this thing went up and set it on fire.
Speaker 2: That's a possibility. It could be somebody who was there
Speaker 2: got cold that night. Maybe they were staying down there
Speaker 2: and they're huddled up and they're like, oh man, some
Speaker 2: of this rubber makes a good fire. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 2: get out of control. And the whole thing burns down.
Speaker 2: That's a possibility. There's a pausibility there was power going
Speaker 2: through here. What if there was a spark underneath some
Speaker 2: of that rubber mat and you know it somehow malfunctioned,
Speaker 2: And so there's other possibilities to be ruled out. And
Speaker 2: only the fire investigators who are down in there nowhere
Speaker 2: it started. You can't see what was there and all
Speaker 2: that are going to be able to tell us. So really,
Speaker 2: anything you see beyond that, I mean, I think there's
Speaker 2: you know, some of them have much higher possibilities than others.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think there's a real good possibility
Speaker 2: that some electrical thing started because there was electricity down there,
Speaker 2: but I think it's unlikely. I think some of those
Speaker 2: other scenarios are much more possible. But until we get
Speaker 2: that though, it's it's sheer speculation.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the failure of imagination. Much like
Speaker 1: nine to eleven, nobody could imagine, and here you got
Speaker 1: state it's a possible. This large replica steamboat sitting on
Speaker 1: recycled rubber mats. What happens if someone starts a fire there?
Speaker 1: Look up there? Failure of imagination? Brian Hamrick, you and
Speaker 1: yours have a great Thanksgiving. I know, between you and
Speaker 1: John London and Karen Johnson, somebody's got to work tomorrow, understand,
Speaker 1: it's you, So enjoy your turkey on Friday.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, no, I'll be here. I'll be here on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 2: We're yeah, we've already I've already got a great story
Speaker 2: for tomorrow kind of lined up and set out. So yeah,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna be here tomorrow and h and we'll
Speaker 2: be We'll bring you the news just like we do
Speaker 2: every day.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Brian Hamrick, you're a great American.
Speaker 1: Thanks for reporting this to the American people. And Brian Hamrick,
Speaker 1: you continue to have a great career, a great day
Speaker 1: and a great Turkey.
Speaker 2: Thanks again, mister Cunningham.
Speaker 1: Brian Hamrick of the power of five, the best there
Speaker 1: is mus continue with more and no one could imagine
Speaker 1: this occurring, and it did. Now all hell's breaking loose
Speaker 1: and we cover the chaos and confusion well on News
Speaker 1: Radio seven hundred WLW.