Can engineers PROTECT old bridges before the BIG EARTHQUAKE hits?

California gets big earthquakes. What keeps the next BIG ONE from shaking apart more bridges on our freeways?

Jerry De Santos, a supervising bridge engineer for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), explains lessons engineers learned from major earthquakes in 1971, 1986, 1989, and 1994. These lessons help California (and the world) build better bridges now.

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Sources:
California Retrofitting Program

Oregon Retrofitting Program

Washington State Retrofitting Program

[jed-henrywitkowski]

5:41 911, what's your emergency?

There is a man, playing on the highway with scissors and Play-Doh.

[rbasomb]

I lost it at "the SECOND time i was a B student".

[meme-luyu]

Imagine driving around and seeing a random guy in a reflective vest playing with play-doh in the middle of the road 😂

[sendtothisone]

Lived in California 33 years of my life and never knew most of this!! Great video, thanks!

[MarkReviews]

GREAT video, Rob! I love the element of including an interview. This was fascinating.
So when is CalTrans going to just hire you as their Social Media guru? 😉

[bjtgaming]

He's like a youtube Bill Nye for roads

[bobdog]

Jerry De Santos was incredible to listen to. Your explanations similarly supported his words very well. I enjoyed this a lot :)

[doujinflip]

As a Californian, I remember visiting Texas and thinking "wow those lines of skinny bridge pillars are gonna fold like a house of cards in the slightest shake" 🃏

[swinde]

I lived in Southern California back in 1970-1971. I was in the 1971 Sylmar Quake. I had just driven the I-5 between Los Alamitos and Bakersfield the night before the Earthquake. Many of the structures I had driven over the night before had failed in the quake. I was then stationed at Pt. Mugu and when I drove through the area of I-5 almost ALL of the freeway overpasses had structural damage. From that point on, I was never comfortable stopping under an overpass. When the 1994 Northridge quake occurred and I saw the pictures of the Newhall interchange, I noticed that it failed in almost the same way it did in 1971.

[jaymitchell]

6:46. “Dramatization: Professional driver on a closed course”. Hahahaha! Your videos are educational and fun. Great job. Thanks.

[robinheil]

This is only the beginning. It seems like you're taking this very seriously and playing the long game. Keep it up and amazing things will happen! I hope next year you can upload more frequently and maybe branch out to other transportation-related topics.

[fitnesswithsteve]

This is such a good video! I love how well you illustrated your points. The guitar example was amazing👍

[colonelmann]

This video was awesome. I saw many of those concrete supports and wondered what and why.
Hats off to Jerry DeSantos for the great engineering explanation.

[JonathanLedbetter]

Great video! Just wanted to point out that Oregon ALSO has a program going on to retrofit its bridges, so you shouldn't be quite as worried. Since the 2009 report you mentioned in your video, Oregon has been retrofitting or replacing its bridges based on simulations they ran for a 9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake. By 2014, they had addressed (retrofitted or replaced) 355 bridges statewide under this program, with 800 left to go. From what I've gathered from the 2019 Bridge Condition Report, another 4 have been fixed and 26 funded, leaving 153 bridges left in Phase 1 of the program.

[appleguy]

Hi Rob! As a happy Southern Californian, I really enjoy your videos. You have educated me in a very fun way! Keep the fun info coming!!

[sonkin]

You make a seemingly boring topic seem very interesting, nice work. Keep it up!

[justanotherguy]

This was great editing and even better interview. He looked so excited. Thank you

[ddrum]

been waiting for a new video forever. You're channels gonna grow massively soon, keep up the great content

[tedzusa]

Why does this video only have 82k views??? Why does Road Guy Rob have only 76k subscribers???!!! I’m so confused!! I’m learning so much from this content!!

[raeorion]

I'm a huge roads nerd, I'm so excited I found your channel, I think I partly got so interested in road design because I live in Oregon after moving from California when I was a child and the roads here are terrible. That said, I love driving so much so I've spent a lot of time on our crappy roads and terrifyingly unsafe bridges since I was a teen 😅🛣️🌉