Something Kinky, this Way Comes

Excessive heat destroys more than just livestock and crops. It can kill human beings, change major storm patterns, decimate water supplies, overload power grids until they shut down and make life just plain miserable for folks trying to live through the heat. A tornado touched down in Elmira, NY, in the south-central part of the state, an unheard of event. But what many miss is the long-term damage that extreme and sustained heat does to concrete, steel, asphalt and the earth that supports large structures above. Heat expands steel and asphalt/concrete, but it can contract soil and take the strength out of it by taking the moisture out of the earth. Powdery and less-than-substantial, earth, especially clay-based, can become dust.

Roads and highways crack and sometimes open wide chasms on heavily-traveled highways. Infrastructure across the heat belt, already sadly in states of decay and disrepair, now faces the clear impact of that hotness as it stretches steel, expands concrete – until cold weather and rain (sooner or later) push it back the other way… eventually breaking it apart or taking the tensile strength out of it. Constant expansion and contraction exacerbated by temperature extremes renders solid structures weak, accelerating decay and withering the projected useful life of our infrastructure that cost so very much.

The examples of steel failing are most obvious in train derailments that were directly caused by excess heat. “On Wednesday, June 27 a Union Pacific coal train derailed near Junction City, in northeastern Kansas, overturning or crushing 23 rail cars. The train was en route to Memphis from a mine in Colorado, according to this report.

“On Monday, July 2, a BNSF Railway Co. coal train originating from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming headed for British Columbia derailed near Mesa, Washington, sending 31 train cars full of coal tumbling across an interstate railroad thoroughfare.

“On Wednesday, July 4 in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, another train derailed, sending 28 coal cars off the tracks, causing an 86-foot long railway bridge to collapse onto a passenger vehicle, killing 2 people. According to this report from the Chicago Tribune, this train was en route to a utility plant in Wisconsin from a coal mine in eastern Wyoming.

“Later that evening, yet another coal train derailment [pictured above] occurred in Pendelton, Texas -- this time sending 43 BNSF cars flying off the tracks and causing hundreds of tons of coal to be strewn everywhere. This quote from the Temple Daily Telegram is pretty powerful: ‘What people see in the sky that looks like smoke is actually coal dust’ - Trooper Shawn Andersen, TX Department of Public Safety.” Skytruth.org, July 9^th.

“With temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 40 degrees Celcius), a New York subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track, forming a sharp angle.” RT.com, July 27^th. Why is this happening? “During multiple days of extreme heat, the temperature of steel tracks can rise sharply, causing them to expand into wavelike shapes known as ‘heat kinks.’ Sometimes, the tracks expand so far out of their normal gauge that cross ties and ballasts, which normally shore up the rail and provide structural support, can no longer do their job… Worst case scenario, ‘the train can't negotiate these large kinks in the rail, and they derail,’ says Andrew Kish, owner of a rail technology consulting firm. ‘The track becomes unstable and buckles out.’” PBS.org, July 7^th.

With roads, tracks, bridges and dams already suffering from the ailment of deferred maintenance – mega-expensive disasters waiting to destroy lives and livelihoods because we only react to disaster and put little stake these days in preventing it – the summer extremes, bolstered by whatever cooling inevitably comes in later months, will create more infrastructure damage than we could have possibly imagined or planned for. And if this heat is the way of the future, that damage will only accelerate. With unemployment unacceptably high, there is no excuse not to invest – and I said invest and not just “spend” – in getting our infrastructure in shape to keep us competitive with all those developing nations that are prioritizing infrastructure and education as a way of competing and taking away America’s once proud edge over everybody else.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the lack of pride in our country, the willingness to let us decay without lifting a figure to stop the erosion, is stunningly unacceptable and profoundly un-American!