Thomas Burns's Blog

I thought I would change up my July blog post. It has been about a month since the paperback version of EQUILIBRIUM came out (visit https://www.tomburnsbooks.com if you still need a copy). The feedback that I have received on my novel EQUILIBRIUM has really been fantastic. My sincere thanks to all of you!Being new to this world of fiction, I am really thankful to everyone for “spreading the word” to your family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, book clubs, and neighbors so that others can hopefully enjoy it too.I have mentioned that I am working on a follow-up novel that I think will be ready in the second half of 2018 so I thought I would give you an unedited glimpse of the first few pages. The story will still involve fictionalized versions of real events – in some instances taken from stories that you may have heard on the news (both world events and engineering events). Don’t worry Nick and Katie will still be in here as well. I would like to hear your feedback on the first few pages and, as time goes on, I will probably send out a few more previews in the months to come.I hope you enjoy. Please go ahead and Share/Like this blog post with others on social media!*********************************************************************1Monday June 4, 20071:00 PMRussell County, KentuckyJ. T. McKay stuffed the last piece of bologna sandwich into his mouth and chewed it a couple of times before washing it down with what was left of his Coke.  He regretted that lunch time was ending as the cool blast from the pickup’s air conditioning provided a welcome refuge from the heat. Today’s temperature was expected to top out above ninety degrees in the south central Kentucky towns of Jamestown, Monticello, and Burkesville. Parked on an access road on the downstream side of Wolf Creek Dam, J. T. knew that was his location was practically in the middle of those three towns and, as such, he was in for a hot afternoon outside today. As the sun beat down upon the hood of his truck he stared up at the massive concrete structure comprising the main part of the dam standing two hundred and fifty eight tall in front of him. Knowing that twenty five stories of Lake Cumberland stood above him on the other side of the concrete structure made him feel a sense of awe and queasiness at the same time.Wolf Creek Dam was one of several constructed after the second World War in southern Kentucky to provide flood control, generate electricity and allow for year-round navigation on local waterways. Those benefits were in addition to forming Lake Cumberland – a lake stretching over one hundred miles long with over twelve hundred miles of zig-zagging shoreline etched into the Kentucky hillsides. More than just water for many people in southern Kentucky, the lake provided a livelihood by way of the leisure economy it had spawned. From Memorial Day until Labor Day marinas – State Dock, Lee’s Ford, Jamestown, Conley Bottom, and others – were invaded with vacationers from the north looking for a boating, skiing, fishing and eating get away. Many of J. T.’s family and friends were happy to oblige the vacationing masses – for a price.“Can’t put it off any longer,” he mumbled to himself as he reached over and plucked his hardhat off of the passenger seat. Getting out of the truck he was met head-on by the stifling heat and humidity that would be with him the rest of the afternoon. To make matters worse, he was required by his employer – the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – to wear a florescent orange safety vest while performing any type of inspection work. Although the vest was lightweight nylon, it still was another layer of fabric on a day when an additional layer was the last thing needed when working outside. Slipping on the vest and J. T. grabbed a clipboard, tape measure, camera, and walking stick from behind his seat and turned around to begin his work.The inspector really considered himself to be a farmer, a guy who liked getting his hands dirty raising corn and soybeans on his twenty acres in nearby Adair County.  He tried his hand at other things as well, including tobacco and cattle but those were difficult. Regulations on tobacco had dried up federal subsidies and the market for beef was suffering through a period of extremely low prices. His job with the Corps helped him enough to almost balance his budget. Besides the Corps had trained him to do a number of jobs, one of which was what he was doing today – a visual inspection of Wolf Creek Dam’s earthen embankment.“Cross-trained sounds a helluva a lot better when you’re inside,” he muttered to himself as he walked away from the truck.Before his one-day training course in dam inspection J. T. thought, as many people do, that a dam like the Wolf Creek Dam are composed only of the huge concrete wall. The concrete section of the Wolf creek Dam was built on rock and contained a spillway capped by ten huge rectangular gates allowing water to be released from the lake as needed. It was in this section where the powerhouse is located, where the water spins the turbines to generate 800,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity – enough to power eighty thousand houses for an entire year. Although this is what visitors recognize as “the dam”, the reality is that the concrete portion of the Wolf Creek Dam makes up only about one-third of the total length of the dam. The larger portion of the dam is its earthen embankment – a ten million cubic yard pile of well-compacted clay and rock taken from the valleys surrounding the site. During construction it took roughly one million dump trucks to transport that amount of material to the site. It was that massive pile of dirt which was needed to withstand the pressure of the two hundred and fifteen feet water which would form behind it. The embankment coupled with the concrete portion of the dam were responsible for holding back the largest reservoir east of the Mississippi – Lake Cumberland.

One of the themes in my novel EQUILIBRIUM (see https://www.tomburnsbooks.com/) is how we, i.e. humans, have changed our environment by the power of technology and our ability to creatively apply it to solve a problem. I suppose we have always worked to build tools and systems to make our lives better or to improve our standard of living. I guess this goes all the way back to our cave-dwelling ancestors who shaped rocks so that they could be used for hunting or preparing food. Heck, I have been to a few restaurants where I am almost certain they still cook that way!Which brings me to this month’s topic. Who the heck is Charles Rockwood and why do we care?I just finished a book on the history of the Hoover Dam called Colossus written by Michael Hiltzik (2010). Being an engineer, I always knew a good deal about Hoover Dam and even toured it back in the mid-1990s at a time where you could walk through the actual dam itself (today these areas are closed off because of possible terrorism). The book was very good but the best part to me was the story of the early proponents of using the Colorado River -- a dream that would eventually result in the Hoover Dam.  Enter Charles Rockwood, who showed the determination that is needed to start putting big dreams in motion. Rockwood was an irrigation engineer who was chief engineer of the Northern Pacific Railroad but he had other dreams as well. In the 1890’s, he had a vision to use water from the untamed Colorado River in order to irrigate a desert wilderness in California and this became his life’s passion. He believed that reliable water in Southern California could turn a desert into a booming paradise. He surveyed the land and found out that the Colorado could be re-routed through Mexico and then flow north into Southern California but of course this would require a massive canal and flood control project - which was actually opened in 1901. For a while, Rockwood’s company sold water rights to landowners and the area’s population began to swell. Still, financial problems and constant dredging of silt deposited from the Colorado into his canal put his company in precarious circumstances. A series of catastrophic floods in 1906 threatened every town along Rockwood’s canal hand caused serious damage all along its route - wiping many towns off the map. The Colorado River could not be tamed by his canal, nor by any canal – this technology was not the solution.Rockwood's dream ended in failure but almost three decades later, the Colorado River was tamed. Rockwood’s vision of Southern California (and other states) having the water and electricity for growth was realized through the technology of the massive Hoover Dam. A small footnote to end with - the California desert served by Rockwood’s canal is known as the Imperial Valley.  A desert turned into an agricultural power, this one region produces many things – totaling about $6 billion in economic impact annually.

1981.Ronald Reagan was president. The TV series Dallas ruled the ratings. Bette Davis Eyes would be atop the Billboard charts and the country was shocked at the walkway collapse at the Kansas City Hyatt Regency in July that year.Although the actual date and location of this disaster were changed in my novel, EQUILIBRIUM, many of the other facts surrounding this failure  are fairly accurate. The 1982 “post-mortem” report by the National Bureau of Standards found that two primary factors caused the collapse - inadequacy of the original design for the hanger rod connection and the change in the hanger rod arrangement during construction that essentially doubled the load on fourth-floor connection. Although the NBS report states that the connections were understrength in spite of this change, the “split-rod” detail change left the connection with a capacity of approximately one-third of that dictated by the building code.How can some long-ago engineering failure -- in a world before IBM launched their first personal computer -- still be a teachable moment to the new crop of young people who will be freshman engineering students this fall? Has a world now saturated with information made the problems of information sharing in the Hyatt Regency collapse irrelevant?Undoubtedly the world has changed since 1981, but the Hyatt Regency collapse is still a tragedy that provides valuable lessons. Although the interface between design and construction has inevitably changed over the years, some things have remained consistent. At its core, the construction process requires that design information be communicated to those that will perform the construction.  That hasn’t changed. Engineers and architects, although schooled in hard sciences, mathematics, and design techniques still, in many areas, rely on specialists to actually help “complete” the design. That hasn’t changed. The completed project, and the structure which supports it, still must resist the loads as presented in the applicable building codes in order to protect the public. That hasn’t changed.So what has changed?The flow of information and the technology that supports that flow has evolved in the design and construction arena like it has in other parts of our lives. People everywhere want things done faster. The Hyatt Regency project was “fast-tracked” meaning that construction would overlap design in order to shorten the overall schedule. Although the concept of fast-tracking is still popular, coordination and communication in such projects can be problematic. Historically, the design and construction teams on a project have preferred to exist in their separate silos. If communication on a fast-tracked project is not emphasized, then incomplete information can lead to misunderstandings. Communication difficulties in the Hyatt Regency project were later found to be part of the problem. The steel fabricator reported that they called the structural engineer and received a verbal “okay” to change to the “split rod” arrangement although this verbal approval was in fact disputed by the engineer. Nonetheless, the shop drawings were changed to the split rod arrangement and these drawings were approved.How might this be different in today’s world?Many of today’s engineering students will undoubtedly be exposed to an emerging project delivery system in today’s construction world called Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). This delivery system which seeks to integrate the processes, practices and technologies used by project participants. Success in a project is the overriding concern of the team where achieving shared goals takes precedence over meeting individual expectations. The overwhelming majority of owners, designers and contractors that have participated in an IPD-type project have stated the efficiency, productivity and costs have all been positively impacted. Today’s technology, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), combines a three dimensional model of the building with a database allowing the storage and sharing of information related to the design, fabrication, and installation of components into one place shared by all project participants. The opportunity this technology provides to help those involved on a project communicate cannot even be compared to a time before the widespread use of computers, email, and everything digital. It is hard to imagine but 1981 was even before the widespread use of fax machines (as I hear a chorus of college freshman asking “what’s a fax machine?”).  IPD also stresses a team-based approach to decision-making instead of decisions made in isolation by a single person or company. The theme of close contact and collaboration in decision-making is an opportunity for all project participants to use their expertise to shape the best decisions for the good of the project. Would this project delivery model be a shift from what existed in 1981? I have to believe it would.Although many things have changed since Dallas ruled primetime television and Kim Carnes sang Bette Davis Eyes to the top of the charts, one thing that has remained the same in the world of design and construction is the need for clear and effective communication. I think that may be a timeless lesson for those heading to college this fall.