In the news Monday were reports of a 6.0 magnitude earthquake near Guatemala City, Guatemala.  This follows last Monday’s news of a 7.0 magnitude quake in Haiti, which I wrote about in my last blog.  Our first concern for Guatemala might be fear of a tragedy similar to Haiti.  After all, 6.0 is almost 7.0, or it’s at least 6/7 or 85% of the strength, right?  Fortunately (for the people of Guatemala City), that’s totally wrong in the context of the Richter scale.

As events unfold in Haiti, our Buildipedia.com audience has been watching the news, and in many cases contributing to or assisting directly in the recovery.  As the Buildipedia.com facilities and infrastructure person, the story has certainly caught my attention, not only because of the humanitarian aspects, but also because of the role that poor engineering played in creating it.

The most recent article posted on the Operations Channel is titled “A Bridge to Everywhere” and briefly explores some notable facts and figures concerning our nation’s bridges, as part of our ongoing infrastructure series.

One web link embedded in the article, provided by MSNBC, provides each reader the ability to evaluate the bridge status along any route of car travel in the United States.  This MSNBC web link has been a favorable feature of our bridges article, and some folks that have read the article suggested I bring that link to light in this Blog section as well.

I envision that somewhere, in our national array of large facility operators, there must be a seasoned fuel manager, armed with sharp pencils, finely tuned spreadsheets, and two red telephones, each linked to a fuel oil and a natural gas distributor, respectively.  I imagine him or her sitting at a dimly lit desk, deep in a warm mechanical room, alongside a huge array of quietly humming dual-fuel boilers.  A small computer screen on the desk is scrolling the latest fuel commodity prices.

In today’s news there’s talk of a new federal government jobs stimulation program, with a cost between $75 billion and $125 billion. This new jobs program would be funded in theory from recaptured amounts totaling nearly $200 billion, originally programmed under the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Approximately $50 billion of the new jobs program would be targeted for U.S. infrastructure projects, i.e., roads, bridges, and water projects. As Buildipedia.com’s U.S. infrastructure watchdog, this particular aspect of the news caught my attention Tuesday.