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Get Your Facts Straight

Get Your Facts Straight

Get Your Facts Straight

(OP)
http://news.yahoo.com/magnitude-4-2-quake-strikes-...

This stupid A(( reporter says Grand Coulee Dam is 5 1/2 stories tall. Great insight and so much head to supply 11 western states... Try 550 feet dude. The idiot was only off by a factor of 10. No worries. Just typical lack of editorial screening to be first to press.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Mike...irritating isn't it! I see it a lot in online stuff. Doesn't take much effort to get it right.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Mike,

Consider the source: Yahoo News

[bugeyed]

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

(OP)
Worse yet, they will probably not catch the error, even now.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


RE: Get Your Facts Straight

They don't care....

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Hmmmm...I'm not so sure about that Mike. I came across this photo. Seems that 5 1/2 stories isn't that far fetched...

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RE: Get Your Facts Straight

The stories about cracking at Allen High School stadium here in DFW described the cracks as "2 inches wide" when they were o.2 inches at the widest. Seems like 1/10 or 10x is about right for the media.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Fact checking costs extra. Fussy engineer. haha

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

They just have tall storeys in Washington, in more ways than one.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

"Dam" journalists.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

(OP)
JAE:

That looks like young Paul Bunyan!

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Good Engineers don't talk to journalists because they know they will be misquoted and taken out of context..... so journalists get to work there entire career only talking with the Other Engineers....

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

I can see a 100 foot storey height in a dam. But as for supplying head for 11 western states, that's phenomenal!

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

I bet the whole thing is made of "cement" too.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Maybe, but you'd have to ask the architect who designed it.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

RWW0002... I came here to say the exact same thing. Nothing snaps me out of a news article or book like a description of "heels clicking on a cement floor" or similar.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Well, it's basicaly made of cement and agregate. They're at least 10 percent right.

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

Just out of curiosity how is a large dam like this engineered to withstand seismic events? I assuming that the reinforcement is to the extent that the entire structure can move as one large unit and not develop major cracks which would probably be fatal.

A confused student is a good student.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson, PE
www.medeek.com

RE: Get Your Facts Straight

When I was in Vancouver (BC) I saw a Seattle TV station interview someone who had just lost his backyard in a landslide (albeit a shallow one). He was saying that "If I had only been able to keep topping up the slope that was failing . . ." - like sure, it is always good to add load at the top of a sliding mass . . . my problem was that with the station showing this interview, others who had/would have the same problem might actually believe this guy.

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