Today’s “Google-a-Day” challenge asks, “Your name is ‘Galloping Gertie’ — how many furlongs long are you?”
The answer (at the end of this post) was easily obtainable with some elementary sleuthing and basic arithmetic. Perhaps more fascinating was the story behind “Galloping Gertie,” the nickname for the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State. You’ve quite possibly seen newsreels of the doomed bridge twisting and buckling violently in the wind.
YouTube video of Galloping Gertie
Engineers have argued over the years over the precise cause of the bridge’s collapse.
The current consensus seems to be that it was aeroelastic flutter: a physical phenomenon where fluid such as air or water “tune in” to a structure’s natural frequency to produce rhythmic motion.
But the story behind the broken bridge is also one of broken communications and project management run amuck. To wit:
- An unvetted design, which ultimately led to the collapse, was chosen over a safer and more conservative one, winning out on initial cost (funding issues had been holding up the bridge’s development).
- During construction, it became obvious how unstable the bridge was, but construction proceeded on the flawed design anyway. According to the Seattle Times, some bridge workers had to “chew on lemons to combat nausea.”
- Questionable financial controls — the inquiry into the collapse found that the state of Washington could not collect on one of the insurance policies for the $5.2 million bridge (1940s dollars, obviously) because an insurance agent embezzled the premiums for $800,000 worth of coverage.
Of what does this collapse from the past remind us? Well, for one thing, it reminds us that 90 percent of a project manager’s work is communication — both with stakeholders and project team members. Central to that communication should be a constant drive to answer the central question: “what problem are we solving?”
In the case of the Tacoma-Narrows bridge, a reasonable answer might have been: “To find a way to provide safe, accessible, and affordable transit between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula , and to build it within a reasonable time frame.”
Problems emerge, however, when ego, stubbornness, and inability to consider unintended outcomes cloud the judgment of decision-makers. When project teams stop vetting their planning and execution against their central question, it becomes an invitation to unmet expectations –and sometimes catastrophic failure.
Fast forward to today: Even with the great strides made in project management methodology over the past few decades, we see how willful disregard of important (if not very welcome) communications can unravel complex undertakings. The Challenger space shuttle tragedy and the BP oil spill provide examples from more recent memory.
As for Galloping Gertie, it’s provided fertile case study material for engineering classes over the years, as you might have guessed. Intriguingly, the only loss of life in the collapse was that of a dog, Tubby the cocker spaniel. Tubby perished because rescuers could not coax him from a car stuck on the bridge.
Now, as promised, the answer to the Google-a-Day question:
Galloping Gertie was 5,939 feet in length, or 1.1248106 miles. One furlong equals 1/8, or 0.125 of a mile.
Divide .125 into 1.1248 and you get approximately 8.99848 furlongs as the length of Galloping Gertie.
Akweli Parker is the founder of Digital Delta Media LLC. He helps individuals and organizations use the power of communication to achieve their business objectives. Find out more at www.digitaldeltamedia.com.
