He's still in Point Pleasant, WV.
Posted on 02/26/2019 9:58:37 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
On 14 August last year, the city of Genoa in northwest Italy woke to a strong summer storm. By 11.30am, the rain was so heavy that visibility had fallen dramatically. Videos captured by security cameras show vehicles slowing down as they crossed Morandi Bridge, which grew progressively more enveloped in a grey mist.
A few minutes later, a 200-metre section of the bridge collapsed, including one of its three supporting towers. The tragedy killed 43 people and left 600 homeless.
It also dealt a hammer blow to Italy’s once-proud engineering history – and the country’s confidence in its mastery of a key construction technology: concrete.
A little more than a kilometre long, crossing the Polcevera valley, a river, a railway depot, a densely populated area and several large factories at an average height of 45 metres above the ground, Morandi was one of the longest concrete bridges in the world when it opened in September 1967.
The 1960s were Italy’s boom years. For the first time, many Italians could afford a car. But the country’s roads – many of them narrow, meandering up mountains and twisting through city centres – needed modernising. Morandi Bridge was the centrepiece of a brand-new network of highways connecting Milan and Turin in the north to the tourist hotspots of the Ligurian Riviera, bypassing a congested Genoa and ultimately completing the coastline highway that runs from southern France to Tuscany.
Named after Riccardo Morandi, the engineer who designed it, the new bridge was a multi-span, cable-stayed bridge similar to the Brooklyn Bridge: regular towers, from which a series of exposed steel cables stretched to the bridge’s deck.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
A lot of us did come over here and bring some good building skills with us.
We still own quite a number of construction companies.
Waiting for mafia comments..3..2..1... :)
What’s really sad is that a coat of paint on the bridge would have prevented the corrosion and collapse.
Did anybody see the Mothman in the weeks before the collapse?
If you put too many bodies in the concrete, it weakens the construction.
It wasn’t the original design and build but the lack of maintenance that brought it down.
I thought bone was stronger than concrete.
Great article, TSR...thanks for posting it.
Thread winner!
Brings new meaning to the phrase “on the job 24/7”!
He's still in Point Pleasant, WV.
The "company" that owned and operated it was a government entity until privatized in early 2018. Their first act on privatization was to start a massive renovation project. They just didn't act quickly enough. It was government for too long.
The original design made the bridge difficult to maintain. Morandi encased the cables in concrete, so the corrosion could not be seen or repaired.
ROFL!!!
I got to hear a talk by General Dozier who was held hostage a couple of months by the Red Brigades. he said the most terrifying part of the ordeal was when he was rescued and thrown into the back of an Italian police car.
He said he was sure he had survived the ordeal only to die in the back of a speeding police car.
Italian drivers are already nuts. Can you imagine one on such a mission who is in a hurry and has zero idea that he should yield to anybody else?
Little, however, was done, and by 1992 the trademark concrete cables were heavily corroded. The company that managed the bridge, Autostrade per l’Italia – then owned by the state – decided to add extra new cables around the corroded ones, rather than replace them. It also neglected to retrofit the remaining two sets.
Push back on maintenance and any structure will eventually fail, especially near the sea.
But since the Italian government was responsible there is no one to punish except for the taxpayers.
Much like the US.
But the state of disrepair and crumbling was easily visible well before the collapse.
Not enough rebar.
Confirmed. We spent the Easter holidays last year around the Naples area after taking the car all the way from England to see my sister, who's stationed at the NATO base there. A road trip is much more satisfying than flying.
It was an interesting experience. Very noticeable that the driving gets progressively crazier the further south you go in Italy. Milan was OK, Rome bonkers and Naples frankly involved hanging on to the sterring wheel, hitting the accelerator and praying.
Going back for another dose in about 6 weeks. I must be mad.
Hey, ya gotta get a little extra for yourself, bada bing!
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