5 Engineers That Should Have Been Fired

when it comes to construction engineers have huge jobs to play it is their experience and knowledge that will be the difference between a huge and majestic building and one that is structurally unsound or simply looks weird for as much as we talk about some of the largest and most beautiful buildings in the world there are some that have been absolute disasters whether in their design or their construction these are the situations where the building owners made the wrong choice in who they hired from having a rather strange shape to being structurally unsound here are five buildings whose engineers should have been fired suspension bridges are some of the coolest marvels in engineering these huge spans not only serve a huge purpose but are rather breathtaking if you need an example look no further than the golden gate bridge but in the 1930s in the state of washington a bridge known as the tacoma narrows bridge started being built and on july 1 1940 it opened for traffic it spanned the puget sound from tacoma to gig harbor stretching over 5900 feet across it was the third longest suspension bridge in the world at the time the design of the bridge was touted as the most flexible design ever engineers believed that the design even though it exceeded the standard ratios of length width and depth was absolutely safe and would withstand the elements however there was one thing that the engineers didn't factor in and that was the wind on november 7th a little over four months after the bridge had opened high winds started whipping through the gorge these powerful winds caused the entire bridge to buckle sway and bend looking at video footage it is estimated that at some points the bridge is tilted so much that one side of the bridge is 28 feet higher than the other at around 11 am a huge slab of concrete dropped from the road surface into the gorge below however this was only the beginning minutes later a 600 foot section of the bridge broke free it was one of the most violent collapses ever seen and one of the first such engineering disasters caught on camera subsequent investigations revealed that the bridge was especially vulnerable to vibrations generated by the wind it was a disaster waiting to happen and since the gorge was especially susceptible to high winds it was also preventable it's easy to talk about engineering flaws a wall is put in the wrong place a building was constructed on unstable ground supports rot away the number of contributing factors seem endless however there is another factor to take into consideration one that doesn't involve destruction but simply a really bad building design so get ready to laugh now it should go without saying that this isn't the funny part but ever since the 1940s the swastika has been seen as a symbol of hate all across the world thanks single-handedly to the use by the nazi party so you can imagine the surprise many had when they took to google earth and discovered that a naval base in san diego is shaped exactly like that while the idea was to build four l-shaped barracks in 90-degree formations it ended up looking like a nazi swastika conspiracy theorists claimed that this was an intentional act by the department of the navy however the navy disputed those claims and just pawned it off as an incredibly unfortunate design oversight however there is another building that could compete for worse design it's a church in the town of dixon illinois that looks like well i think you can figure that out for yourselves it was designed by a local architect who said that it was meant to be a design around a huge oak tree on the property allowing ample sunlight and room for growth however users on google earth wouldn't let it go and the church became the butt of many internet jokes eventually the church started having a little fun with it as well tweeting things such as fig leaf coming soon [Music] in the city of kansas city missouri was the kemper arena just west of downtown it was built to replace an 8 000 seat municipal auditorium and would be the site of many great sporting events from basketball to hockey it even hosted a sold out concert from elvis presley in 1977. in terms of its construction it was revolutionary in its simplicity and because there were no interior columns obstructing the view of spectators it cost the city over 22 million dollars and won multiple architectural awards in the 1970s however trouble was on the horizon on june 4th 1979 a major storm rolled through the area with winds that gusted to over 70 miles per hour it dumped inches upon inches of rain in a very short time at 6 45 pm the heavy rains caused a portion of the arena's roof to collapse luckily it was not in use at the time so no one was injured however over an acre of the roof fell in and caused millions of dollars in damage it came as a surprise to architects who had assessed this structure and given its stellar reviews when investigations were done there were two major factors that were found to contribute to the collapse first the roof had been designed to gradually release rain water in order to prevent the sewers from being overworked because of this water ended up pooling in places adding to the weight and second there was a miscalculation on the strength of the bolts on the hangers when subjected to strong winds when they gave way there was a cascading failure on the south side of the roof luckily it wasn't a total loss and the arena was reopened within the year [Music] in the 1960s new building designs were being implemented in cities across the world as population booms were causing a shortage of housing in many places london was one of these cities here tower block design buildings were preferred because they were cheap and affordable pre-fabricated housing one such building that was constructed was known as ronin point and was built by casting large concrete prefabricated sections at a place off-site then it was transported to the construction site and bolted together with the other larger section construction started in 1966 and was completed on march 11 1968 two months after construction was completed a resident named ivy hodge went into her kitchen in order to make a cup of tea as always she lit a match in order to light the gas stove however there was a malfunction in the gas line and the flame sparked an explosion that blew out the load-bearing flank walls these walls were supports for the four units above hers what was unknown at the time was that there was a weakness in the joints that connected the vertical walls to the floor slabs so when her walls fell away the four units above hers fell as well because each unit was the support for the ones above them the other units collapsed as well eventually the entire southeast corner of the building fell in on itself this design flaw was actually a combination of a variety of factors the structural design was incredibly flawed not being able to resist even the smallest of outside forces however it was still all built within local regulations so it also showed that the regulations themselves were two lakhs because of these failures four people were killed and another 17 were injured [Music] sometimes engineering fails aren't just in the realm of huge structures like buildings and bridges they can also be mechanical design flaws maybe this is due to a road being the wrong size or a subway tunnel that's dug in the wrong place they can come in all shapes and sizes one such mishap occurred in france and it had to do with their trains as one of the most popular means of public transportation trains see hundreds of thousands of people getting rides each day but they don't last forever and need to be updated when it came time to update the fleet france's national railway operator ordered about 2 000 new trains that were more advanced more environmentally friendly and could carry more passengers there was just one problem when the order was placed the train operator had failed to measure the proper dimensions this resulted in 2000 trains that were too large for many of the stations now when we say too large this mostly had to do with their width the older trains that were to be replaced were thinner therefore the station platforms were built accordingly so when the newer trains were ordered and the measurements not verified they ended up being too wide for many of the platforms the costly mistake resulted in tens of millions of dollars to modify over 1 300 platforms in the regional network it's such a shame because such a major error realistically could have been avoided within about 10 minutes by taking just one proper measurement luckily few of these blunders resulted in death or injury many of them were just unfortunate or comical but it illustrates the importance of planning and double checking every step otherwise you can end up with a penis-shaped church a collapsing bridge or a swastika-shaped building if you enjoyed this video and want to see more just like it be sure to click the link on screen now with that thank you all for watching and we'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Underworld

Views: 513,440

Keywords: Underworld, Underworld channel, Top 10, Top 5, Facts, viral, recent discoveries, mystery, scary, 2021, 15 funniest engineering fails, funny engineering fails, engineering fails, worst construction mistakes, construction mistakes, engineers who should be fired, architects who should be fired, engineering mistakes, most expensive mistake, most expensive mistakes, engineering fail, expensive mistakes, most expensive fails

Id: 9mucUSUu1Xk

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021