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Italy bridge: Genoa motorway collapse kills at least 22
- paganel 8y agoArticle from 2016 talking about the people that designed and built the bridge: http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/ponte-morandi-a-genova-prestigiosa-opera-di-ingegneria-o-no-parla-ling-brencich/ http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/po... (in Italian, Google Translate may help with it).
- davydog187 8y agoIts 404ing, did they take it down?
- hucker 8y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20180814113709/www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/ponte-morandi-a-genova-prestigiosa-opera-di-ingegneria-o-no-parla-ling-brencich/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180814113709/www.ingegneri.inf... An old mirror on the waybackmachine
- gattilorenz 8y agoThey updated the page with today's news: http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/ponte-morandi-genova-analisi-infrastrutturale/ http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/po... on archive.is: http://archive.is/nZ9rF http://archive.is/nZ9rF
- frostburg 8y agoIt's a bit long to translate while typing on a phone, but the main takeaway is that it was build in the sixties with then-novel and not fully understood material engineering practices which then forced frequent and expensive extraordinary repairs, to the point that it would soon have been economical to just demolish and rebuild it. As for people asking why the highway needs to go through Genova instead of around, it's probably the same kind of reasoning that leads to using nuclear bombs to build harbors and the like.
- 24gttghh 8y ago>As for people asking why the highway needs to go through Genova instead of around, Mountains. And a few of the major highways actually go under Genoa, via tunnels.
- rullopat 8y agoA very small piece of land on the sea with a very steep 1000 meters tall mountain next to it, that's why.
- frostburg 8y agoI know, but are you familiar with how terrible it looks, even when it doesn't collapse? Genova hasn't ever been the prettiest city, but still.
- donkeyd 8y agoPeople tend to pick an ugly city over hours of traffic jams in a pretty city.
- toyg 8y agoIt's more that people in Italy like to live and die close to where they were born. Genoa also was a very busy port until relatively recently, which is a natural population magnet.
- sabas_ge 8y agoIt's the biggest port in Italy, and 63rd worldwide. The population increased when the big public industrial complexes were active, now it's declined.
- yitosda 8y agoTranslation not very clear, but seems to say towards the end that the bridge will quickly cost more than it's worth to maintain (issues with the concrete?) and will need to be demolished. I'm guessing what happened here is neither maintenance nor (planned) demolition.
- talonx 8y agoWhy is this on HN?
- windows_tips 8y agorubenbe31 posted it
- bignet 8y agoXD
- andrepd 8y agoBridges are engineering.
- abhiminator 8y agoAnd it's a matter of public safety, collapses like these.
- noefingway 8y agoHighly recommend Henry Petroski's book on bridge building https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/to-engineer-is-human-the-role-of-failure-in-successful-design_henry-petroski/247221/#isbn=0679734163&idiq=493725 https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/to-engineer-is-human-the-role-...
- abhiminator 8y agoThat picture of the Tacoma Narrows' incident on the cover totally grabbed my eyeballs. This book looks super interesting, thank you for the recommendation.
- PakG1 8y agoPlease allow this article to help you appreciate bridges. :) http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-makers-of-things/ http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-makers-of-things/
- dreen 8y agoApparently in Ancient Rome, the ceremony of opening of the bridge consisted of placing the Engineers and Architects who built it to be under the bridge and marching an army Legion over the bridge. Today we have courts and laws to deal with this but every story like this is a reminder of responsibility put into Civil Engineers. But also it serves as a reminder that any Engineering discipline, including Software, has to have accountability and ethics standards. edit: I'm not blaming anyone for this tragic accident. The cause will be found eventually. What I mean is it's important to remember how your work may impact lives, regardless of what that work is.
- ra 8y agoLet's not jump to conclusions. The only facts we know are that the bridge collapsed and a bunch of people died. Let's not turn the conversation to "blame the engineer". Accountability and ethics are the yardstick everyone is measured by.
- jnxx 8y agoBlame, no. But going into the cause is more than warranted. Seemed like an Italian academic called it an "failure of engineering" two years ago, and another construction of the same engineer was reported to have collapsed in earlier years.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoApparently this was built in the 1960's. Not sure if lack of maintenance is to blame or original design.
- kristofferR 8y agoProbably the best image, showing the scale of the collapse: https://gfx.nrk.no/gJothoXlgJysV_sS10u_RQaXLsIZsJIlLIQrfEX8EDmA https://gfx.nrk.no/gJothoXlgJysV_sS10u_RQaXLsIZsJIlLIQrfEX8E...
- vthallam 8y agoWhy did they even build apartments under a bridge or a bridge over apartments? Can't think what would of have happened if the whole bridge collapses.
- jaclaz 8y agoIn this case it is why they built a bridge over existing buildings. A photo of the construction (1964): https://www.autostrade.it/comunicazione-e-media/mediateca/archivio-storico/-/media-items/image/playlist/storico-a10-genova-savona#gallery-6 https://www.autostrade.it/comunicazione-e-media/mediateca/ar...
- overcast 8y agoSame reason they build housing near other highly undesirable locations.
- jandrese 8y agoThe housing is right next to an industrial trainyard from the looks of it. It was already undesirable before the bridge was built over it. On the BBC the person they interviewed said that those apartments were abandoned however, so it may not be as bad as it looks.
- toyg 8y agoNot just a trainyard: reportedly the bridge runs above Ansaldo Energia, a big company that makes generators and turbines. So yeah, definitely not prime land, but still crowded.
- toyg 8y ago
- Freak_NL 8y agoI was looking for the site of the bridge on OpenStreetMap, but couldn't find it. It took me a while to realize that someone already took it off the map within an hour of it collapsing. Impressive (and correct), if a little disconcerting: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.42585/8.88840 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.42585/8.88840 All the access roads have been disabled too.
- tim333 8y agoGoogles map with sattelite and traffic updates https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.425374,8.8839348,2984m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.425374,8.8839348,2984m/dat... It has a quite a good 3d render of the bridge and street level view if you zoom in
- aembleton 8y agoIf you zoom out, it is still there. I guess it might be a cache https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/44.4262/8.8879 https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/44.4262/8.8879
- pella 8y agobridge=collapsed damage:event="2018-08-14 Genova Collapsed Bridge" https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/616904168#map=18/44.42599/8.88854 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/616904168#map=18/44.42599/...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joaomagalhaes 8y agoPart of the collapse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0c4N91otMs&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0c4N91otMs&feature=youtu.be
- projectileboy 8y agoCoincidentally, a book has just been published on the I-35W bridge collapse, written by one of the survivors. I wonder how many parallels there will be (less a tragedy of design and more a tragedy of maintenance reports gone unheeded for decades). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077FHMNJX/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077FHMNJX/
- DomreiRoam 8y agoFrom an article in Le Temps[1], the bridge had some conception issue; Concrete viscosity wasn't consider correctly. The cost of maintenance was very high and a replacement was considered but the project was opposed. [1] https://www.letemps.ch/monde/catastrophe-genes-lecroulement-dun-pont-11-morts https://www.letemps.ch/monde/catastrophe-genes-lecroulement-...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- peterwwillis 8y agoYet another bridge design felled by over-reliance on concrete for structural integrity. A lot more bridges are going to fail around the world because they rely too much on concrete, and on dangerous designs without sufficient redundancy. I like ancient Roman bridges because they're both complex and simple, but my favorite thing about them is how utilitarian they are. At least the examples we have today were clearly not undermining their integrity for the sake of a cool design (2 prestressed concrete tension beams? what the fuck?). Pretty much the only thing that would fell them was the force of flooding rivers. Some fell apart over time, but we're talking over a thousand years. Bridges today barely last 100. We have to stop letting architects design, and cities then build, hipster bridges. Their primary consideration must be their integrity and longevity.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago>We have to stop letting architects design, and cities then build, hipster bridges. Their primary consideration must be their integrity and longevity. Agreed. You don't have to go back to roman times to see engineering for function over form. If there's one thing the red side of the iron curtain did right it was not letting form compromise function when it came to public works and civil engineering. >At least the examples we have today were clearly not undermining their integrity for the sake of a cool design What people like to see follows what they're used to seeing. A good example is the GMT800 Chevy truck platform. In 2000-2005 everyone thought they looked like ugly slant eyed jelly beans, now they just look normal because people have gotten used to them. If we built functional things people would get used to how they look and start to like it.
- zonovar 8y agoAs Italian I feel very touched. Hope the body count won't go up. What a tragedy! This is the live streaming from an Italian newspaper https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/genova-crollato-il-ponte-morandi/312390/313026 https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/genova-crollato-...
- jnxx 8y agoI feel you. I think that people all over Europe are sad and shocked. This is heartbreaking for all of us, I was in Genoa not very long ago. I hope that the families get all the help possible.
- tonylemesmer 8y agowow - you can just catch the silhouette of the pier collapsing right at the start of the video amongst the mist. Terrible.
- Malkut 8y agoI used to work under this bridge. Everybody knew that the bridge was unsafe. However, the local government didn't want to close the bridge because it was critical for the community. Some activists didn't want to close it because they didn't want to build a replacement. So disasters happen, shit always happens. But this was not a disaster, something unknown, this is manslaughter from my point of view. I wish somebody pays for it, but this won't happen.
- akerro 8y agoAlmost the same thing happened in London a year ago, local government was too afraid to make any action and improve the situation. No one is gonna to pay for it, unless it's you with taxes. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-failed-safety-inspections-before-fire-a8483151.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tow...
- nicktelford 8y agoUntil I saw the link you posted, I thought you were talking about Hammersmith Flyover, which had to be closed for several weeks to strengthen it after they found an alarming number of cracks. They still don't have a long-term plan to replace it afaik, despite the strengthening works only being a temporary measure.
- moviuro 8y ago> temporary measure Everyone knows that temporary is a new word for permanent. //TODO: temporary workaround, fix ASAP, etc.
- Malkut 8y agoThe difference between this and grenfell was that here the local authorities had been acknowledged of the status of the bridge via official documents. The bridge suffer a major redesign in the '90s. I cannot believe how nobody cared about it.
- DangerousPie 8y ago
- maury91 8y agoEvery time I refresh the page the title (count) changes, what a tragedy!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Lennu 8y agoNothing at this scale but this summer in Finland there was a national park bridge fail. The merging of the local municipalities caused the bridge maintenance to be taken care of by the new municipality. In the merge the maintenance was simply forgotten for ten years. https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mondays_papers_tractor_taxi_hanging_bridge_fail_and_kindergarten_on_wheels/10284039 https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mondays_papers_tractor_ta...
- aaron695 8y agoTherac-25 kills ~3 people 30 years ago.... software engineers still go on about it. Here's an example from where the adults (Real engineers with 1000's of years experience) do hard things and make mistakes and kill 22.... and there'll be another incident next week somewhere else in the world. Software matters and saves (and hence kills) lives but this cargo culting of needing dead bodies to seem important like the other engineers is annoying.
- nkkollaw 8y agoFrom what I read on Italian forums, Italian engineers say that the materials that were used to build the bridge weren't the same chosen by the designers. It will be a while before we learn the actual cause for the collapse, however.
- jaclaz 8y ago>From what I read on Italian forums, Italian engineers say that the materials that were used to build the bridge weren't the same chosen by the designers. Care to post a link? The bridge (actually a long viaduct) has been subject to several overhaulings in the years, including the replacement of some structural parts, though these interventions were largely related to the deck, while - at least from the pictures I have seen - it seems more like a pier collapsed, which is "unusual".
- donjoe 8y agoThere is a live stream from the bridge currently available on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjfUyvtr3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjfUyvtr3w
- ilove_banh_mi 8y agoWhenever there is a bridge failure (or similar, highly-visible civil engineering failure) I recommend to engineers of all stripes that they go read the works of Henry Petroski. In particular: - To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985) [1] - Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering (1994) [2] and - Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and The Spanning of America (1995) [3] He also wrote a salient op-ed after the 2007 bridge failure in Minneapolis: Learning from bridge failure. [4] [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163 [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521466490 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521466490 [3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679760210 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679760210 [4] http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-petroski4aug04-story.html http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-petroski4aug04-story.html
- pp19dd 8y agoThis tragedy shows the importance of inspection and cost of maintenance of infrastructure. In the U.S. there are approximately 600,000 highway bridges. It's estimated that a quarter of them are at their end-of-life mark (that avg being estimated by some at 70). Not counting over 1,700 bridges still in use built before the 19th century, the breakdown is something like this: Decade No. Built 1900 6,084 1910 5,893 1920 17,883 1930 42,009 1940 25,971 1950 64,085 1960 99,975 1970 82,129 1980 78,279 1990 81,410 2000 71,475 2010 38,038 This is just bridges. There are also about 84,000 dams and in a decade or two a huge number of both of these will approach their end of life, just as a legion of civil engineers go into retirement.
- mschuster91 8y ago> This tragedy shows the importance of inspection and cost of maintenance of infrastructure. Your table is scary - and it leads me to one question: why is the future maintenance not budgeted in with any public infrastructure project? For example, a city wants a shiny new bridge... but without provable funding for the maintenance in the future (e.g. tax projections), it is not allowed to be built. Of course stuff like economic shifts (leading to a loss of tax base) can't be prevented but it's a small risk compared to some politician deciding "I need something monumental where I can cut the opening ribbons" and loading the future generations with maintenance debt.
- zouhair 8y agoThese are easily the first to get the axe, because we now live in the Uber Tax Cuter Politician. For me now I vote for the politician that will have the most taxes.
- tim333 8y agoCertain recent presidents promised $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending but you don't always get what you vote for.
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- codedokode 8y agoI don't know if this brigde collapse could be prevented but they could at least not build bridges above buildings. There probably was a better place for the bridge.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoGenoa is a very 3D (hilly) city, so they really don’t have a choice.
- tyrex2017 8y agohn is the one site i come to detox from news (porn). hopefully for me, i wont see so many news here in the future