Brooklyn Bridge Sandblasting Wreaks Havoc

By on December 22, 2011 11:19 pm in Brooklyn Heights, News, Traffic, Transportation

Photo by M. Hermann for BHB

Motorists heading across the Brooklyn Bridge this afternoon were taken by surprise when their rear windows suddenly shattered. Eight cars on the Brooklyn-bound side of the bridge in the left-hand lane were passing an area where construction is ongoing, and sandblasting was in progress, when some sort of debris started hitting them. At least two cars collided during the hard brake that resulted, sending two people to the hospital. No other injuries were reported.

Photo by M. Hermann for BHB

“My ears are still ringing,” said Sasha Clemendore, who described the frightening sound of the impact. Emergency workers and numerous representatives from the construction crew working on the bridge were on scene immediately, and traffic on the bridge was down to one lane for over an hour. Damage to the cars ranged from golf ball-sized holes to near total destruction of the glass.

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  • RemsenGal

    How unfortunate! I hope the motorists are feeling normal again soon and that some precautions are taken in the future to prevent a recurrence.

  • Henry

    Surprisingly it took this long for something like this to happen. In addition the users of the bridge are gong through four+ years of delays and diversions. Those delays add to the social cost of wasted time.

    The proper thing to have done would have been to shut the bridge for six months and get all the work done 24/7. The rebuilding of the LA freeways after the 1994 earthquake and the rebuilding of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis demonstrates such work can be done.

    Yes, we would have endured six months of pain as alternates had to be found, but we would not have the long construction process of piecemeal work.

  • Master Of Middagh

    So lucky that nobody got hurt! All it would have taken would be for a baby to be strapped in a car seat and they could have wound up showered in glass. How would those workers have felt then- to have injured a child just before Christmas? They;re very lucky indeed…

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlsiLOnWCoI Arch Stanton

    MOM, I think it’s unnecessary to add hypothetical drama to a story you know very little about. You don’t know exactly what caused the incident or if anyone was directly responsible.

    I could never understand the belief that tragedy is somehow worse if it occurs “just before Christmas” or “the holidays”. Does anyone really think someone seriously injured or the family of someone killed would feel any less devastated it happened in August?

  • weegee

    For what it’s worth, there was a small child (uninjured) in one of the cars that was hit.

  • Master Of Middagh

    There’s no reason not to add hypotheticals though, is there? All I was saying was that they were lucky that a child wasn’t injured by virtue of having been strapped into the backseat of one of the cars whose back windshield got entirely blown out. I know enough for that, at least.

    And, regardless of the cause, you don’t think the folks working at and responsible for the site would feel worse? And, when they are likely to spend time with their families for the Christmas holiday, isn’t it likely that they would feel the pangs of guilt even more- when constant reminders of family and childhood abound?

    And why would you evenn bother to argue about that with me?

  • north heights res

    I was driving across the bridge after an 11 hour road trip yesterday afternoon…took me as long to get over the bridge (an hour) as it did to get through several states. Oy. Glad no one was hurt, but oh, man, was it a traffic disaster.

  • http://j lori

    We were returning from a trip to New Jersey at the time and, for some reason, decided to go thru Staten Island instead of the city. Between the collapse of the building at 185 Columbia Street and the trouble on the Brooklyn Bridge, it was not a good day for the City and its contractors.