Original subtitles

[Narrator] Construction. Heavy machinery.

Tight schedules. Millions at stake.

What could go wrong?

Everything.

Whether it's faulty equipment, poor design, human error...

Or just bad luck...

...these are...

Construction Fails.

In this episode...

When a giant bridge turns into a giant sail...

...you get a double Dutch disaster.

What's up, Dock?

When something big hits something bigger...

...nothing good can happen.

Buildings are supposed to stay up...

... but sometimes they fall down.

Trucks: Reliable for every aspect of construction...

...but their drivers are harder to predict.

The telescopic crane is a marvel of engineering.

Long-necked iron giants that can bend

and stretch and swivel.

Diesel-powered hydraulics control the boom arm

and hefty counterweights give the cranes the leverage

they need to lift super-heavy loads

and maneuver them deftly into place.

They can launch your yacht...

Or they can build the yacht club...

Have crane, will travel...

...these mobile lifters can go anywhere the road can take them.

Once in position, the outriggers provide

the stability that makes heavy lifting possible.

But push a crane past its limits...

and watch out!

There's nowhere to go but down.

That's exactly what happened in Alphen aan den Rijn, Holland.

Two telescopic cranes mounted on barges

were lifting a 187-tonne bridge

when everything went sideways.

Like many Dutch cities, Alphen Aan Den Rijn

is laced with a network of canals.

Its many drawbridges get a lot of wear and tear.

For more than fifty years, the Juliana drawbridge

carried 15,000 vehicles a day...

The old crossing needed a new span...

...the deck that tilts up for boats...

and down for bicycles.

The 187-tonne span was custom-made.

A crane company and a barge operator

coordinated a plan for delivery and installation.

To pull it off they needed two telescopic cranes

and three barges.

A 700-tonne crane and a 400-tonne crane

would float alongside the cargo barge,

hoist the massive span, then carry it down the canal

to the drawbridge and lay it neatly in place.

They only had to travel 100 metres

to the insertion point.

They didn't come close.

When the dust cleared over 50 homes and businesses

had been destroyed.

Miraculously, no one was seriously injured.

What began as an installation ended in devastation.

So what went wrong?

Cranes need stability.

And they need to operate on a level surface.

Moments after the initial lift,

the barge carrying the smaller crane

began to tilt under the weight.

The barge was no longer level.

It gets worse.

As the two cranes hoisted the 187-tonne bridge section

they were already at maximum weight capacity.

Both cranes were equipped with a safety feature

that automatically stops the lift

if the load reaches maximum weight.

But neither crane had this safety feature engaged.

There was no margin for error.

Even the slightest breeze could wreck everything.

And that's what tipped the balance.

On the morning of the lift, there was little to no wind.

The crane operators did not even bother to install

the wind speed indicators

that are considered part of the standard lifting operations.

But, by the afternoon, the wind speed rose

to gusts of 36 kilometres per hour.

The higher the object, the stronger the effect of wind.

The bridge span reached 12 metres higher

than the surrounding buildings.

The wind was blowing

straight into the 225 square-metre surface.

Despite its massive weight,

the bridge acted as a sail.

The barge became a sail boat.

The small crane began to slip on the barge's deck,

swaying like it had a bad case of vertigo.

As the suspended bridge span moved with the wind,

the barge tipped slightly,

further shifting the smaller crane's center of gravity.

Once the small crane lost its footing,

the two cranes were no longer sharing the load evenly.

Now, you've got double the trouble.

As the barge tipped under the shifting weight...

...the water in one of its ballast tanks

began to flow to the lower side...

...further increasing the tilt of the deck.

The trouble tripled.

As the smaller crane went down,

it dragged the second crane with it,

snapping its neck and dropping the bridge.

More than one-thousand tonnes of pure destruction

sheared through shops and houses,

flattening cars and scattering panicked pedestrians,

who dodged debris as they ran for their lives.

According to the accident report by the Dutch Safety Board,

any one of these factors could have caused

this Construction Fail.

Six months later, when the new Juliana Bridge was ready,

the span was floated into position on a pontoon.

The cranes that hoisted the span into position

were on solid footing.

You could say the new bridge started off on the right foot.

In April 2016,

just outside the town of Mayerthorpe, Alberta in Canada,

a wooden trestle bridge caught fire.

The 365 metre Mayerthorpe Bridge

was a vital link in the province's rail system.

Within an hour, 40 firefighters

from four fire departments were on the scene.

Helicopters delivered water to douse the blaze.

But the fire burned on.

Nine months earlier...

In Sherwood, Oregon, Another wooden bridge...

...another fire.

More than 50 firefighters fought the blaze.

But the bridge collapsed in less than two hours.

So, what went wrong?

Everyone knows wood burns.

But in reality, solid wood structures

don't burn as easily as you might think.

Once the exterior of the wood is scorched,

the core wood is insulated by the charred layer.

So why did these two wooden bridges burn right through,

and burn so quickly?

One possibility is lightning.

A lightning strike generates heat

greater than the surface of the sun.

And lightning is the most common natural cause

of forest fires.

But in both cases, in Alberta and Oregon,

there was no lightning when the fires began.

The other possibility is what fire investigators

call an accelerant.

Both bridges were treated with a chemical wood preservative

called creosote.

Creosote prevents rot on railway ties

and telephone poles.

It prevents insect infestation.

And is completely impervious to water.

Just don't put it near a flame.

Because creosote is derived from coal tar.

It's highly flammable.

Arson was blamed for the Alberta bridge fire.

The blaze caused nearly $8 million in damages.

The fire in Oregon destroyed not just the bridge

but more than three hectares of wetland.

The cause was careless smoking.

One crime and one misdemeanor

is what set those bridges on fire.

But what burned them to the ground

was the creosote preservative

that was designed to protect them.

The very substance that was supposed to prolong their life,

accelerated their destruction.

Some buildings were made to stand the test of time...

....even those that seem to be clinging to a cliff.

The Hanging Temple of Mount Heng,

south west of Beijing,

is a marvel of gravity-defying design.

It's been hanging out for 1500 years.

The temple is held in place with wood crossbeams

fitted into holes bored into the cliffs.

But it was a different story in Jakarta,

the capital of Indonesia.

The city's stock exchange

is a significantly younger building.

In January of 2018, an internal walkway collapsed.

At least 77 people were hurt.

Remarkably, no one was seriously injured.

Around the world, buildings fail to do

the one thing they are designed to do...

Stay standing.

This Cairo apartment block collapsed

just moments after its residents were evacuated.

A school in Northern India...

A café on a busy Indonesian street...

And a condemned building in Manhattan, New York,

that took out its neighbours.

How is it that some buildings,

even poorly-designed ones, stand for centuries

while others go to pieces after only a few years...

or even months?

Most structural failures

are failures in structural engineering.

In Jakarta, a visiting group of 100 university students

gathered in one location.

The tour ended badly.

The building should have been able to accommodate

that many people.

But it could not.

So, what went wrong?

A preliminary investigation

pointed to the failure of support cables.

The cables broke away from the ceiling

due to a 'concentration of weight' in one area,

namely the student bodies.

But were other factors in play?

Initially, the government feared the collapse

was a terror attack.

The tower had been bombed in 2000.

But police found no evidence of an explosive device.

According to news reports,

Indonesia has a substandard safety record,

potentially connected with alleged corruption

in the construction industry.

The people in this Indonesian internet cafe

heard a huge crack and got out of the building...

...just in time.

But humans shouldn't shoulder all the blame

for a sudden collapse.

Tree roots can be culprits...

Growing trees draw moisture, causing the soil to contract,

and cracking foundations.

Soil erosion is another villain,

undermining the supporting land.

Whatever the cause, the result is a pile of rubble

and sometimes...

human tragedy.

It's no accident the Hanging Temple

has hung in there for 1500 years.

The structure is not only kept in place with wood crossbeams -

it's how those crossbeams are fitted into the holes.

Two-thirds of the crossbeam is bored

all the way into the cliff.

They are not going anywhere.

If only the original architect was around

to tell us how they did it...

When you imagine a disaster at sea,

you envision a perfect storm,

ships battered by gale force winds,

tossed helplessly in five-metre waves.

But shipwrecks can happen mere metres from shore.

Or even closer.

Think of them as marine parking violations.

It might look like the whole neighbourhood is on the move...

...but that's actually an apartment-size cargo ship,

blown off course in a storm and heading into town.

If the captain hadn't managed to steer the vessel to safety

it would have taken out the entire street.

When a cruise ship the length of three football fields

and 13 decks high makes a change in the itinerary,

there's no turning back.

This one was headed for an unscheduled port of call

until a tugboat narrowly prevented

what would have been its farewell tour.

Either this leviathan didn't notice the little tour boat

putting alongside it

or it was just trying to eliminate the competition.

And this tour of the Thames ends with an up close look

at Canary Wharf.

Sometimes these wrecks are a result of pilot error.

Like this barge barging straight into the locks.

And sometimes you're caught in a rogue current

and there's nothing to be done but abandon ship.

But some mishaps seem less like accidents

and more like conspiracies.

A coordinated series of unfortunate events

that could never happen in perfect sequence.

Until they do.

A ferry carrying passengers into Barcelona harbour

was easing its way towards the landing dock -

until a freak gust of wind pushed the ferry off course -

and straight into the pier.

But it gets worse.

The ship not only rammed the dock,

its prow smacked a massive crane...

The crane toppled over.

And landed on shipping containers

filled with flammable chemicals.

The impact sparked a blaze, which spread along the pier,

sending billows of toxic smoke into the air

One bad turn deserves another.

When you're in a boat,

there's no slamming on the brakes.

No razor sharp turns.

No throwing it into reverse.

Everything happens in slow motion.

It can take up to 20 minutes to bring a large tanker

to a full stop.

Which means you've got plenty of time

to regret your decision while you wait for the inevitable.

And brace for impact.

From A to B, the truck is an essential tool

of the construction world.

But when it comes to truck drivers,

the word 'tool' can take on another meaning entirely.

Long hours behind the wheel can make any trucker weary.

But it's the other people on the road who need to be wary.

This dump truck comes equipped with a bed

that hinges up and down on hydraulics.

But apparently no rear view mirror.

Looks like he might hitting his destination a little late.

You can see why it's sometimes called a "tipper truck".

Here's another dump truck with no "down" button

for the bed.

Well, that's one way to get the seats to recline.

The driver is going to need a ladder

and a new identity to get out of this one.

Tractor trailers are popular

because the trailer can be uncoupled quickly.

You can drop it off anywhere...

apparently.

When he wakes up he's going to wonder

where the rest of his rig went.

This truck is called a "Low-Boy".

Just not low enough.

Instead of "Oversize Load" there should be a sign

on the back reading, "Blind Optimist At The Wheel."

This flatbed is carrying an excavator -

which is often used in demolition.

Like this.

Although typically they'd offload the excavator first.

Sorry officer, I didn't see the light.

The driver of this "mobile home toter"

doesn't have much going on upstairs.

Now he has even less.

[Man] No way.

Look how close that roof is...

Oh, there goes the roof.

There goes the roof.

[Narrator] This driver moonlights

as a menace to society.

And thanks to the kamikaze camera guy

for risking it all to get the shot.

In the US, height clearance can vary

from 4.3 metres to 4.5 metres

depending on which state you're in.

This guy is clearly in the state of confusion.

You know how shouldn't drive with your arm

dangling out the window.

Same.

This tanker truck is equipped with its own vacuum tube...

so at least it can clean up its own mess.

Looks like this flatbed driver is going to miss his train.

Nope. He caught it just in time.

But he's still going to be delayed.

No drivers were harmed in the making of this video.

But you could be if you get too close.

So keep a safe distance.

Or you may find yourself driving alongside these drivers...

On the Road to Hell.

♪ ♪