15 Craziest Engineering Fails in the World

we aren't all perfect as much as we think or hope we are even engineers who are some of the smartest people in the world make some mistakes but when they do the consequences can sometimes be deadly from an explosion of molasses to a snapping bridge here are 15 craziest engineering fails in the world number 15 tacoma washington bridge the opening of a new bridge is always an exciting and monumental occasion but in the case of the tacoma washington bridge built in 1940 that wasn't entirely true after just four months this suspension cable bridge collapsed because of an air elastic flutter its failure has been studied ever since the tacoma washington bridge was the first bridge to have plate girders used as road bed support it was also the first cable suspension bridge and the third largest of that type at the time it had a 2 800 foot central span and both its sides measured 1 100 feet each it was an incredibly long bridge with two 26 foot cable anchorages and two 5-foot sidewalks though because of its length it was classed as a narrow bridge even back in 1940 construction costs were a whopping 6 million dollars after it was opened to the public it started to buckle and sway in the wind even in light winds the sway was noticeable when winds of 70 kilometers per hour hit the bridge the bridge started to rise fall and twist finally cracks formed and the entire bridge crashed into the river fortunately no one lost their life although the bridge's construction has been used in engineering studies so people can understand how oscillation works before we go on like this video smash the subscribe button and click the notification bell right now or this centipede will crawl on your face when you're sleeping [Music] now it's time for the star topic speaking of engineering fails we received this picture of a road and bridge located in india rather than create a bridge that went straight over the body of water engineers decided to make one that formed a giant loop kind of like a donut cars have to drive at slow speeds and while they get to admire the view on the way it seems to be a bit of a waste of money just to build a bridge what do you think would you rather drive around this bridge or just on a straight one comment down below with the hashtag star topic and let us know your opinion in relation to what we just showed on screen with that said let's keep things moving number 14 the boston molasses disaster in january 1919 everyone was going about their daily business when a molasses tank burst open in the north end of boston over 2 million gallons of thick sticky molasses poured out of the tank in waves like a sweet tsunami the molasses flooded the streets at speeds of almost 35 miles per hour crushing buildings and trapping horses in its wake in the aftermath it was revealed that 21 people had died and 150 more had been injured for decades after the smell of molasses lingered so what happened to cause this massive tsunami of molasses about a century later analyses showed that multiple failures led to this catastrophic event safety oversights and flawed steel are some of the most obvious still fluctuating air temperatures and even basic fluid dynamics played a role u.s industrial alcohol the tank's owners were found liable it was discovered that the 50-foot tall tank which measured 90 feet in diameter had walls too thin to support the weight of that tank being filled to the top with molasses who would have thought that basic math would cause the deaths of so many people number 13 ryugyoung hotel it's known as the hotel of doom but its actual name is the ryugyong hotel and it's a massive failed engineering project in pyongyang north korea the 105 story unfinished building has been under construction since 1987. even today it is still not finished the building was supposed to be constructed for the world festival of youth and students which was a society known for spreading communist propaganda to young people the 13th conference was supposed to be held in north korea in 1989 hosting around 20 000 participants as you can imagine building a structure that size is probably gonna take more than two years and it did they missed their deadline north korea also ran out of money for the 750 million dollar project which isn't surprising given it made up around 2 percent of its gdp work resumed again in 2008 and inspectors noted some instabilities the exterior was completed a year later but it missed its opening date of 2013. over 30 years later it still sits unfinished so how did it fail case studies show that you should focus on functionality over aesthetics and research a problem before solving it north korea also lost focus of their user base then money would have been better spent on bolstering their economy and feeding their citizens number 12 walt disney concert hall as beautiful as the walt disney concert hall designed by frank gehry was neighboring properties looked past its aesthetics they were more concerned about how its mammoth stainless steel walls were so shiny that they would produce blinding glare for anyone who looked at it the building which opened in 2003 at an initial construction cost of 274 million dollars was undeniably beautiful depending on the sun's angle its colors would change however even before it was finished both business owners and nearby residents said its reflection caused a significant temperature rise some residents even had to close their curtains all day to prevent their buildings from heating up exponentially in the end something had to happen the city government investigated and said that the concert hall would have to be sandblasted to remove some of its beautiful sheen around 370 square meters of walls had to be sandblasted and this would come at the cost of about 180 000 as a designer frank gehry is known for taking risks the guggenheim museum in northern spain he designed also had issues because it was clad in titanium three years later it was covered in dark stains number 11 the lotus riverside complex in shanghai so so so many things went wrong with the lotus riverside complex in shanghai that much is obvious when you come to learn that part of it collapsed almost entirely intact resulting in the death of a construction worker trapped inside when the 13-story building known as number seven of the lotus riverside compound in the shanghai minhong district collapsed rumors of shoddy construction and corruption came to light as it turns out subcontractors and construction workers had dug out an underground garage and placed the excavated soil next to the building site on a plot of land the weight of the pile and the hole under the building had weakened its foundations causing it to collapse in 2010 the collapse went through the court system and many people were held to account a shanghai court convicted six people with sentences ranging from three years to five years for causing a major criminal accident the head of the lotus riverside complex for the developer and the construction company chairman both received five year sentences a subcontractor in charge of digging received four years and an engineer and project manager received three years number 10 quebec bridge when the quebec bridge was built it was an engineering marvel it would become the largest structure of its kind and the longest bridge in the world but the best and cheapest plan was chosen to bring it to life and that probably wasn't the best idea for the 550 meter bridge because of a lack of leadership some problems started to appear as it was being built lower cords on an arm of the bridge were bent and then two more bent cords were found still construction continued then in 1907 everything came to a head a worker by the name of beau vice was driving rivets into a section of the bridge when he noticed one of his fresh rivets had snapped in too before he had a chance to report it the giant cantilever dropped below him and crashed into the river the entire bridge ended up in a pile of twisted metal out of 86 workers on the bridge 75 died the twisted steel crushed some some drowned in the water and others died from the sheer fall alone number nine charles de gaulle airport collapse the last place you want a structural failure to happen is at one of the busiest airports in france but that is exactly what happened part of terminal 2e at the charlo de ghoul airport collapsed in 2004 and killed several people as it turns out it was an engineering failure that was to blame when the terminal was built it was called beautiful and practical it was 450 meters long and consisted of an elliptical tube design with concrete rings french architect paul andreo used principles of his design of the english channel tunnel for the airport terminal the terminal had no internal roof supports but no one was entirely sure whether that was why it had collapsed the concrete on one side slit of the support fell to the ground on the other side killing four people and injuring three others after an official investigation it was found that two things were to blame firstly a process failure there was inadequate design checking which resulted in a poorly engineered structure structural engineering failures were also to blame such as weak outer struts not enough redundant supports poorly placed reinforcing steel weak concrete support beams and low resistance to temperature oopsie number eight hyatt regency hotel walkway collapse the hyatt regency hotel walkway collapse remains the deadliest non-deliberate structural failure in the whole of american history up until the world trade center collapsed it was also the deadliest structural collapse in 1981 two walkways in the hyatt regency kansas city hotel in missouri collapsed one directly on top of the other at the time a tea dance was being held in the lobby during the collapse 114 people died and 216 were injured even though lives were lost the disaster taught many lessons for people studying engineering an architectural engineer was brought in to investigate the collapse a design later found to be fatally flawed almost immediately he noticed that the original design of the walkways had been changed after years of investigations the final report cited that the walkways only had minimal capacity to resist their own weight the collapse was caused by changes in the design of the steel hanger rods the positioning and even quantity of the rods had changed entirely from the design the fourth floor beams had to support the fourth and second floor walkways but they only had enough strength for 30 percent of that weight number seven tropicana field even though tropicana field a covered stadium looks incredibly impressive from the outside it's clear to see that a few things weren't well thought through and it was being designed and built the stadium was constructed as the home venue for the tampa bay devil rays it has a massive ceiling with supports and lighting structures these hang low into the stadium this means that baseball players can't hit high balls to get home runs imagine a stadium impacting how you play your sport seems absurd the slanted roof was designed to reduce cooling costs and protect the stadium as much as possible from hurricanes by 2010 it was the only active major league baseball stadium with a fixed roof which means it can't be retracted on a few occasions it has been an obstruction for batted balls proposals in 2018 were put forward to replace tropicana field with yabor stadium in 2021 more proposals were put forward to eliminate the structure entirely or renew it with or without a stadium given how many millions of dollars go into creating a stadium they better make their minds up once and for all number 6 ss sultana disaster greed has caused heartache and disaster since the beginning of time so why would the ss sultana vessel be any different it wasn't in 1863 this vessel was one of the most modern of its kind it could carry 376 passengers and crew and was pretty luxurious when union prisoners of war were released in 1865 the government authorized steamships to transport passengers from mississippi's southern ports to the northern ones they would make five dollars for each soldier and ten dollars for each officer cass mason the sultana's captain was keen to make as much money as possible he loaded as many people onto the boat as he could including 2 100 prisoners and 200 civilians as well as cargo as he didn't want to miss out on this lucrative government contract he also opted for a quick patch of a boiler instead of a significant repair that would have cost him money after a few days of slow but steady progress the patched boiler exploded around 400 people died instantly either by the explosion or the steam the wooden vessel then caught fire people scurried to grab pieces of wood to use as flotation devices as they jumped off the boat at least 1 800 soldiers and civilians died and it remains the worst maritime disaster in american history by comparison the famous titanic sinking resulted in around 1 500 deaths number 5 deep water horizon when you make a horrific mistake you generally learn what caused it and try not to do it again but deepwater horizon is proof that not everyone learns from their mistakes the deepwater horizon was a rig that transocean and offshore drilling company owned it was leased by bp the oil company and was located in the macondo oil prospect in the mississippi canyon deepwater horizon was positioned over an oil well that sat on the seabed about 4993 feet below the ocean surface it extended about 18 000 feet into rock in april 2010 natural gas blasted through a concrete core halliburton a contractor had recently installed it to seal the well for use at a later date through release documents it was found that something remarkably similar had happened to a bp-owned rig in 2008 in the caspian sea what are the odds it was later discovered that those concrete cores were too weak to withstand the pressure that's because they had been made with a concrete mixture featuring nitrogen gas that they had used to accelerate the curing process number four sky lab nasa made an incredible error of judgment and it seems so unreal that you probably don't believe this is real they created a space station called sky lab an orbiting workshop they would use for scientific research this project was monumental in paving the way for even broader space exploration nasa was successful in orbiting skylab though they spent so much time and energy putting it into space they didn't really factor in the logistics around bringing it back they said it would cost too much sky lifespan was looking to be around nine years however in 1978 nasa engineers found that the station's orbit was decaying fast essentially it became a 77 ton danger that could come down at any minute congress and members of the public were furious nasa then had to figure out how to stop people from dying when skylab tumbled out of the sky they sent a space shuttle up there to extend its lifespan then in 1979 they fired rocket boosters up to send chunks of it down into the indian ocean although some parts missed and ended up littering parts of western australia fortunately no one was hurt number three indian power grid failure there's definitely been no shortage of studies into the influence of solar on electric equipment in 2012 india's northern power grid fell short of being able to supply electricity to the entire national capital region which included india's capital delhi the cause was thought to be sudden changes in the electric supply frequency this resulted in geomagnetically induced currents because of fluctuation and proton flux changes in the geomagnetic field did it at least kind of sound like i knew what i was talking about there this grid failure caused a blackout in eight states of north india around 370 million people were affected and the country experienced significant economic setbacks india isn't the only one to have suffered from grid failures either the quebec region of canada lost power in 1989 northeastern america in 2003 the whole of italy in the same year and london in 2003 as well and between the time this script was written and the time i'm recording it there are massive blackouts in texas surprisingly one of the most common factors in regional grid failures is sun earth weather changes solar storms can actually influence the ionosphere which disturbs the earth's magnetic field in india with the rise in the electric supply caused by the geomagnetically induced current the grid wasn't able to cope and subsequently failed number two the bo paul disaster in 1984 the city of bhopal in india's pradesh state was struck by one of the worst industrial accidents in history on december 3rd of that year 45 tons of gas methyl isocyanate which is an incredibly dangerous gas escaped from an insecticide plant this gas drifted over many heavily populated neighborhoods close to the plant and thousands of people immediately died tens of thousands more attempted to flee in a panic the final death toll set at between 15 000 to 20 000 people but the people who lived weren't left unaffected by the disaster about half a million people went on to suffer things like blindness eye irritation and respiratory issues many were awarded just a few hundred dollars in compensation so what caused this horrific disaster an understaffed plant and substandard operating and safety procedures the plant was owned by an indian subsidiary of the american firm union carbide corporation in 1998 the former factory site was turned over to the madhya pradesh state but even into the early 21st century around 400 tons of industrial waste still remained on the site number one titanic if you haven't heard of the titanic then you've clearly been living under an iceberg if you haven't seen the movies then you would at least have read about this terrible tragedy over 1 500 passengers lost their lives when the titanic struck an iceberg there was definitely more than one failure first of all there weren't enough lifeboats for every passenger to improve the ship's aesthetics one row of boats had been removed that's not to say everyone would have made it out alive but more people may have been able to escape the fast sinking ship there were also watertight compartments in the boat's hull but they weren't actually watertight they were not sealed and the walls did not connect to the ceiling as a result water flowed into every possible nook and cranny what's also quite interesting to note is that other ships in the area around the titanic had sent warnings out for about 60 hours regarding ice in the titanic's path the clear moonless night meant the crew would have had a hard time spotting them and they were still traveling at the maximum speed of 22 knots i'm not gonna lie i would hate to have been an engineer on one of these projects when something went wrong could you imagine how painful the sinking feeling in your stomach would be have you got any engineering fails in your town or city tell us about them also check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now see you next time

Channel: The Finest

Views: 635,156

Keywords: funny, you had only one job, fail compilation, engineering fail, construction fail, epic compilation, comedy, examples, unbelievable, expensive, engineering, mistakes, strange, weird, bizarre, incredible, facts, engineer, money, most expensive, most unbelievable, expensive engineering mistakes, unbelievable engineering mistakes, technology, how its built, how its made, worlds funniest engineering fails, model dam fail, funniest construction fails, Craziest Engineering Fails, Engineering Fails

Id: mT7pU2hPzpA

Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021