All language subtitles for Abandoned.Engineering.S07E03.Disaster.At.The.Maya.Hotel.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-squalor_track3_[eng]

Narrator: A Kentucky ghost
town caught in the crossfire.

In some cases people were
literally killed in these fights.

There was always conflict.

In Japan, a once opulent
retreat reclaimed by nature.

The decoration
here is fantastic,

this place must have
been absolutely amazing.

A mountain top ruin in
Italy with a harmful legacy.

What they left behind
wasn't just documents,

machinery and equipment, it
was an ecological nightmare.

And in Scotland, fragments
of a bridge foundation,

all that remains of
a terrifying disaster.

This just shook up
the whole of the UK.

Decaying relics...

..Ruins of lost worlds...

..Sights haunted by the past...

..Their secrets
waiting to be revealed.

The remote backwards of
Harlem county, Kentucky,

hide the remnants of
a grand looking town.

This was a confident
town, a proud town,

there's buildings here
made of beautiful stone,

these are buildings made
nicer than they needed to be.

People wanted to get here,

there was something
there that was drawing them.

Scattered ruins point
to an industrial purpose.

One of the more
impressive derelict sites

is this big house
with a huge chimney.

It's hard to know
what it is exactly.

Just looming over these
abandoned railroad tracks.

The operation is even more
extensive below the surface.

You can see these
tunnel entrances,

they look like New York's
Lincoln tunnel or Harlem tunnel.

Among these relics
lie signs of catastrophe.

So what spelt the end for
this once imposing town?

This deserted settlement of a
1,000 homes is lynch Kentucky.

It dates back to the
early 20th century.

With it's wide streets and
fine municipal buildings,

lynch was once one of the
richest towns in the state.

Michael o'bradovich worked here.

This town was so
big and so impressive

that people were coming from
Chicago and New York, it was impressive.

Constructed in 1917, this was
the town's department store.

We who live here
call this, the big store.

All of this here in the front

was women's apparel
or men's apparel,

over on this side
there was a diner,

in my time, soda shop.

On the far end over there was
sporting goods and home goods.

Within eight years a large
town had been built around it,

powered by an enormous
state of the art generating station.

Its owners spared no expense
building this grand place

in the middle of nowhere.

Us steel bought up
hundreds of acres

under black mountain
in this part of Kentucky.

In 1917,

the demand for steel
was skyrocketing,

you had all the armaments
that were being used in the war,

everything was made of steel,

ships were being built, you
know, rail carts were being built.

Even though there's
no iron ore nearby,

us steel invested millions of dollars
in to these Kentucky back woods.

The real thing that made lynch
was actually underneath the town

and that was black gold, coal.

Lynch was created for one reason

and that was to
provide a reliable

and massive supply of coal

to the country's leading
steel producer us steel.

This part of the
appalachian mountains

is very, very rich in
carboniferous coal,

this is a famous coal
deposit that stretches

all along North America

and it's been mined
for many, many years.

The thing that makes
the coal at lynch so special

is it's low in sulphur so it's
very good for making steel.

These turned out to be some
of the wealthiest coal mines

in the country.

As the son of a
miner, Nick sturgill

knows the hazards that
lie below ground here.

This is portal 31.

Once part of the largest
coal complex in the world.

Portal 31 even by today's
standards is enormous.

The north heading of portal 31

goes approximately 13 miles,

the east heading actually goes
in to Virginia just a little way.

Back in the 1930s,

extraction continued to
pace despite the risks.

No matter how
well a mine is run,

it's still very dangerous
and difficult work.

The coal company also
wanted to showcase,

to show off their high standards,
they also stressed safety a lot.

They even named this place
after the father of mine safety,

Thomas lynch.

They wanted to
counteract this image

that mining was this
terrible dangerous occupation

where people were exploited.

It worked.

Lynch attracted workers
from all over the world.

With a German mother
and Montenegrin father,

former mine manager Michael
o'bradovich's own family

is typical of those
who flocked here.

In it's heyday, lynch had
around 10,000 people...

..With all those
different nationalities,

most of the families here
had five, six, seven, eight kids.

The schools, churches and hotels
of lynch accommodated them well

but the relentless objective
here was to dig coal.

They engineered the town to move
the coal as efficiently as possible.

They built a structure
called the tipple.

This is like a giant
bin that holds coal

and then loads
it onto rail cars.

They built the biggest
tipple in the world.

This tipple could handle
15,000 tonnes of coal a day.

Lynch was actually world
famous, it held the record

when miners produced
nearly 13,000 tonnes of coal

in one single nine hour shift

and that's pretty
impressive statistics.

But the miners were dissatisfied
with the low wages and the risks.

Coal dust is so
fine and so volatile,

that it can combust
with any little spark,

it can catch on fire,
cause an explosion.

And at one point, in the
history of this building,

they actually stopped using it

because there was so
much dust being created

and some spontaneous
combustion with that dust

that created some issues.

Working inside the mine
was even more dangerous.

The leading cause of
death here at portal 31

was by rough falls

and believe it or not, a
lot of coal car accidents...

..Of men being run over

or pinned against
the rib by a coal cart.

The air will kill you, miners
could contract black lung.

There's a lot of different ways

that a man or woman
can perish in a mine.

The owners of lynch

refused to compromise the
efficiency of their production.

No amount of grandiose town
planning could make up for the dangers

and low wages of mining.

The miners were
gearing up for a fight.

There was always conflict
between miners and owners

and the owners often
responded to that conflict

with overwhelming force.

Skirmishes broke out
across Harlan county.

This is where battles
between the coal companies

and the miners came to a head.

We had these clashes between
miners fighting for more rights

and owners trying to keep up
production and keep wages low.

In lynch rumour has it that
the violence didn't end there.

One eye witness
told Nick sturgill

what she believes she
saw back in the 1930s.

She would be sitting
out on the porch

and company officials would
walk or ride up black mountain

with known union members
or union sympathisers,

what have you,

and after a few minutes
she would hear gunshots

and a few minutes later
the company officials

would come down the mountain
and they would come alone.

No one knows for sure what
happened in those troubled times

but the mine owners
eventually quashed the discord.

And the enormous
underground complex at lynch

continued to produce
coal for many more years.

Total mileage of
tunnels in this mine,

if I had to guess,

would be upwards
or exceed 1,000 miles.

During the height of
us steel's operations

here at portal 31
on any given day,

you would have approximately
1,500 men on one shift.

But this boom time
couldn't last forever.

The last piece of coal left
the colossal portal 31 in 1963.

And the other mines in lynch
closed during the following decades.

Us steel pulled out of here

simply because they
pretty much mined out

what they could mine
easily and economically

but also because, you know,
this coal was needed for steel.

Well, you know, in
the last few decades

steel is really not in
demand like it used to be

during world wars or during
the industrial revolution

or the building of skyscrapers
or anything like that,

so this grade of coal
is just not sought after

as it once was.

By the late '80s,

the economics were changing
and the mines eventually shut down.

In those 46.5 years,

us steel they mined approximately
120 million tonnes of coal here.

Today, this ghost town echoes

with the memories of
the industrious residents

who mined this land.

A lot of people tend to forget
the blood sweat and tears,

the struggle that these men
put up with every single day

to bring this rock
out of the ground.

In the city of cobi in Japan,

buildings stand
tightly packed together

but one empty structure
looms above the rest.

Right at the edge of the city,
suddenly the buildings stop

and this hill just climbs
up away from you.

It's heavily wooded with
very, very dense foliage

and so it's really extraordinary

to find in the middle of it,
this striking decrepit building.

It's like something
out of a Sci-Fi movie,

where its half man made and
half just taken over by nature.

The only way to reach it

is to step on board
the old funicular railway.

Translator: "Above here there's a
structure that's about 90 years old.

"The building sits on top
of a very high precipice.

"With an incredible view
over the whole of cobi city."

The unrivalled
position the site holds

was matched only by
its elaborate interiors.

The decoration
here is fantastic,

it's so many brilliant details

and you can tell in it's time
this place must have been

absolutely amazing but
now it is falling to pieces.

Translator: "The
building has suffered

"with all sorts of
events over the years."

It really looks like it's
been through wars or hell,

but the question is,
what ended this place?

From the top of the
railway on Mayan mountain,

a solitary path leads towards
the old abandoned structure.

Utsumi kenichi works
for the heritage group

now in charge of the building.

Translator: "Originally, Mayan
mountain was a religious site.

"Then a large temple called
tennoji temple was built here

"and it needed a funicular
to bring all the materials up.

"After that many
visitors used the funicular

"to come up to worship,

"so this structure was built to
welcome them when they arrived."

The original art deco features
point to the early ambition

of this place which
opened in 1929.

Translator: "In Japan at that
time, art deco was seen as futuristic,

"it was the latest cultural
import from the west

"and this building reflects
that fashionable trend."

There's a lot of
enthusiasm about the future

and a lot of the
design aesthetic

really reflects that
machine age perspective.

You see it in New
York, in Paris, in London

with these beautiful lines

trying to imitate
the same clean lines

of a locomotive or an aeroplane.

That style, you
see it all over Japan

and that enthusiasm is
expressed in this building as well.

Translator: "Over
there around the stage,

"it's designed with
curves, that's the style.

"If I had been
alive at the time,

"I would have loved to
have seen it in all it's glory."

This vision of modernity
was the Maya club.

Boasting public baths, a
restaurant and a theatre.

This was a destination
in its own right.

Translator: "This is
the screening room,

"it used to be a cinema where
they showed films every day.

"Chandeliers hung
from the ceiling.

"And there was a
red carpet on the floor,

"this was a place where people
in Kobe came to enjoy themselves.

"Those people who visited
weren't rich or anything,

"this place was for everyone."

It was built on the promise
of a prosperous future

but the rumble of war which
could be heard in the distance

began to threaten
the hilltop haven.

Those rooms that
had been packed,

the grand dining hall,

the entertainment room,
once filled with people,

slowly began to
quieten and empty out.

During the early decades
of the 20th century,

Japan had been pursuing a
policy of imperial expansion.

They entered world war ii

after attacking the
us in December 1941,

Japan's mainland cities

were in direct line of fire

when the us fought back

most infamously in 1945.

The skies above Kobe
were filled with us bombers.

Tonnes of explosives
were dropped on the city.

So in the last few
months of the war,

the city is devastated.

Almost 9,000 people

and three square miles
of Kobe were obliterated.

The destruction went right
to the foot of Mayan mountain.

The club itself escaped
the worst of the carnage

and amid the devastating
aftermath of war,

it would soon prove invaluable.

Translator: "So this
was the guest room floor

"for the original facility.

"After the war, soldiers who
came back from overseas

"and those people who
lost their homes in Kobe

"began living here
in these rooms."

So the site is turned
into a kind of barracks

and they can use this as a base

from which they search
for their lost family members

amidst the devastation
of what used to be Kobe.

Their task, their terrible task

was to try to find in all
of the rubble their families

and their lives and to try
and put those back together.

After somehow, making it through
to the other side of the war years,

for this building there was
hope for a brighter future.

Yes, it was damaged and derelict

but actually throwing
a little bit of money at it,

it could be bought
back to it's glory days

but with a slight
twist as a hotel.

The whole site's been
restored to it's former glory,

it's vibrant, it's luxurious

and people can once again enjoy
these magnificent views of the city.

But as the damaged writ
large across the building

shows this story had
no fairy-tale ending.

Just when it looked as
it's future was assured,

disaster struck again.

The year was 1967, the
storm was typhoon Billy.

A typhoon hits
Kobe, killing hundreds

and causing
catastrophic mudslides,

those mudslides damage
the building beyond repair,

it probably could
have been fixed

but the new owners, the
cost was just too much,

so it's abandoned again.

It had a second life
but it was painfully brief.

Translator: "Those mud
slides came inside here,

"it was such a mess that they
couldn't run it as a hotel anymore."

While the site has seen

a few other short lived
uses through the years,

it would never fully recover

from this devastating
natural catastrophe.

Now, being watched over by

the Mayan mountain
revitalisation association,

the building is about
to enter a new phase.

Translator: "I was born
and bred in this city.

"And this building
has always been here,

"I believe tangible things
will eventually return to nature.

"So I want to protect them."

In a blustery, Scottish estuary,

a world famous structure
spans the deep waters.

The first thing you notice

is this big red
giant of engineering.

This is a very dangerous
place to build a bridge.

It towers over a craggy outcrop.

In the middle of this
enormous estuarial river,

you find this tiny rocky island.

There's all sorts of things
tucked away around the edges,

there's quite a lot going on.

An insignificant structure
at the base of the bridge

could hold a clue to this
small island's importance.

And its link to a fatal
disaster that rocked a nation.

This waterway is
known as the firth of forth.

The size and
depth of this estuary

made it Scotland's most
important trade artery for centuries.

Sitting below the forth bridge,

is the abandoned
island of inchgarvie.

Historian, Ron Morris,

has been studying
the site for decades.

We are approaching inchgarvie
and it's about 500 yards long

and just maybe 30 yards
wide at it's widest point.

It looks a very small island

but has a wealth of
history attached to it.

Inchgarvie translates
as rough island

and this place really
lives up to the name.

The currents are terrible,
the waves crash into it,

it's cold, terrifying
and claustrophobic.

Evidence suggests inchgarvie had
been inhabited since the late 1400s.

That's, you know,
the early mortar

from 500 years ago

and it's still
holding good today.

People have been building here,

clearly with an eye to
defending this bare rocky island.

In the days when the only way
to cross this estuary was by boat,

inchgarvie was an
important staging post.

In 1491, king James of Scotland

granted a local laird the
right to build a fort here.

So a castle here
fortified with Cannon

could offer a safe Anchorage
upriver for mercantile traffic.

But inchgarvie's ruins,

show that someone has defended
the estuary much more recently.

Newer fortifications
date back to world war I.

The first thing you notice
is a gun emplacement

which is obviously 20th century
and the gun battery faces east

which would be
towards the north sea,

towards the entryway
to this estuarial river.

Now see, this is the easternmost

four inch gun position.

There should be a
ring of bolts in here

but really covered
with the vegetation

which was the holdfast

for the actual four
inch quick firing gun.

This was the
original living quarters

for the original Garrison,

which was a very
small number of men.

There was only
about six or seven men

actually stationed on the
island to look after the battery.

Yet the disaster
linked to this place

came not through
war but in peacetime.

40 years earlier,

the advancing age of invention,

meant that Scotland's firth
of forth had to be conquered.

The UK was exploding in
trade and transportation.

The railway boom
had kicked off, big style

and goods and people
were moving all over the UK.

But the firth of forth is
huge deep water channel,

was an unsurmountable
obstruction.

To get from one side to the
other, would be a 40 mile detour

or a tricky trip on the ferry.

So they commissioned a
bridge but there was a problem.

The depth of the estuary
made it very difficult to build.

The estuary's about
a mile wide here.

It's where the
estuary really narrows

that we have about 30
fathoms of water depth

on either side of inchgarvie.

In the 19th century,

inchgarvie was bought by the
forth bridge railway company

to provide a
foundation for a bridge.

What you see on the
surface is just a tenth of it

but the geology underneath the
water means that rocks extend out.

Over millennia, glacial ice
scoured away soft layers of rock,

leaving behind hard rocky
outcrops like inchgarvie.

And that provided
a solid foundation

in order to get the cantilever
for the centre of the firth bridge.

There was a natural column,

a stone foundation right there
in the middle of the firth of forth,

inchgarvie, it was like
a gift from the gods.

But an abandoned pier
points to a complication.

To be quite honest,

people are so taken
up with the wonder

of the forth bridge itself that
they tend to overlook this.

If you look at the
bottom of the bridge,

there's like a stump
as if an extra caisson

had been built
and then discarded.

A caisson, is the first
step in building a bridge,

this watertight structure
allows the foundations to be laid.

The geology of the region here

makes it very hard to
successfully build a bridge.

You've got to build caissons,

float them to
just the right spot

and then sink them
deeply on to the sea floor

in order to build the
footings for the bridge.

Here on the island,

we can see that somebody
has started to put caissons down.

The explanation for
the abandoned caisson

lies 30 miles north.

On another windy
Scottish estuary, the tay.

Here the celebrated
engineer Thomas bouch

had built the tay bridge.

Sir Thomas bouch,
he designs caissons,

the ability to sink a
ring into a water body

and then put concrete inside it,

so you can build
up these supports.

His next commission was
to design another bridge

to span the firth of forth.

This brick pier
was the first pier

that was constructed
to hold the first design

of the rail bridge.

And there was to be
eight of these piers

in which the centre of the
bridge would be supported,

there would be two great spans.

Bouch's new design was
hailed as the wonder of the age.

Until the howling
winds of Scotland

sent dozens of helpless
souls in to the waters.

One night, the wind
got up really quite strong,

so a big, big load from
sort of horizontal direction

pushing against the tay bridge

that sir Thomas bouch
hadn't accounted for.

The central section of
the tay bridge collapsed.

The train continued to carry on

and plunged back into the water.

More than 70 people died
in the tay estuary that night.

This was bad news
for the forth bridge.

The future of that new rail
bridge was now in doubt.

Could they continue
building the bridge

using the design of this
now disgraced architect

or should they
abandon the project?

Well, they decided to scrap it.

All you can see now
and what's left behind

is one pillar sticking
up out of the sea.

Thomas bouch was devastated,

his reputation was ruined

and he never recovered
and he died a disgrace.

A few years later, a new
bridge was commissioned

and it still stands to this day.

The forth bridge is now one
of three to span the estuary.

If any structure was described
as the eighth wonder of the world.

And if it wasn't for the
presence of inchgarvie,

we could never have
had the forth bridge built.

In the north of the
mediterranean island

of sardinia

is the imperious granite
massive of monte limbara.

You ascend up this
winding steep mountain road

until you reach the peak

and then in a clearing,

these six massive structure
appear out of nowhere.

All of a sudden, you
see this compound

of massive antennas
pointing off in all directions.

Some very large and ambitious
communications centre was built here

but what was it for?

At almost 4,500
feet above sea level,

this mountain creates
its own micro climate.

This place is at high altitude.

The weather can
turn on a knife edge,

one minute it's
brilliant sunshine

and the next, you're
enveloped by cloud.

They must have had
an excellent reason

to want to build this kind of
very ambitious high tech facility

in exactly this spot.

Inside you have row upon
row of electronics equipment,

massive generators,
living quarters

and of course, these
six huge dishes.

Whoever built this

had access to some
serious resources.

Kept top secret for decades,

speculation over the type of
operations that took place here

has always been rife.

And rumours still abound.

The locals have no details,

so the locals make
up their own stories

to explain this mysterious
hulking presence

on top of the mountain.

Marcello moretto remembers well
what this site looked like years ago.

Translator: "It is rather
weird to see it today

"but at the time it
was abandoned,

"it was left in perfect
working condition

"even though, of course,
it was no longer in use."

He works for an
environmental agency

now trying to clean
up the noxious mess

left by this decaying
infrastructure.

Translator: "From an
environmental standpoint,

"especially from a
forestry standpoint,

"this is a dump of
basically iron materials."

This is built at the
top of a mountain,

everything that happens
up here flows downstream.

And as this place
starts to disintegrate,

it becomes a toxic threat
to people living down below.

The long term
environmental impact

was the last thing on the minds
of those constructing this complex

back in 1966.

When the world was split by
two bitterly opposed ideologies.

It is no exaggeration to say

that this is a moment
when the NATO countries,

the United States
and its European allies

are convinced that at any moment,
the Soviets are going to attack.

This place is born out of
a very real expectation...

..That the cold war is going to
turn in to world war III, any day.

Both sides knew they needed
excellent communications,

both to know what was happening

but also potentially to
prevent a misfire, you know,

to prevent a false alarm.

These six vast dishes
date back to that time.

Inside, rusting machinery
reveals the identity of their owners.

Built by the us air force,

this was one of NATO's most
secret radio communication centres,

the monte limbara station

was designed to plug a
weak spot in NATO defences.

NATO's southern flank,

that is the NATO
countries facing south

towards north Africa

was always the soft
underbelly of NATO,

it was always a place
where the Soviets,

where their allies
might be able to strike.

The location of this facility reveals
NATO's clandestine intention.

The island of sardinia
is beautifully placed

for this kind of communication.

For one thing, you're
sitting in the mediterranean

between Italy and Spain.

To the east, it points to a
similar station in Naples,

to the west, to the
island of menorca

off the coast of Spain

and via those ultimately
around the world.

This station was
part of a vast network,

capable of transmitting
crucial classified messages

over thousands of miles.

Until the 1950s,

radio communication beyond
the curvature of the earth

which blocked the
signal was impossible.

The ultra high frequency devices

and abandoned technology found
here show how this was overcome.

This was a microwave
communications base

that used microwaves
to communicate

by using the troposphere
part of the atmosphere

to send microwaves
over the horizon

and the best way to
communicate long distances

at this time was called
troposcatter or tropospheric scatter.

With the invention
of troposcatter,

stations like monte limbara

could transmit to
a receiver station

out of the line of sight

by using particles six miles up
in the earth's lower atmosphere

to reflect microwave signals.

That system can
amplify the signal,

send it up again and
repeat the process.

So instead of sending
your radio signal, you know,

30, 40, 50 miles, now
you can send it 250 miles.

That meant fewer
costly relay stations

and much faster long
distance communication.

We were ready to
coordinate the nuclear forces

that were going to have
to smash a Soviet advance

into Western Europe.

The amount of
communication and coordination

that was required by the
supreme headquarters,

allied powers in Europe by NATO,

by the vast American
commitment to defending Europe,

all of that required an
immense amount of coordination.

Thankfully, they never had to
but the fact that we were ready

maybe is part of the
reason on both sides

why the cold war
never turned hot.

Yet legend has it,

this base did play
an active role in war.

A us fighter bomber
was supposedly guided

by monte limbara antennae
on a controversial mission.

In 1986, a disco
in Berlin is bombed

by Libyan sponsored terrorists

and American
servicemen are involved.

President Reagan
orders muammar gaddafi,

the Libyan dictator
that his family compound

be bombed by American aircraft.

Gaddafi's private
residence was struck

and dozens of
civilians were also killed.

The claim that the station
facilitated the strike, however,

remains unproven.

Even as the iron curtain
was lifting across Europe,

it hadn't yet outlived
its usefulness.

As late as the first
Gulf war in 1991,

this system was
still very much in use

and useful during that period
when all kinds of secure traffic

had to travel around the
mediterranean and Europe.

The monte limbara station
was finally retired in 1993.

It had been made obsolete
by satellite communications

which communicate with
any point on the planet.

When the us forces left,

it was like they just
vanished into thin air,

but what they left behind
wasn't just documents,

machinery and equipment, it
was an ecological nightmare.

For the locals, there
was one final insult.

There's this revelation of
exactly how much the us paid

the Italian government

for the use of this mountain
top site for 27 years.

Just five lira a year.

That's less than $1.

Environmentalists
like marcello moretto

are attempting to
clean up monte limbara

and transform into a place
of historical significance.

Translator: "We would like
this place to become a museum

"about the cold war,

"a museum of industrial
and military archaeology,

"it would have its
own importance."

In a more recent turn of events,

tropospheric scattering is
experiencing a resurgence.

And military experts
see renewed potential

for sites like this.

As NATO weakens

in the face of
American disinterest,

as Russia becomes more powerful,

it is not difficult
to see a scenario

in which someone desiring
to dominate the mediterranean

could deploy
anti-satellite weapons.

And could create a situation

in which this mountain
top might again be useful

as a communication station.

Captioned by
ai-media ai-media. TV