California Freeway Meltdown! - Massive Engineering Mistakes - Engineering Documentary

in California catastrophe strikes one of America's most vital intersections to witness that much steel collapse in a fiery mess it's scary in Australia a demolition disaster in the nation's capital canra any event involving explosive is inherently a dangerous thing tragedy in Illinois as a pioneering Stadium collapses the scene was uh chaotic the devastation was total and in Michigan a crucial shortcut cracks at the seams it was one of the worst segments of road that I've ever driven on in the United States with big builds even the smallest mistake can be a huge disaster from miscalculations to misunderstandings some with deadly consequences [Music] these catastrophes are every engineer's worst [Music] nightmare with big construction Engineers try to prepare for every possible outcome but sometimes the most unlikely fail can strike the hardest like this disaster in California a catastrophic collapse on a major freeway a tanker truck spewing Flames smoke throughout the Bay Area absolute disaster a raging Inferno devastates a supersized structure but watch a road that you've been over a million times just fold like a taco no words can describe it it was really shocking and a Race Against Time to get this vital road back up and running this interchange carries more than a quarter of a million Vehicles a day they needed to get this route open again and fast San Francisco the city by the bay sits at the tip of a 65 km long Peninsula surrounded by water for decades The Only Way North from the peninsula was by ferry but all the that changed in the 1930s when the city added not one but two iconic Bridges Bay is the California Department of Transportation chief of public information we're in the Bay Area we have always built the future two massive um and historic Bridges the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge here on the East Bay all of the roadways here sort of feed towards the Bay Bridge which is the gateway to San Francisco although the Golden Gate gets all the attention in reality the 7 km Long Bay Bridge is the area's Workhorse carrying well over a million Vehicles a week and the unsung hero is this winding Labyrinth of Roads the mathur maze connecting the Bay Bridge with three major freeways Peter hlob is a local journalist it's the most essential stretch of highway in the area you're going to use it to commute to work you're going to use it to go to Grandma's house I mean it's something that everybody knows and uses it's a rather complex and robust piece of engineering that takes three major arteries Interstate 80 Interstate 580 and Interstate 880 uh through the East Bay and distributes them onto the Bay Bridge so you can head into San Francisco originally completed in 1936 to coincide with the opening of the Bay Bridge over the years the maze has evolved to truly earn its name we're approaching the maze there's a fly over over me here I think this goes to San Francisco we've got one coming over here I think it goes to Oakland I'm not sure I've lived here almost all my life I still get lost on the MacArthur maze it is an absolute just bowl of spaghetti if you look at it from above it it's almost like looking at somebody's heart there are so many arteries coming in and out of this distribution center while the maze might look like a gigantic mess the engineering behind each intertwined section is very carefully designed for an area that's famous for earthquakes it was built extremely robustly and built to last it was also built with the thought that this is earthquake country and there would need to be some flexibility in it and that's why over the years the MacArthur m has done well in earthquakes the ma stood firm against huge Tremors that decimated the bay area but in 2007 it was struck by something entirely [Music] unexpected April 29th a tanker truck loaded with gasoline was heading into the MacArthur maze on route to a fuel station in Oakland it was the early hours of Sunday morning very little traffic very quiet on the roads just before 4:00 a.m. the tanker hit a guard rail and overturned spilling thousands of liters of gasoline thankfully the driver escaped before the truck exploded the unfolding disaster was caught on camera Cal Tran's Communications Chief bartay was at home when he heard the news I was in bed I was asleep it was uh 4:00 in the morning and um I was called by the baybridge project manager he said turn on the news he said it doesn't matter what channel just turn on the news just 20 minutes later as the fire and heat intensified the top span of the maze suddenly gave way to witness you know that much steel collapse in a fiery mess it's scary journalist Peter hlob knew a major catastrophe was unfolding we saw I mean just incredible Flames smoke throughout the Bay Area you can see it everywhere and we knew something huge had happened fire Crews fought for hours to control the blaze by morning the devastation was plain for everyone to see I I didn't think it was possible to melt a steel freeway like that and to watch something just watch a road that you've been over a million times just fold like a taco it uh no words can describe it it was really shocking it it looked like a war had happened incredibly despite the intensity of the Inferno no one was seriously injured in the disaster but with the bay area's most important intersection decimated drivers prepared for chaos when we saw what was going on in the East Bay we knew this meant shutdowns for a long time it was a huge huge thing on people's minds from the beginning we're literally under the maze uh the part that collapsed a major truck throw Fair you'll see trucks moving across here as we're talking there goes one this is the heart of traffic in the Bay Area if you lose the maze then you're going to have gridlock throughout this entire part of the state the big question was why had a structure that stood strong against some of California's most powerful earthquakes been destroyed by a truck fire evidence in the wage showed that the structure had endured unexpectedly high temperatures there was so much volume of fuel here that It produced temperatures that the steel never should have seen professor of engineering abulhassan aan Asel investigated the collapse when the temperature goes up reduces the strength of steel these are the bumps due to buling of Steel because it has lost strength this was a about half inch thick plate as the heat intensified the steel plate girders supporting the concrete roadway began to twist and bend not only altering the shape but crucially the strength of the steel steel is an amazing material we use it all over the place in bridges because it's so resilient however one of the things about steel is that you can mold it into different shapes but it takes an imense amount of heat to do that and you don't normally see that type of heat out on the [Applause] freeway it's estimated that the blaze reached 1,000° C around double the heat that the steel was designed to withstand 1,000° is around the same temperature as a volcano burning within all this concrete and steel but the intense heat wasn't the only problem investigation revealed the exact location of The Inferno made things far worse against the odds it was directly below one of the main connections supporting the roadway above see that truck going across the the truck probably began began its fall right about there on that curve and it landed right there against that support so it was literally the worst possible place for fuel to ignite because it was right underneath the steel steel it's good until about 500° C like 1,000° f but at that point it loses it strength rapidly so just one truck at one location two of them claps we have an overturn eared truck that is spewing out something as hot as molten lava right under the freeway that everyone here uses to get to work to get to Grandma's to get to soccer practice um absolute disaster with traffic gridlocked and the economic impact estimated at around $6 million a day officials knew they had to get this vital interchange back up and running fast this was quite easily the biggest traffic disruption we we had ever seen in the Bay Area thousands of vehicles go through this area at any given hour time was absolutely critical because time means money and delays in traffic affect everything officials estimated the maze would take at least 50 days to repair but what actually happened was nothing short of remarkable less than 48 hours after the collapse demolition crws removed the mangled section and within days construction was moving Full Speed Ahead girs are coming in stuff's going up incredibly quickly some steel came from Pennsylvania and it was fabricated in Arizona just to get the girders up here they've got two guys in a truck so that one guy could sleep and one guy could drive and all they're doing is stopping to go to the bathroom those people worked around the clock and there was a giant welcome message uh on the steel when it arrived here from Arizona to the people of o just 26 days after the collapse and crucially with increased levels of fire protection the repaired MacArthur ma reopened to [Music] traffic while modern fireproofing and thermal protection might help reduce the risk of collapse if you're facing a freak accident and the Flames as hot as a volcano there's not much more you can do for me it's not about the accident for me it's about how quickly this got done everybody coming together from places outside the Bay Area and just an absolute miraculous amount of time the maze is still doing its job it's still doing the thing it was designed for in the 1930s it's getting people to their destinations it's getting trucks where they need to go in East Bay and it's uh keeping America [Music] strong in engineering safety and planning must always go hand in hand hand get the design wrong and safety goes out the window like this catastrophe in Australia where a routine detonation turned to tragedy everybody was looking forward to it it was going to be something that we should tell our children about thousands watching as a hospital demolition ends in Devastation it wasn't what we were supposed to be seeing at all big chunks of metal flying into the lake and a blast that sent shock waves across the nation's capital when you're using explosives in front of a huge crowd you have to get things right CRA Australia sits on the banks of the malongo river surrounded by the Australian bush this Inland city was founded in 1913 to serve as the newly independent nation's capital journalist Emma McDonald is a canra native CRA is a very unique City because the government decided to uh launch an international competition to have cber designed the plan at the time was a a sort of futuristic city really geometric there's no very very tall buildings it's been kept at a low level some people love it some people LOE it I love it canura is one of the great planned cities of the 20th century every detail was meticulously sketched out from its state buildings to its boulevards and like every major city canbar needed a major hospital to support it built in the 1940s for five decades the Royal CRA Hospital served the city from the shores of Lake Burly Griffin but in the 1990s the Aging hospital was closed and and its lakefront buildings scheduled for demolition as journalist Verona Burgess explains the decision wasn't without controversy practically every family in CRA had a connection with it somebody had been born there somebody had died there somebody has had had their lives saved there so it was a very big emotional and political topic when the government wanted to knock it down in an effort to get the public on board the Govern Government invited Spectators to attend the event it was the hospital that I was born in and when it was demolished by government touted it as a family day out it was meant to be you know seeing a little bit of History come down it was meant to be a safe wonderful adventure for the family the plan was for the steel-framed buildings to be brought down with explosives in a controlled implosion the structure should collapse within its own footprint at least that's the [Applause] [Music] theory explosives engineer Dr Graham McKenzie explains the key to do it is take the columns out at the bottom of the building to start it moving down then each of the floors in turn the column supporting the top will be blown then the next floor columns will be blown so what's happening is the building's moving down if it's offet CER the building will go sideways you want it to go straight down in a controlled implosion the placement of the charges and the timing is key the concept is use the minimum amount of explosive to facilitate the best Progressive collapse if you use the minimum amount there's less likelihood of of fragmentation there's less likelihood of people being [Music] hurt Sunday July ju the 13th 1997 demolition day boats and huge crowds descended upon Lake Burley Griffin one of the largest crowds in cra's history more than a 100,000 people gathered to witness the final stages of the demolition a 200 met exclusion Zone was enforced journalists Verona Burgess and Andrew Campbell were among the crowd I was at the camra yacht club which directly looks across the lake and it was quite a festive occasion because the government had wanted to make it a community event I was based here just on the bridge there was a level of excitement and there was an air of anticipation in the crowd everybody was looking forward to it we'v been told it was going to be something that we should remember and tell our children about there were people literally only a few hundred meters away from the actual EXP explosion site shortly before 1:30 p.m. it was two sets of explosions basically first one was a very small one and then the second one much larger it was not anything like what we'd expected you expect to see the building kind of collapsing in on itself and just a big cloud but what happened instead was we started seeing bits spurting out the side of it for Verona it was clear something had gone very wrong these bits of concrete and metal of flying into the lake this isn't right this this can't be right this isn't what it was supposed to be instead of imploding the blast shot shrapnel over the lake as far as 800 M four times the distance of the exclusion Zone directly at the crowns and then this big piece CES up hurtling towards the yach club and I think that was when I realized this is actually a disaster while nine people were injured tragically one girl standing about 400 m away or twice as far as the exclusion Zone was struck by debris and died [Music] instantly it was terrible it was awful to think that this little girl had just lost a life for no reason we were there for the implosion and we didn't anticipate that it would turn into a tragic event I still can't talk about it without just feeling so sad it was just a hideous terrible terrible thing to happen everyone was in shock and it was just awful canra citizens were demanding answers we all wanted to know who was at fault and I think the most obvious was the local government who literally told us all to come down and see it and had hyped the event as being such a public spectacle there's little doubt that without a crowd there would have been no tragedy but for the official inquest one big question was why this routine demolition had turned to disaster the inquest found a number of failings from too much explosive to incorrect Cuts in steel columns the list goes on when all these things combined it explained why this demolition went disastrously wrong the key problem was uncontrolled debris I don't believe that the right explosives were used I don't think they were protected from producing fragmentation the safety distances for the public were totally inadequate there's a lot of Hope and prayer there was nothing else the coroner's inquest discovered that the original plan had been to use around 130 kg of explosives in reality almost 500 kg were used a seemingly huge miscalculation that's around 3 and a half times the amount of explosives require fired that's massive inspectors also discovered that there had been a last minute change to the blasting configuration on the day of the demolition there was still a working hospice not too far away with patients who were unable to leave so the explosives were placed so that the blast was in the other direction which was towards the crowd this change meant the exclusion Zone was now inadequate the possibility of of uh fragmentation for steel flying large distances is high the safy distance that apply to Steel structures or anything to do with steel is much much farther away an Army Major giving evidence to the inquiry said that for a blast like this the standard exclusion zone is around 1,000 M which is almost twice as far away as the main crowd was standing we were technically in the blast range as it turned out um parts of the hospital ended up at the National Library on the other side of the [Music] bridge following the disaster the inquest made a number of recommendations that it strongly suggested should be followed in the future one of the key proposals was that for all future demolitions fully independent explosive experts and and Structural Engineers should be consulted at every stage of the process a memorial Act is a permanent reminder of the tragic event that took place that day in the nation's capital an implosive demolition as a public spectacle is fraught with danger safety has to be Paramount that way tragedies like this can hopefully be avoided in the future in engineering every step from design through construction has to be Rock Solid one mistake can bring everything crashing down to earth like this disaster in Illinois a pioneering Stadium brought to its knees I noticed right away that the roof had pankake down engineering errors that shook a community you knew you had serious injuries and some of these people were our neighbors and friends the burning question what had gone so catastrophically [Music] [Applause] wrong Chicago Illinois lies at the heart of the third largest metropolitan area in America with around 10 million residents it's also home to one of the world's busiest airports Chicago O'Hare since the mid 70s O'Hare has handled more than half a million flights a year with tens of millions of passengers heading into Chicago all of those people coming and going created an economic boom along I90 which is now known as the golden corter for o hair's neighboring Community Rosemont the golden opportunity transformed the town Todd wessell is a local journalist you can't be any closer to O'Hare Airport than Rosemont there are sever several cities that actually AB but or touch Rosemont property but the uniqueness of Rosemont is that it has an expressway like road that goes in and out it is really the only entrance in and out of O'Hare Airport and thus the development of Rosemont Rosemont might be small but thanks to the golden Corridor it punches well above its weight Rosemont is probably one of the most unique towns in the in the entire country it's a town of 4,200 people but it is home to a 20,000 seat Stadium Convention Center uh Luxury theater and it's an entertainment uh destination for a lot of people in the midwest in the Chicago area In 1980 this small town gained a major new Landmark this vast multi-purpose Arena originally known as the rosem Mont Horizon the stadium has hosted everything from ice hockey to monster trucks as well as live music from major artist Like The Rolling Stones You2 even Madonna inside the 20,000 strong crowd had an uninterrupted view of the action thanks to the giant self-supporting roof constructing an arena this size is always a massive engineering challenge but building one directly under the flight path of Chicago oare gave Engineers a real headache noise as you can see many many thousands of planes travel very very close to the arena and they fly down the Kennedy Expressway and land right at the airport but jet engines and live music don't mix so Engineers came up with a clever solution instead of Steel or concrete they would use wood professor of engineering Dr Solomon cadira explains the reason why the Roseman Horizon roof was to be Wood versus steel which is common to use for roof wood is much better noise insulator compared to steel wood is full of tiny gaps or pores which help the Trap air molecules dampening sound from the outside world the fact that this arena is close to oare many planes going on top of it and you definitely want to deaden the noise inside the arena construction on the $19 million Stadium began in September 1978 the main structure of the Arena was relatively simple essentially four stories of concrete but the eper wooden roof was unique 16 wooden arches resting on 32 concrete buttresses would span almost 90 M across the stadium with hundreds of girders bolted between them creating a solid frame topped off with wooden planks and a 2 and 1/2 CM thick weatherproof canvas sheeting at the time this was the largest commercial roof of its kind east of the Mississippi it was an engineering Masterpiece during the summer of 1979 the gigantic wooden roof was taking shape when they were building the Horizon it was special uh to have it here it was something we were all very excited about having on August the 13th 18 workers were on the roof installing the final two arches just after 8:00 a.m. without warning the Innovative wooden frame collapsed journalist Todd wessell heard the news I've heard something bad had happened at the sight of the Rosemont Horizon I immediately got my car drove out here and I noticed right away that uh there was a disaster and the roof had pancake down a firefighter at the time Roy mccampbell raced to the scene it basically looked like a lumber yard cuz it was just a pile of lumber at that point the wood didn't look damaged it looked like it had just all fallen over you knew you had serious injuries and some of these people were our neighbors and friends rescue crews from surrounding communities helped scour the wreckage it was obvious that the devastation was total the scene was chaotic I remember seeing uh uh a fireman I've known for 40 years he was crawling on top of the roof looking for for survivors our goal was was to ascertain who needed care and if we could find people that were injured at that time there were other members of the teams working to find people that were buried Rescuers freed many of the trapped workers while 16 were injured in the collapse tragically five lost their lives the deaths of many people due to the collapse uh that was just awful you could always build a new stadium but you can't replace the people who passed away the authorities immediately launched an investigation the concrete structure was unscathed so something must have gone wrong with the wooden frame one of the reasons that was speculated on are the planes in and out of O'Hare International Airport planes when they uh come over buildings of course they produce larger amount of noise decibels very high uh if they are very low they also will affect the wind uh flow wind pattern jet wash can create waves of air pressure but Engineers didn't think that that alone could explain the collapse and dug deeper for problems within the structure [Music] itself closer inspection revealed the real issue lay in the method of construction which had left the roof unsteady the reason why the rosan Horizon roof failure occurred is because of U Global instability the entire structure globally was not connected in the design hundreds of smaller girders were supposed to be connected to the giant archers using angle irons each secured with three bolts but the investigation revealed that less than half the bolts were in place and hundreds of those had known nuts fitted the members were not connected rigidly to each other during construction they were apparently in the process of connecting them but also there were some bolts that's missing more than 53% of the bolts were not installed yet it turns out that was part of the plan they wanted to keep the roof as a flexible roof if you install all three bolts and make it stiff make it tight from the beginning then what happened when the entire roof wants to settle down then there is some resistance to that settling which creat some strange Force distribution so what they decided is let's just install one bolt connecting the arch to the gerder let the structure be flexible Engineers knew the roof would be unstable until fully secure so steel plates known as compensating plates were bolted where the girders met the Arches to keep things steady during the construction phase the compensating plate that was supposed to be installed on the top of the arch connecting all those members together it was either not properly installed or it was not installed at all although they were essential to stability barely one quarter of the plates were properly installed the entire roof structure was a house of cards just waiting to fall there was yet another problem one reason that contributed to the lateral instability is when they were building the roof they were stockpiling materials on the side of the structure so at certain location there were what we call concentrated load it is not a uniform load that load was the just stockpiling and from the calculation that done later that that stockpile of materials and Light Equipment and the weight of the workers exceeded the maximum that's allowed by more than 50% now all it needed was a nudge the wind was blowing on the side of the Arches that also contributed to the lateral instability of The Archers so all of those reasons combined uh contributed to the global instability of the roof that caused the collapse the national weather service at O'Hare reported Winds of less than 23 km an hour at the time it really didn't take much to bring the roof crashing down the collapse devastated the community however the city of Rosemont was determined to rebuild this time every single critical piece was fully in place anytime there is a collapse the construction industry the engineering industry learn from any collaps there's nothing better than learning from failures to avoid the failure in the future the Rosemont Horizon finally opened to the public in May 1980 once the stadium was built and ready to go we attended uh the very first show here George Burns and Kenny Rogers and we knew from the GetGo that this was going to be a real winner for our community more than four decades later the stadium still stands in honor of the workers who died on that tragic day in 1979 I never forget the sacrifice that was made I never forget the day because I think the people at sacrifice needed to be remembered the events needed to be remembered and there's part of History here when building big every component no matter how small is crucial get it wrong and catastrophe can be just around the corner like this failure in Michigan a nightmare on a major highway it was one of the worst segments of road that I've ever driven on in the United States a shortcut that drivers would rather avoid people were choosing to drive for an extra hour just to stay off this road a freeway that failed to stand the test of time just deteriorated very quickly and obviously much too quickly [Music] Grand Rapids Michigan was founded in 1826 and thrived thanks to the powerful Grand River that flows through it Jim harer is a local journalist we are right in the heart of downtown and the Grand River is behind me the Grand River is the largest and longest river in Michigan and it runs through Grand Rapids the river behind the Rapids drove this City's success 150 years ago this River served as a primary Transit arm for the logging industry you didn't have trucks you didn't have trains you had the river and the logs would float down the river until they got here as the city grew the ground was damned to provide Power for industry while the existing River traffic moved over to rail road we've created these rivers of concrete and uh they become vital to our economy you need good roads back in the 70s the state identified one route south of the city that would be essential for future growth the Paul B Henry freeway known as the m6 the m6 is a 20m freeway that was built um in the early 2000s this Expressway is is considered a significant shortcut for the um people traveling from Chicago to Lancing um and anywhere in outstate Michigan the m6 was designed to deliver a smooth ride for decades to come thanks to an age-old material concrete Dr Angie aono is a civil engineer concrete sounds very simple and yet it is very complicated you have to be very careful about the exact ingredients so this is the stone as you can see it's very Co and then this is the sland it's really fine with a size less than 5 mm once those materials are mixed with cement and water there's only one ingredient left to add we think of concrete as a hard densely packed material and it kind of is but for road building especially where Winters are hard there's an unexpected ingredient air a special resin is added last to create these all important air bubbles as temperatures change with the seasons these tiny pockets of air allow the concrete to expand and contract without cracking getting the bubbles right is vital the $700 million dollar M6 took three decades from planning to construction finally in 20 04 to the relief of Road users this shortcut opened to traffic usually when you lay concrete on a road as a pavement you expect it to last 50 years before having to carry major maintenance work as local engineer Jade vaner Camp knows getting roads like this right is vital for a nation reliant on its automobiles in the United States we drive everywhere this is how we get from point A to point B and having the infrastructure to do that is incredible L [Applause] important but after only 7 years it became clear that the m6 had a serious problem it just deteriorated very quickly and obviously much too quickly it just began uh developing these giant potholes and not just the size but the uh the the number of them it was just a poth hold filled Road by 2017 a 6 and A2 km stretch had become a daily nightmare for 50,000 commuters Jade was part of the team tasked with assessing the problem the worst part of that road was like driving over inverted speed bumps essentially so if you think of when you drive over a speed bump going down the road you typically slow down a lot except now you're doing them at 50 m an hour or 70 M an hour and it really was quite violent the whole vehicle would shake it was one of the worst segments of road that I've ever driven on in the United States analysis of vibration levels reveals the road wasn't just bumpy but a risk to Vehicles it was surprising but we found that in the Four Mile segment which we're on right now that segment especially would do 10 times the normal amount of damage for or what you would expect in a highway setting the road where people are that's their daily commute that is that violent is going to do significant amounts of damage to your vehicle the road was clearly falling to pieces the question was why the Region's weather immediately came under the spotlight in West Michigan here it's lovely in the spring right now it's beautiful in the fall it's it's gorgeous in the summer however our Winters are brutal those harsh Winters take a heavy toll on the roads the temperatures will rise above freezing during the day the sun will uh melt the snow and and will have wet roads and they'll be moist and in the evening when it gets colder and below freezing it turns to ice with time most roads develop cracks and when it rains or snows water gets in now that's no problem in the warmer months but in the winter when the water freezes it causes the cracks to grow and then this cycle is going to repeat again because then the next time that you have a freeze because you have the micro cracks you have more water sipping in again it's going to freeze expand and then you're going to keep propagating the microcracks but the cold weather alone didn't explain the speed of the failure a closer inspection revealed a hidden floor the very thing that should have ensured the Integrity of the concrete the air bubbles analyzing the concrete experts believe the bubbles although already tiny might have been too small the result of using new untested resin to create them the State's Department of Transportation also suggested that the journey from the concrete mixing location to the construction site could have played a part ironically transporting the concrete on rough Rose before it was poured might have shaken some of the air out of the bubbles with the bubbles too small to do their job properly harsh salts and the freeze Thor cycle rapidly accelerated the damage causing the m6 to crumble in 2017 a $9.5 million project was announced to replace the failing concrete on the worst affected Parts with new asphalt when we found out it was called going to be replaced I think the initial reaction was finally after a 6-month closure the m6 reopened to the relief of local drivers my personal experience was it was great to be able to use all the lanes again it was so much smoother than it had been and I didn't avoid it anymore it was nice I mean it's went from probably the worst road that I've ever driven on to one of the nicest roads that you've driven on am

Channel: Banijay Science

Views: 220,620

Keywords: Australian Demolition Fail, California Freeway Collapse, Illinois Stadium Collapse, Structural, buildings, construction fails, documentary, engineering, engineering challenges, engineering disasters, engineering documentary, engineering errors, engineering fails, engineering lessons learned, engineering mistakes, failed constructions, fails, massive engineering failures, mechanical engineering, saving buildings

Id: TXfT6gJDzTw

Length: 44min 37sec (2677 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024