Empire Built on Sand: inferior concrete used in 1/3rd of SF public projects!!

[Liberal_in_LA]

when I read the title of this article, I assumed it was about a foreign country or 'third world' country. Nope... California doesn't need this. America is gonna fall under the definition of 'third world' if we don't get our act together :wow: :wow: :wow:

EMPIRE BUILT ON SAND
Businessman allegedly poured inferior concrete into key projects

Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, July 9, 2006

Ricardo Ramirez seemed an unlikely success story: At 57, the former Marine Corps judo instructor had spent more than 20 years as a paving contractor and had little to show for it but a long string of lawsuits, business failures and bankruptcies.

Then, in 1998, the struggling businessman appeared to hit upon a way to make it in a new venture. Taking advantage of city and state programs designed to help minority-owned businesses, Ramirez started turning out low-priced, locally produced concrete for projects that included earthquake retrofit work on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge. By 2003, his Pacific Cement venture was supplying a third of the concrete used in San Francisco's public works projects.

Prosecutors now believe it was an empire of sand.

Ramirez built Pacific Cement on a combination of moxie, deceit and greed, prosecutors say, only to have it crumble. Left behind, they say, was a costly and potentially dangerous legacy: tons of substandard concrete built into vital public structures.

Ramirez, now 65, faces charges of grand theft and fraud for allegedly passing off inferior recycled concrete -- a cheaper material that is more prone to wear, cracks and water penetration -- as meeting higher durability standards for the Golden Gate Bridge and a Burlingame wastewater treatment plant. He has pleaded not guilty.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/09/MNG9JJRI8K1.DTL#ixzz0LkU5UgHj

Ramirez was a well-connected political player who sometimes broke the rules. He had given nearly $100,000 to state and local politicians since 1995, and twice had been fined for making illegal contributions. Some of his work for San Francisco had been criticized by city officials for its poor quality. Still, he was able to secure work on major state and city projects.

His fall finally came when former truck drivers for Ramirez told prosecutors that they delivered load after load of flawed product -- recycled concrete made from ground-up construction debris, rather than hard rock -- not just to the Golden Gate Bridge and to Burlingame, but also to the retrofit of the Bay Bridge's western approach, the Muni's Third Street light-rail line and a new parking garage in Golden Gate Park.

[lindisfarne]

1. Hopefully they go beyond the corporation and after his personal assets, including his house &

retirement accounts. They'll never recover what it will cost to fix the problem, but he should be left penniless & homeless.

[RandomThoughts]

7. He should have health, home, and food security like everyone.

I would hope not to wish anyone homeless, or hungry, or without health care.

[valerief]

9. You forgot the sarcasm icon. This is America, after all. nt

[anonymous171]

11. I would. Especially corporate criminals. nt

[lindisfarne]

18. He'll have that. In prison. Then, he can live on the streets, seeing as he was wasting tax money

that could have gone to people who are homeless but haven't ripped off the public. He'll qualify for medicare & have it better than many who could have used the funds he's wasted.

[johnfunk]

26. Health, home, and food security in jail

[LeftyMom]

27. He will. In prison. nt

[Taverner]

2. Always a fear when there are already allegations of sand being used in the Bay Bridge Redo

[hunter]

3. The next big earthquake will be....

:scared:

[billyoc]

4. Stop crying, what's the worst that could happ--

[RandomThoughts]

12. I didn't know building could fall over sideways?

I thought buildings fell neatly into their own foot prints at free fall speed, with a loss of all internal support columns?

[LeftyMom]

28. Totally different situation. That building failed because the foundation was inadequate,

not because somebody hit it with a passenger aircraft.

Also, you'll note that it's not a similar structure at all.

[RandomThoughts]

13. I didn't know building could fall over sideways?

I thought buildings fell neatly into their own foot prints at free fall speed, with a loss of all internal support columns?

[billyoc]

14. First rule of Truther Club, don't stop talking about Truther Club.

:crazy:

[RandomThoughts]

19. I doubt you would believe how many times

people have said that things I talk about are not real or relevant. Mostly using labels that give them some programmed value.

I think my batting average is pretty good, so when that one rolls around remember your post.

[crikkett]

22. Ad hominem attacks to avoid the issue is soooo Bush-era n/t

:eyes:

[billyoc]

24. lol @"avoid the issue"

It's a thread about shoddy construction material, Sherlock.

[crikkett]

31. The reply was not to shoddy constrx matl in OP but to shut down discussion of

evidence of controlled demolition of at least WTC 7 on Sept. 11.

- Which admittedly was a tangent, but I notice that the subject, as usual, is shut down w/ ad hominem attack. And that method is not working as well as it used to.

[Silent3]

17. The physics of a 13 story building...

...and a 110 story building are very, very different.

[tabatha]

20. Good one.

[Neecy]

5. This could be, quite literally, murder on a mass scale

If any of those retrofits collapse in even a medium-sized quake. Money trumps everything, doesn't it?

[tomreedtoon]

6. They just didn't pay the Mafia enough.

Who do you think determines the quality of building materials, the safety of your restaurant food? Payoffs are a way of life, and those are taxes that not all the influence in Congress can cut. Try to do it, and you find your building's foundation has too much sand.

[valerief]

8. Which Mafia? I thought lots of Congress was the Christian Mafia. nt

[tomreedtoon]

30. No, the original organzation and its clones.

They've suffered a lot in recent decades, mostly because the old code of omerta is pretty much gone. But there's the Yakuza, the Russian Mafia, the Triads and all sorts of other charming groups.

Oh, and by the way, the construction industry has always been an important part of the Mafia's influence.

[Liberal_in_LA]

10. article says he was 'politically connected'. How else do you go from 20 yrs of failure to major

supplier of concrete?

[tomreedtoon]

29. How? Tony Soprano.

If you don't think that Mafia-style corruption isn't an important part of politics - as much a part of politics as disenfranchising the black vote or wrecking the California economy - then you're more naive than you seem. If the Republican Party were to disappear tomorrow, the Mafia and other organized crime groups like the Yakuza would still have their dirty fingers in everything.

And certainly you know that the construction trades, many of their unions, and the companies that do the construction have been havens of organized crime influence. Pay Guido or your building will collapse on opening day.

[elifino]

15. Who at the state,county, or city level tested the concrete?

Some one had to sign that it met specs.

[tularetom]

16. Doesn't anybody test this shit?

I spent a couple of summers in college working as a quality control tech on large highway and bridge projects. We did a "slump cone" test on every truckload of concrete delivered to a job and we poured concrete test cylinders which were broken in a lab at 7 and 28 days to check the compressive strength of the concrete. We were authorized to send back truckloads that showed an excessive amount of slump (too much water in the mix) and also to send back trucks that did not empty their loads within 90 minutes of arrival on the job. Nobody gave us any crap or told us to go easy on the contractors either.

I gotta believe that any problems with this concrete would have been detected by these tests (unless the crooked politicians got to the guys doing the sampling or testing as well. If they are culpable smebody will rat them out. I would've.

[marmar]

21. And isn't the San Francisco financial district, where the skyscrapers are, built on landfill?

Brilliant.

[rucky]

23. It's a good thing they don't have earthquakes around SF.

:scared:

[canetoad]

25. What a fucking mess

Did the city award the cheapest tender without investigation? Who was signing off on the completed projects?
This is going to be a shit fight among insurance companies.