steel structure

With fire season approaching, a Bay Area company is giving the public a glimpse of what could make things safer for homeowners in the future.

More fallen concrete shut down a portion of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge Friday afternoon, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The Richmond-San Rafael Bridge’s history is part of an NBC Bay Area investigation spanning more than six years into the safety and condition of California’s bridges.

Engineering experts tell NBC Bay Area the cracks found in the Transbay Terminal superstructure appear to have started at the sharp corners of holes cut into vital steel beams during construction – edges long understood to heighten stresses in any steel structure.

Efforts to relocate protected birds so the old eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge can be torn down could cost the state more than $30 million, a newspaper said Monday.