<This just in...

I took my family to the bridge last weekend, along with some relatives. My wife and a couple of members of the family don't walk all that well, so there was no particular temptation to walk out on the bridge even if I hadn't been a little nervous about it. We went to the scenic overlook at the North end of the bridge, and then I saw the bridge's weak point.

The center of the bridge, the towers, the cables, the bridge proper, are almost indestructible. The concrete tower footings cannot be approached stealthily, and are designed to shrug off ship collisions. The rest of the structure is highly distributed, built to resist massive earthquakes, and would require a tremendous force to wreck.

However, there is a long section of elevated roadway at the north end of the bridge, easily observed from the observation point (the following shot was taken from there.)

It is the curved area at the top of this shot:

This roadway is supported by a standard steel trusswork supported on the near-deserted dirt area far below. When the fog is in, this area is completely concealed. When I was there, a maintenance access tunnel that went underneath this roadway was open and unlocked, and easily reached from the observation point parking lot (!!).

An explosive charge of reasonable size in this trusswork could theoretically collapse this piece of elevated roadway. While the bridge itself would remain, thus failing to score the tremendous visual propaganda blow generated by the collapse of the WTC, the destruction of the roadway would plug a major access point to San Francisco for many weeks. Hopefully, this weak point has been addressed in light of the news above.