Seven Horrifying Cases of Collapsed Bridges

roadwarrior

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7: Yangmingtan Bridge
The 15.4 km-long Yangmingtan Bridge is located in the city of Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China. It is the country’s longest bridge on the northern side of the Yangtze River. Construction on the bridge began in 2009, and it was completed in only 18 months. As Harbin’s first suspension bridge its total building cost was estimated at around 300 million dollars. Even within the context of China’s fast growing infrastructure, the project was finished so quickly that it received praises from the state media

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6: The Seongsu Bridge
Construction on this bridge, which stretched over Seoul’s Han River, in South Korea, was completed in 1979. It measures 1160 meters. On the 21st of October, 1994, the bridge collapsed because of a suspension structure failure. One of the concrete slabs fell as its support steel trusses had not been welded properly. 32 lives were lost in the accident. 17 people were injured. Because of its overall weak structure, the Seongsu Bridge had to be rebuilt.

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5: The Sunshine Skyway Bridge
Although it has been rebuilt the original Sunshine Skyway Bridge, spanning Florida’s Tampa Bay, was first opened to traffic in 1954, on the 6th of September. On the 9th of May 1980, at approximately 7:33 am, the MV Summit Venture freighter collided with one of the bridge’s support columns. The incident took place during a massive thunderstorm and caused more than 1200 feet of the bridge to plummet into the Tampa Bay. A Greyhound bus, six cars and a truck fell into the water from a height of 150 feet.

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4: The Silver Bridge
The Silver Bridge was built in 1928 and its name was due to the color of its aluminum paint coating. It was an eyebar-chain suspension bridge that stretched over the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant, North Virginia to Gallipolis, Ohio. In 1967, on the 15th of December, the structure collapsed during rush-hour traffic which resulted in the deaths of 46 people. Two of them were never recovered. The bridge collapsed due to overloading and the failure of one single eyebar in the suspension chain. Investigations revealed that the defect which had compromised the eyebar’s structural integrity was only 0.1 inches deep, had been caused.


3: The Rafiganj Rail Disaster
The Rafiganj rail disaster which claimed the lives of at least 130 people was caused by a faulty colonial era bridge over North-Central India’s Dhave River. The Rajdhani Express, a train carrying more than one thousand people, derailed from the 300-foot-long bridge on the 10th of September, 2002, at approximately 10:40 pm. The accident took place near the town of Rafiganj and fifteen of the train’s eighteen cars fell from the tracks. Two of them went into the river below, sealing the fates of the passengers trapped inside. The powerful impact from the crash had also caused people from other carriages to be thrown into the river. The region’s poor roads hindered the efforts from rescuers and local military personnel.

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2: The Stirling Bridge
One of the earliest bridge collapses ever documented took place during the Battle of Stirling Bridge on September 11, 1297. The bridge was a narrow wooden structure over the River Forth, near Stirling Castle. It served as a significant strategic point during the First War of Scottish Independence. The Scottish forces lead by William Wallace and Andrew Moray confronted the combined English forces of Hugh de Cressingham and the 6th Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne. Even though the Scottish forces were outnumbered, they used the bridge as a tactical advantage. Moray and Wallace waited for a significant number of English troops.

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1: The Hyatt Regency Walkway

On the evening of Friday, July 17, 1981, approximately 1,600 people gathered in the atrium to participate in and watch a tea dance. At 7:05 p.m. local time (00:05 UTC; July 18) the second-level walkway held approximately 40 people with more on the third and an additional 16 to 20 on the fourth level who watched the activities of the crowd in the lobby below. The fourth-floor bridge was suspended directly over the second-floor bridge, with the third-floor walkway offset several meters from the others. Construction difficulties resulted in a subtle but flawed design change that doubled the load on the connection between the fourth-floor walkway support beams and the tie rods carrying the weight of both walkways. This new design was barely adequate to support the dead load weight of the structure itself, much less the added weight of the spectators. According to the National Geographic documentary programme Seconds From Disaster, many of the survivors reported hearing popping noises coming from above them shortly before the collapse. Only moments later, the fourth-floor walkway suddenly dropped several inches under the spectators, before falling completely onto the second-floor walkway. Both walkways later crashed to the lobby floor below, resulting in 111 deaths at the scene and 219 injuries. Three additional victims died after being transported to hospitals, bringing the total number of deaths to 114.

The rescue operation lasted fourteen hours and was performed by many emergency personnel, including crews from 34 fire trucks and EMS units and doctors from five local hospitals. Trapped survivors were buried beneath more than 60 tons of steel, concrete and glass, which neither the Hyatt's forklifts nor the fire department's most powerful jacks could move. Additional volunteers from surrounding areas responded to the fire department's requests for help, including construction companies and building-supply stores, bringing hydraulic jacks, acetylene torches, compressors, jackhammers, concrete saws and generators. Kansas City's natural disaster response team, known as "Operation Bulldozer", was also summoned to the scene with earthmoving equipment, but was quickly sent away to make room for cranes that would lift the sections of walkway off the trapped survivors. Dr. Joseph Waeckerle, former chief of Kansas City's emergency medical system, directed the rescue effort establishing a makeshift morgue in a ground floor exhibition area, using the hotel's driveway and front lawn as a triage area and helping to organize the wounded by greatest need for medical care. Those people who could walk were instructed to leave the hotel to simplify the rescue effort; those mortally injured were told they were going to die and given morphine. Often, rescuers had to dismember bodies to reach survivors among the wreckage. One victim's right leg was trapped under an I-beam and had to be amputated by a surgeon, a task which was completed with a chainsaw.

One challenge to the rescue operation was the hotel's sprinkler system, which had been severed by falling debris, flooding the lobby and putting trapped survivors at risk of drowning. As the pipes were connected to water tanks, not a public source, the flow could not be stopped. Mark Williams, the last person rescued alive from the rubble, spent more than nine and a half hours pinned underneath the lower skywalk with both of his legs pulled out of their sockets. Williams nearly drowned before Kansas City's fire chief realized that the hotel's front doors were trapping the water in the lobby. On his orders, a bulldozer was sent to break through the doors, which allowed the water to pour out of the lobby and thus eliminated the danger to those trapped. A fire hose was then placed over the broken pipe, redirecting the water outside the hotel. Additionally, the lobby was filled with concrete dust, and visibility was poor as the emergency workers had cut the power to prevent fires.

Twenty-nine people were rescued from the rubble

 
In 2007 we in Mpls Mn had a 35W bridge collapse over the Mississippi River killing 14 and injuring 145. It's a horriying thing to see the aftermath of these types of things.
 
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