Here are some of the biggest engineering mistakes
in history!
8 - Avenida Treze de Maio, Brazil
On January 26, 2012, a 20-story building in
Rio de Janeiro spontaneously collapsed.
The gigantic high-rise crashed into another
ten-story building as well as a third smaller
building, reducing all three buildings to
one huge pile of rubble!
The impact sent an enormous wave of dust through
the streets of Cinelandia square
If the disaster had occurred just a few hours
earlier, it would have been much worse!
Fortunately, the district, home to many office
buildings and Brazil’s famous Municipal
Theater, was pretty desolate due to the late
hour of the collapse.
Authorities suggested that illegal construction
work had weakened the 20-story building and
caused it to fragment, which triggered a chain
reaction and brought down the two smaller
buildings.
This catastrophe led Brazilian authorities
to call for reforms for stricter building
and renovation regulations.
7 - Hotel New World, Singapore
On March 15, 1986, all six stories of Hotel
New World collapsed in less than 60 seconds!
The building housed a hotel, a bank and a
nightclub, all of which disintegrated into
piles of rock and twisted metal.
It was the worst disaster Singapore had experienced
since the 1940s, and it shocked the nation.
Singapore’s newly formed Civil Defense Force
launched rescue and recovery efforts immediately,
and continued for seven days.
Engineers and other experts from around the
world were called in to assist the delicate
rescue operation.
At first, they merely removed beams and other
remains from the top and sides of the ruins,
but not many bodies were recovered.
On the second day, assisted by foreign experts
who were in Singapore to build a mass transit
system, rescuers began to tunnel into the
rubble.
Sound-detection equipment was used to help
locate the 17 lucky survivors.
After intensive research, investigators discovered
a terrible error in the original design of
the building.
The structural engineer had completely left
out the building’s “dead load” during
the design process.
This is the weight of the building itself.
As a result, it wasn’t strong enough to
hold itself up!
Tragically, Hotel New World was doomed from
the beginning.
6.
Skyline Plaza, USA
On March 2, 1973, tragedy struck the Skyline
Plaza complex in Virginia.
One of the complex’s towering apartment
buildings collapsed, leaving a huge eerie
cloud of dust and debris where it once stood.
Luckily construction hadn’t even been completed
at the time of the disaster.
The building wasn’t due to open until August.
Although there actually wasn’t a flaw in
the design per se, the forms supporting the
concrete columns on the 22nd floor were prematurely
removed.
The cement hadn’t hardened completely yet
and couldn’t bear the weight of the 24th
floor!
The failure of these columns put an increased
amount of pressure on the rest of the columns
on the 23rd floor until the entire floor buckled
and slammed down onto the floor below.
The building hadn’t been engineered to withstand
such a huge increased load, and the tremendous
weight proved catastrophic.
Each floor gradually couldn’t take the load
and plummeted onto the floors below in a devastating
ripple effect!
Construction worker Michael Hill ran all the
way down the stairs from the 23rd floor when
he saw cracks appear in the ceiling.
He made it to the fourth floor when he decided
it was time to jump out of a window!
He broke both his arms but hey, he survived!
5 - Ronan Point, England
In East London on May 16, 1968, a single match
triggered the collapse of an entire corner
of a massive 22-story building.
Ivy Hodge, a 56-year-old cake decorator living
on the 18th floor, got up early to make herself
a cup of tea.
When Miss Hodge lit her stove, the spark from
the match triggered a devastating gas explosion.
The blast tore through the joints connecting
the walls to the floor and threw her to the
ground.
The load-bearing walls came apart, leaving
the four apartments above her without any
kind of structural support!
The four floors came down, tearing through
the floors below like falling dominoes until
an entire corner of the building lay in ruins.
The building was actually brand new.
The construction was completed just five days
prior to the collapse!
When Ronan Point came tumbling down, 260 people
were in the building.
Surprisingly, only four people didn’t make
it, and only 17 people were injured.
Although the building was rebuilt and the
joints strengthened, public confidence in
high-rise tower buildings dropped.
Many high-rise blocks, including Ronan Point,
were eventually pulled down to make room for
less intimidating low-rise housing.
4 - Highland Towers, Malaysia
At 1:35 pm, on December 11, 1993, a landslide
with the force of TWO hundred jumbo jets slammed
into the foundations of the Highland Towers
apartment complex in Malaysia.
The Highland Towers complex consisted of three
12-story residential buildings built at the
base of a steep hill just outside of Malaysia’s
capital city, Kuala Lumpur.
The retaining walls and drainage system had
been poorly designed, and maintenance was
pretty much non-existent.
The situation grew more dangerous when another
development company began construction on
a ridge just above Highland Towers.
The land was stripped and exposed to erosion,
and some of the drainage pipes were blocked
with branches.
Ten days of non-stop rain put an enormous
amount of pressure on the pipes.
At various points on the hill, the pipes burst,
and the water content of the soil rose to
dangerous levels.
Eventually, a landslip took down a large retaining
wall.
A colossal one hundred thousand square meters
of mud slid into Block One, carrying it forward
and eventually snapping the building!.
Three people were pulled out alive on the
first day, but 12 days of frantic searching
failed to unearth any more survivors.
After many years, urban legends grew that
the towers were haunted!
However, any hauntings that took place had
to stop around June of 2019, when the towers
were finally demolished by the city.
3 - Deepwater Horizon Explosion
The single largest oil spill disaster in history
was back on April 20, 2010.
The Deepwater Horizon Offshore Drilling Unit
suffered an explosion, causing a massive oil
leak into the ocean!
The unit, called a MODU, was owned and operated
by Transocean, and was drilling for BP in
the Macondo Prospect oil field about 40 miles
southeast off the Louisiana coast.
The Deepwater Horizon had frequent issues
with maintenance that were never taken too
seriously.
Internal BP documents showed that BP engineers
had concerns as early as 2009.
They were afraid that the metal casing that
BP wanted to use might collapse under high
pressure.
According to a number of rig workers, it was
understood that workers could get fired for
raising safety concerns that would delay drilling!
Preliminary findings from BP's internal investigation
indicated several serious warning signs in
the hours prior to the blowout.
Equipment readings indicated gas bubbling
into the well, which signaled trouble.
The heavy drilling mud in the pipes initially
held down the gas.
BP appeared to have chosen riskier procedures
to save time and money.
And executives often did this against the
advice of its own engineering staff or contractors!
If you ignore enough warnings, you’ll eventually
pay the price.
That’s exactly what happened to BP.
Loss of life, loss of profit, loss of reputation
is what happened to BP with the single biggest
environmental catastrophe in recent history!
2 - Sampoong Department Store, South Korea
On June 29, 1995, in the span of just 20 seconds,
the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South
Korea fell to the ground!
Criminal negligence, blatant disregard for
ethical engineering practices, and shoddy
construction led to the largest peacetime
disaster in South Korean history.
The problems can be traced almost exclusively
to the future chairman of the building, Lee
Joon.
Under his insistence, the building was changed
from being an office building to a department
store halfway through its construction.
To install the escalators, several key support
columns were to be eliminated.
Later, Joon had an extra floor added to the
building.
Despite serious warnings, Joon simply hired
his own company to do work other companies
refused to do.
Not only was the building not meant to support
an extra level, but this extra level was made
with a thick, extra heavy, heated floor!
Air conditioning units that were added to
the roof quadrupled the load the structure
was designed to sustain.
To make matters worse, the building was constructed
with substandard concrete and had only half
the 16 steel reinforcing bars it needed.
Also, the concrete columns were thinner than
necessary and were reduced even more when
fire shields were installed around the escalators.
In April 1995, extensive cracks were spotted,
yet nothing was done.
These fractures grew exponentially worse on
the day of the disaster, but because management
didn’t want to lose the day’s revenue,
they refused to evacuate the building!
Top executives, however, left as a precaution.
Seven minutes before the collapse, the building
began to pop and crack, and employees sounded
the alarm, but it was too late to avert disaster,
and a total of 1,500 people were trapped inside.
1 - Royal Plaza Hotel, Thailand
On August 13, 1993, at around 10:00 in the
morning, the once splendid six-story Royal
Plaza Hotel in Thailand came crashing down
in less than 10 seconds.
That’s around 1.6 seconds per floor!
Rescuers dug through the rubble with jackhammers
and crowbars, desperately searching for signs
of life.
Trapped survivors had been using their cell
phones to call for help.
A pregnant woman was pulled from the mangled
pile of steel and debris 2 days after the
collapse.
Police detained the owner of the Royal Plaza
Hotel, the architect, and an engineer over
allegations that three stories had been added
to the building in 1990 without proper architectural
review.
Also, a huge amount of water was being stored
on the roof of the hotel ahead of an expected
water shortage.
Here’s what’s next!
