I was looking for the site of the bridge on OpenStreetMap, but couldn't find it. It took me a while to realize that someone already took it off the map within an hour of it collapsing.<p>Impressive (and correct), if a little disconcerting:<p><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.42585/8.88840" rel="nofollow">https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.42585/8.88840</a><p>All the access roads have been disabled too.
Apparently in Ancient Rome, the ceremony of opening of the bridge consisted of placing the Engineers and Architects who built it to be under the bridge and marching an army Legion over the bridge. Today we have courts and laws to deal with this but every story like this is a reminder of responsibility put into Civil Engineers. But also it serves as a reminder that any Engineering discipline, including Software, has to have accountability and ethics standards.<p>edit: I'm not blaming anyone for this tragic accident. The cause will be found eventually. What I mean is it's important to remember how your work may impact lives, regardless of what that work is.
I used to work under this bridge. Everybody knew that the bridge was unsafe. However, the local government didn't want to close the bridge because it was critical for the community. Some activists didn't want to close it because they didn't want to build a replacement. So disasters happen, shit always happens. But this was not a disaster, something unknown, this is manslaughter from my point of view. I wish somebody pays for it, but this won't happen.
Probably the best image, showing the scale of the collapse:
<a href="https://gfx.nrk.no/gJothoXlgJysV_sS10u_RQaXLsIZsJIlLIQrfEX8EDmA" rel="nofollow">https://gfx.nrk.no/gJothoXlgJysV_sS10u_RQaXLsIZsJIlLIQrfEX8E...</a>
This tragedy shows the importance of inspection and cost of maintenance of infrastructure. In the U.S. there are approximately 600,000 highway bridges. It's estimated that a quarter of them are at their end-of-life mark (that avg being estimated by some at 70). Not counting over 1,700 bridges still in use built before the 19th century, the breakdown is something like this:<p><pre><code> Decade No. Built
1900 6,084
1910 5,893
1920 17,883
1930 42,009
1940 25,971
1950 64,085
1960 99,975
1970 82,129
1980 78,279
1990 81,410
2000 71,475
2010 38,038
</code></pre>
This is just bridges. There are also about 84,000 dams and in a decade or two a huge number of both of these will approach their end of life, just as a legion of civil engineers go into retirement.
From an article in Le Temps[1], the bridge had some conception issue; Concrete viscosity wasn't consider correctly. The cost of maintenance was very high and a replacement was considered but the project was opposed.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.letemps.ch/monde/catastrophe-genes-lecroulement-dun-pont-11-morts" rel="nofollow">https://www.letemps.ch/monde/catastrophe-genes-lecroulement-...</a>
Whenever there is a bridge failure (or similar, highly-visible civil engineering failure) I recommend to engineers of all stripes that they go read the works of Henry Petroski. In particular:<p>- <i>To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design (1985)</i> [1]<p>- <i>Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering (1994)</i> [2]<p>and<p>- <i>Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and The Spanning of America (1995)</i> [3]<p>He also wrote a salient op-ed after the 2007 bridge failure in Minneapolis: <i>Learning from bridge failure</i>. [4]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734163</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521466490" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521466490</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679760210" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679760210</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-petroski4aug04-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-petroski4aug04-story.html</a>
Article from 2016 talking about the people that designed and built the bridge: <a href="http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/ponte-morandi-a-genova-prestigiosa-opera-di-ingegneria-o-no-parla-ling-brencich/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ingegneri.info/news/infrastrutture-e-trasporti/po...</a> (in Italian, Google Translate may help with it).
Nothing at this scale but this summer in Finland there was a national park bridge fail. The merging of the local municipalities caused the bridge maintenance to be taken care of by the new municipality. In the merge the maintenance was simply forgotten for ten years.<p><a href="https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mondays_papers_tractor_taxi_hanging_bridge_fail_and_kindergarten_on_wheels/10284039" rel="nofollow">https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mondays_papers_tractor_ta...</a>
Part of the collapse - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0c4N91otMs&feature=youtu.be" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0c4N91otMs&feature=youtu.be</a>
Coincidentally, a book has just been published on the I-35W bridge collapse, written by one of the survivors. I wonder how many parallels there will be (less a tragedy of design and more a tragedy of maintenance reports gone unheeded for decades). <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077FHMNJX/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077FHMNJX/</a>
As Italian I feel very touched. Hope the body count won't go up. What a tragedy!
This is the live streaming from an Italian newspaper
<a href="https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/genova-crollato-il-ponte-morandi/312390/313026" rel="nofollow">https://video.repubblica.it/edizione/genova/genova-crollato-...</a>
From what I read on Italian forums, Italian engineers say that the materials that were used to build the bridge weren't the same chosen by the designers.<p>It will be a while before we learn the actual cause for the collapse, however.
There is a live stream from the bridge currently available on youtube:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjfUyvtr3w" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBjfUyvtr3w</a>
I don't know if this brigde collapse could be prevented but they could at least not build bridges above buildings. There probably was a better place for the bridge.