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Structural engineer speaks on Trump's wall

OscarLevant

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Copy and pasted from Facebook with permission.
the engineer's name is Amy Patrick

Howdy.

To recap: I’m a licensed structural and civil engineer with a MS in structural engineering from the top program in the nation and over a decade of experience on high-performance projects, and particularly of cleaning up design disasters where the factors weren’t properly accounted for, and I’m an adjunct professor of structural analysis and design at UH-Downtown. I have previously been deposed as an expert witness in matters regarding proper construction of walls and the various factors associated therein, and my testimony has passed Daubert.

Am I a wall expert? I am. I am literally a court-accepted expert on walls.

Structurally and civil engineering-wise, the border wall is not a feasible project. Trump did not hire engineers to design the thing. He solicited bids from contractors, not engineers. This means it’s not been designed by professionals. It’s a disaster of numerous types waiting to happen.

What disasters?

Off the top of my head...
1) It will mess with our ability to drain land in flash flooding. Anything impeding the ability of water to get where it needs to go (doesn’t matter if there are holes in the wall or whatever) is going to dramatically increase the risk of flooding.
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically. For all other projects, we have to do an Environmental Site Assessment, which is arduous. They’re either planning to circumvent all this, or they haven’t accounted for it yet, because that’s part of the design process, and this thing hasn’t been designed.
3) The prototypes they came up with are nearly impossible to build or don’t actually do the job. This article explains more:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.engineering.com/amp/17599.html

And so on.

The estimates provided for the cost are arrived at unreasonably. You can look for yourself at the two-year-old estimate that you see everyone citing.

http://fronterasdesk.org/sites/default/files/field/docs/2016/07/Bernstein- The Trump Wall.pdf

It does not account for rework, complexities beyond the prototype design, factors to prevent flood and environmental hazard creation, engineering redesign... It’s going to be higher than $50bn. The contractors will hit the government with near CONSTANT change orders. “Cost overrun” will be the name of the game. It will not be completed in Trump’s lifetime.

I’m a structural forensicist, which means I’m called in when things go wrong. This is a project that WILL go wrong. When projects go wrong, the original estimates are just *obliterated*. And when that happens, good luck getting it fixed, because there aren’t that many forensicists out there to right the ship, particularly not that are willing to work on a border wall project— a large quotient of us are immigrants, and besides, we can’t afford to bid on jobs that are this political. We’re small firms, and we’re already busy, and we don’t gamble our reputations on political footballs. So you’d end up with a revolving door of contractors making a giant, uncoordinated muddle of things, and it’d generally be a mess. Good money after bad. The GAO agrees with me.

And it won’t be effective. I could, right now, purchase a 32 foot extension ladder and weld a cheap custom saddle for the top of the proposed wall so that I can get over it. I don’t know who they talked to about the wall design and its efficacy, but it sure as heck wasn’t anybody with any engineering imagination.

Another thing: we are not far from the day where inexpensive drones will be able to pick up and carry someone. This will happen in the next ten years, and it’s folly to think that the coyotes who ferry people over the border won’t purchase or create them. They’re low enough, quiet enough, and small enough to quickly zip people over any wall we could build undetected with our current monitoring setup.

Let’s have border security, by all means, but let’s be smart about it. This is not smart. It’s not effective. It’s NOT cheap. The returns will be diminishing as technology advances, too. This is a ridiculous idea that will never be successfully executed and, as such, would be a monumental waste of money. 🤷🏻*♀️

This is set to public. Have a blast sharing it.
 
I swear, it's like we have never built a wall before with some of these people.

We currently have more than 600 miles of wall along the southern border. Some of it is slats, some is plates, some is concrete. It's different because different configurations work better in some areas than others do. With all due respect to Mr. Wall Expert, get over your bad self!
 
I swear, it's like we have never built a wall before with some of these people.

We currently have more than 600 miles of wall along the southern border. Some of it is slats, some is plates, some is concrete. It's different because different configurations work better in some areas than others do. With all due respect to Mr. Wall Expert, get over your bad self!

Is the intention to build one, uninterrupted, continuous border wall, covering the entire border of mexico? Yes or no?
 
Is the intention to build one, uninterrupted, continuous border wall, covering the entire border of mexico? Yes or no?
One uninterrupted continuous wall of indeterminate design...sure. Considering they havent accepted a type and design yet, how the **** would you even know what the final concept is, where they would keep existing fencing, add more, etc?

Maybe more of this...only better...

border-fence-reuters-fred-greaves.jpg

and maybe more of this...only better...

fence.jpg

The only thing we know FOR SURE is that if it decided to continue with the same design that democrat presidents have built in the past, idiot leftists will **** themselves over it and shriek THATS RACIST!!! ITS INEFFECTIVE!!! WE SHOULDNT BUILD THEM!!!
 
I swear, it's like we have never built a wall before with some of these people.

We currently have more than 600 miles of wall along the southern border. Some of it is slats, some is plates, some is concrete. It's different because different configurations work better in some areas than others do. With all due respect to Mr. Wall Expert, get over your bad self!


Mexico-Border-Fence-Climbers-1.jpg

Wall 2.jpg

Doesn't even matter which wall....





The wall is not going to do anything without the deploying of an army of new hires and a tremendous amount of new infrastructure, largely in areas that cannot support the hires on their own, all of which will push the numbers up to hundreds of billions easily with tons more on a yearly basis, and STILL only address a portion of the 25% of illegals who actually cross at the border now but would never think of using ladders, ropes, tunnels, or boats to get around it? (And, yes, ways to break through).

This wall is a manfactured issue. You know it, I know it, and you know that I know it.

If any of you actually cared about illegal immigration, your main focus would be attacking Trump for not using the kind of methods that might actually make a dent: e-verify ramped up, penalties and enforcement against employers of illegals ramped up, and some kind of improvement(s) in the way visa holders are treated such that they are less likely to overstay: they make up 75% of illegals.




But no. You want to demand a wall. You want the wall because you bet you aren't going to get it, so you can therefore always use it to attack "liberals." And it's a win-win for you because if you do get the wall, you can spin around to attack them for the people who overstay their visas and the like. As long as you're careful to never upset their motive for coming here, to frustrated it, you will always have illegal immigration to blame on the liberals.

And if that gets tiring, you can go back to truther-worthy conspiracy theories about Mueller, or perhaps about how Obama used mind control worms from space to make you stub your toe yesterday evening...
 
The cost estimates are light and I have stated so in other posts. Possibly as much as 2x light even without the cost overrun elements sighted in the post.

This is a cluster, a total and complete cluster. It is a Wall that exists in Donald's mind and nowhere else and even in his mind, it apparently changes with a soft breeze when you consider what comes out his mouth. It will NEVER exist in fact. Take it to the bank.

You can't negotiate nor build a figment of the imagination. Good luck costing it or engineering it.
 
You trusted an expert that said that Meliana was the first FLOTUS to visit a war zone since 1969.:lamo

With the exception of Laura Bush. Neither Hillary or Michelle were in active war zones...EVER.


See the desperate reduction to DODGING THE TOPIC..as usual.
 
With the exception of Laura Bush. Neither Hillary or Michelle were in active war zones...EVER.


See the desperate reduction to DODGING THE TOPIC..as usual.

With the exception of EVERY FIRST LADY. (you seem to also forget about Barbara Bush)

But, your expert said no one. :lamo

So much fail.
 
With the exception of EVERY FIRST LADY. (you seem to also forget about Barbara Bush)

But, your expert said no one. :lamo

So much fail.

Saudi Arabia was not a "war zone" in 1990. Iraq and Kuwait were.

Please cite the "war zones" Michelle and Hillary were in...
 
Please cite the "war zones" Michelle and Hillary were in...

Already covered. You got owned, because you never spend the tiniest amount of time fact checking the garbage sources you use.
 
I swear, it's like we have never built a wall before with some of these people.

We currently have more than 600 miles of wall along the southern border. Some of it is slats, some is plates, some is concrete. It's different because different configurations work better in some areas than others do. With all due respect to Mr. Wall Expert, get over your bad self!

Only Republican walls are bad for the environment.
 
Saudi Arabia was not a "war zone" in 1990. Iraq and Kuwait were.

Please cite the "war zones" Michelle and Hillary were in...

Bosnia:lamo
 
One uninterrupted continuous wall of indeterminate design...sure. Considering they havent accepted a type and design yet, how the **** would you even know what the final concept is, where they would keep existing fencing, add more, etc?

Maybe more of this...only better...

View attachment 67247985

and maybe more of this...only better...

View attachment 67247986

The only thing we know FOR SURE is that if it decided to continue with the same design that democrat presidents have built in the past, idiot leftists will **** themselves over it and shriek THATS RACIST!!! ITS INEFFECTIVE!!! WE SHOULDNT BUILD THEM!!!

The wall should be five hundred feet tall, yes? If you think that would not be cost effective, you just hate border security.
 
I swear, it's like we have never built a wall before with some of these people.

We currently have more than 600 miles of wall along the southern border. Some of it is slats, some is plates, some is concrete. It's different because different configurations work better in some areas than others do. With all due respect to Mr. Wall Expert, get over your bad self!

You of course being the engineering expert are able to say he is wrong. Oh, you are not an engineer, right, you just get the info from Fox News and Limbaugh. RGHTTTTTTT
 

Don’t act like a stretch of mountain gets you out of this. You want a wall along the entire area that it’s possible to build one.
 
2) Messes with all kind of stuff ecologically

Wow! Impressive for someone so ejumacated.
 
Don’t act like a stretch of mountain gets you out of this. You want a wall along the entire area that it’s possible to build one.

Some places are natural defiles and don't need a wall/fence/barrier/berm.

This is the Rio Grande running through Santa Elena Canyon.
 

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Wow! Impressive for someone so ejumacated.

I wonder if this FB author has ejumacated herself on the TONS of trash left by illegal immigrants and drug cartels in border states like Arizona? Ecological erosion, too.
 
Some places are natural defiles and don't need a wall/fence/barrier/berm.

This is the Rio Grande running through Santa Elena Canyon.

Yeah that’s what I said.

And ALL of the areas that are not natural barriers, you want to build one, yes?
 
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