jnewmano - Slashdot User

Submission + - Highway 35W Collapses into Mississippi (wcco.com)

Submitted by

dcapel

on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:30PM

dcapel writes: "In what has been called the worst engineering disaster in decades, a bridge of highway 35W, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has collapsed into the Mississippi. The collapse took place during late rush-hour traffic, so an estimated 50 cars were on the bridge at the time. There is no evidence for terrorist involvement, but an engineering or safety flaw of immense proportions must have been involved. As someone who was working only blocks away at the time, this happened entirely too close to home."

Submission + - 365 Main Generator Flaw May Affect Other Providers (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by

1sockchuck

on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @06:34PM

1sockchuck writes: "A flaw in a Detroit Diesel Electronic Controller (DDEC) was the key point of failure in the July 24th power outage at 365 Main's San Francisco data center, the company said today in a report to customers. The controller manages generator speed, and effectively prevented three of the data center's generators from starting properly when grid power from PG&E was interrupted. While much of the media attention has focused on the blame game, the DDEC flaw may affect other data centers using the same component, which has been discontinued but is still in use in many generators. "We've talked with other people in our industry that have seen the same issues," said 365 Main's VP of operations. "This is a problem that is going to be felt by anyone who is using a Detroit Diesel MTU 4 controller." 365 Main's generator vendor, Hitec Power, is said to be contacting other customers with similar equipment to head off a repeat elsewhere."

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