What you are watching, is the remains of the Morandi bridge being demolished in a spectacular
display.
You may notice the bridge appears to be dropped straight into numerous apartment complexes.
It seems odd that such a thing would be done, but there is an explanation.
The demolition is merely the conclusion to a longer story.
The Morandi Bridge was constructed in the city of Genoa, Italy in 1963.
Stretching just over a kilometre (1,182m - 3,878ft), the bridge stood 45 metres (148 ft) above
the Polcevera River, from which it gets its official name - the Polcevera Viaduct.
However, the bridge was more popularly known as the Morandi Bridge, named for its designer
- Riccardo Morandi.
At a time when steel was in short supply and very costly in Italy, Morandi made innovative
use of reinforced concrete for the majority of the bridge.
This is particularly noticeable in the bridge's diagonal stays.
You're probably more accustomed to seeing dozens of cable stays supporting a bridge
- but Morandi made use of a hybrid system - which saw four cables per tower, encased
in prestressed concrete.
The process of prestressing concrete aims to mitigate concrete's two weaknesses.
1 - concrete can withstand a lot of compression, but little tension.
It can much more easily stand up to forces pushing it together than pulling it apart.
2 - Concrete is brittle, it has very little give or elasticity, and will simply crack
rather than bend.
Prestressing involves tensioning the tendons, usually made of steel, inside the concrete
before it goes into service, resulting in a structure that has concrete's strength against
compression forces, and the tendon's strength against tension forces.
There is a fairly obvious drawback to constructing a bridge's stays in this way, however.
It makes future analysis of the integrity of the cables more difficult, because they're
encased in concrete.
This can become a problem for maintenance of the structure.
The responsibility of maintenance for Morandi bridge was given to the state-owned Autostrade
per l'Italia.
Over the next thirty years, Morandi bridge saw a massive increase in traffic load, with
Autostrade reporting that the traffic had quadrupled in three decades.
Naturally, the bridge suffered wear and tear - small cracks formed in the concrete, allowing
water to seep in and rust the cables.
Instead of replacing the corroded cables however, new ones were added beside them.
And this was just one of many problems that had to be addressed over the bridge's lifespan.
Autostrade highlighted that the volume of traffic on the bridge was causing "an intense
degradation of the bridge structure subjected to considerable stress", resulting in continuous
maintenance.
Autostrade said it would be more economical to just build a new bridge to replace the
Morandi bridge.
However, after the 2008 financial crisis, infrastructure investment in Italy was reduced
dramatically.
This takes us to the 14th of August 2018.
During a torrential rainstorm, 210 metres (690ft) of road centred on the westernmost
pillar collapsed.
There were over 30 vehicles on this section of road - some fell down into the swollen
river, some onto the train tracks and some onto warehouses.
Among the affected motorists was professional football player Davide Capello, whose car
fell 30 metres (100ft) before lodging between parts of the fallen bridge.
Miraculously, he walks away unharmed.
He is lucky - 43 people have been killed, and 16 injured.
The area is evacuated as rescue workers search the rubble for survivors - 600 are made homeless.
The exact cause of the bridge's failure was not determined, but given its long history
of problems, the blame was largely attributed to irresponsible maintenance and neglect.
Criminal charges, up to and including manslaughter, were brought against 59 people, many of them
employees of Autostrade per l'Italia.
These trials are still ongoing.
On the 28th of June 2019, the remains of Morandi bridge were demolished and removed, along
with multiple houses in the surrounding area.
Construction began on a replacement bridge, the Genoa-Saint George Bridge, which opened
in 2020.
It's shocking that such a terrible tragedy could happen in this day and age - this only
occured a few years ago.
It seems almost unthinkable that in any developed nation such a structure could just be allowed
to age and degrade to the point it collapses and kills its unsuspecting travellers.
Many of you watching this video may pass over a bridge of similar scale to this one on a
near daily basis.
But what assurances do you have that these motorists didn't?
What confidence in your safety do you have that they didn't?
The sobering truth is, they spent their last moments the same way you spend any other innocuous
moment, unaware and powerless to sudden doom.