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.

[Onlooker] Yo! What the [bleep]?!

[Narrator] In this episode...

Bridge versus boat.

As ships get bigger, so does the danger.

[Captain] Mayday, mayday, mayday, Coast Guard!

[Narrator] Fire in the sky.

Fighting a crane blaze 45 stories above Manhattan.

In Scotland, six doomed towers go boom.

But why do two fail to fall?

Trouble in the loo!

These sewer mishaps will have you on the edge of your seat.

Lumber blunders.

Brace yourself for side-splitting splinters.

Blowing the roof off.

Why are the Netherlands' top stadia losing their tops?

Lopsided lager.

The Crooked House leaves you wobbly before the first drink.

Bridges.

Perhaps the most critical piece of infrastructure.

Connecting while separating.

Bridges are particularly important

in port cities and long estuaries,

where oceangoing vessels pass through water

while vehicles are on the overpasses.

Port cities like Baltimore.

Baltimore is so far from the Atlantic Ocean,

it’s hard to believe it’s a seaport.

And yet, it has one of the largest container terminals

on the Atlantic coast,

the Seagirt Marine Terminal.

As ships have increased in scale,

bridges have increased their clearance.

But as those mighty ships have grown mightier,

their potential for destruction has grown, too.

Baltimore.

On the night of March 26, 2024,

around midnight...

[beeping]

...the container ship Dali received the last of its cargo.

[beeping]

The Dali is a behemoth, like this one.

Nearly 300 meters long and 50 meters wide,

it was carrying 4,680 containers

with a combined weight of nearly 60,000 metric tons.

Nearly five kilometers away, the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

34,000 vehicles cross the bridge per day.

But at this hour, traffic is sparse.

A repair team is filling potholes

on the bridge’s roadway.

Suddenly, the traffic stops.

Police have closed the roadway.

The Dali is on a collision course with the Key Bridge.

The road repair team is trapped.

♪ ♪

[crash]

[Onlooker] Yo! What the [bleep]?!

No way in hell I just witnessed that.

No way!

♪ ♪

The Francis Scott Key Bridge just got hit by a cargo ship!

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Marine rescue boats begin the desperate search

for survivors.

As for the work crew on the bridge,

one escapes unharmed, another is severely injured.

But six people are dead.

When dawn breaks,

the scale of the disaster is stark.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The Francis Scott Key Bridge is gone.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

The Port of Baltimore is at a standstill.

So, what went wrong?

♪ ♪

Investigators learned the Dali's electrical system failed

shortly after leaving its berth,

shutting down the main engine and all propulsion.

♪ ♪

The Francis Scott Key Bridge opened in 1977.

The 2.8-kilometer span links

the northeast and southeast shores of the Patapsco River.

At the time, it was the second longest

continuous truss bridge in the world.

The key to the truss is

the strength of the triangle.

It’s twice as strong as a rectangle.

Any pressure applied to one

point of a triangle

will be absorbed equally

by the other two sides.

That's why triangles have been a feature of architecture

through the ages, from the Great Pyramid of Giza

to the Eiffel Tower,

to the futuristic geodesic domes of Buckminster Fuller,

and the International Space Station.

The triangle is strong.

And so was the Key Bridge.

In fact, it was so strong,

it survived an earlier strike by another vessel.

In August 1980, a Japanese container ship lost power

about 600 meters from the bridge.

That ship was moving at roughly the same speed as the Dali,

between six and seven knots.

The collision destroyed a chunk of the protective fender

around the bridge’s piling.

But the bridge was unscathed.

Ship and bridge design have evolved,

but not necessarily at the same pace.

[crash]

When fully loaded, the Dali is

another echelon of ship.

It's several times bigger

than the Japanese vessel.

Ship and cargo displaced

over 112,000 metric tons.

Its mass is at least

a third the size

of the Empire State Building.

But by some estimates, the force of the Dali was greater

than a rocket launch--

as much as 100 million Newtons.

A fully loaded semi-truck colliding with a bridge

at 130 kilometers per hour

would generate one hundredth of that force.

In other words, the bridge itself didn’t stand a chance.

But what about the protective barriers

designed to prevent catastrophic contact?

The struck pier has a 30-meter-by-25-meter

shock-absorbent protector made of crushable concrete and wood.

As well, there are several concrete structures

called dolphins placed in front of the piers

to deflect oncoming vessels.

Experts say the dolphins at the Key Bridge

were not up to the task

of stopping or deflecting the Dali.

They were poorly positioned

and too small to protect against a behemoth.

♪ ♪

As for the Dali, the ship has returned to service.

[horn blows]

The owners of the Dali agreed to pay $102 million

to settle a civil claim by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The National Transportation Safety Board

didn't want this to happen again,

and has launched an examination

of the advanced protection structures of other bridges;

especially newer bridges that have replaced bridges

that have been destroyed in similar mishaps.

The NTSB has several precursor events to study,

including one that happened in 1980,

the same year the Key Bridge was first hit.

Mayday, mayday, mayday. Coast Guard.

Mayday, mayday, mayday.

Coast Guard.

Vessel calling mayday.

Vessel in distress.

This is United States Coast Guard Florida,

request your position, nature of distress

and number of persons on board, over.

[Narrator] The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa, Florida,

was struck by a ship.

The deck collapsed, sending 35 people to their death,

including the passengers of a Greyhound bus.

♪ ♪

The replacement Sunshine Skyway Bridge

has dozens of dolphins to protect it.

When the new Key Bridge opens in 2028,

it will have more than dolphins to defend it.

The new bridge will have an increase of clearance

from 56 meters to 70 meters.

The length of the main span will be increased

from 365 meters to 490 meters.

Which will allow the main span pylons

to be well apart from the main navigation channel.

Here’s hoping the new span will be too long to fail.

Otherwise, it may end up like the old Sunshine Bridge...

a fishing pier.

[Narrator] Sewers.

Those pipes under our roads where the water goes.

Beneath every city,

beneath every town,

a vast network devoted to keeping water

and many other things out of our way

and out of sight.

There are three types.

Storm sewers carry rain and meltwater from roads and roofs

into lakes and rivers.

Sanitary sewers carry wastewater from our homes

to treatment plants.

Combined sewers are a single pipe system

for both wastewater and stormwater.

The great French writer Victor Hugo

likened Paris’ sewers to a digestive system.

Speaking of digestion...

Sometimes sewers have indigestion.

September 24, 2024,

in Nanning, China,

a wastewater sewer erupted.

No doubt the owner drove straight to the car wash.

So, what went wrong?

It all depends on the sewer.

The driver of this car instantly knew

which kind of sewer had gone wrong.

The average American generates

370 liters of wastewater per day.

Appliances, showers,

and... you know.

It all flows through over 2 million kilometers

of wastewater sewers.

More than 16,000 water treatment plants

process more than 128 billion liters of wastewater every day.

Those water treatment plants are often located

near a lake or a river,

so water hasn’t far to travel once it’s treated.

Treatment plants rely on gravity to receive wastewater.

But when wastewater needs to go uphill,

it travels through a pressure

sewer called a force main.

Now and again, maintenance crews use pressure tests

to detect any leaks in the force main.

These pressure tests can be performed

with either air or water.

Either way, pressure is applied,

and any loss of pressure signals a leak.

But air is compressible.

In fact, it’s a bit like a giant pneumatic spring.

So, if some vital part of the system breaks,

all that compressed air

is suddenly unleashed.

Along with anything else in the way.

Compressed air, lots of it,

was behind this geyser in Moscow, Russia.

It rose over 50 meters and stayed there,

and stayed there, long enough to swamp the area.

This incident occurred October 28, 2024,

a few weeks after the Nanning event.

While many assumed the geyser was sewage,

the Russian energy company Gazprom claimed

it was the result of high-pressure water

being forced through a gas pipeline.

Speaking of gas, methane is another hazard of sewers.

Methane is quadruple trouble.

It’s odorless. It's colorless.

It ignites at a relatively low temperature.

And it will explode at low concentrations--

as little as five percent.

[boom]

[boom]

This blast in Pattaya, Thailand,

occurred shortly after reports of smoke rising from the sewer.

All evidence points to a gas explosion.

Consider that a manhole cover

typically weighs more than 45 kilograms.

This manhole cover was blown more than 16 feet in the air.

All it takes is a spark...

or a firecracker.

That's what happened in Chongqing, China,

in January 2024.

He dropped a lit firecracker

down the hole of a manhole cover.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Dropping firecrackers into manholes

seems to be a dangerous trend.

Only a month later, this teenager was captured

on surveillance video in Sichuan Province, China.

The resulting blast was so powerful,

it blew off all the manhole covers in the immediate area.

Miraculously, the kid suffered only minor injuries.

Speaking of multiple manhole covers,

these drivers in Anshan

were in the right place at the wrong time.

A pipeline exploded, sending more than 10 manholes skyward.

One cover went so high, its hang time was over 10 seconds.

[clang]

Luckily, it crashed to earth; not on a car.

This explosion occurred in Jingdezhen, China,

in March of 2018.

Demolition work caused a rupture in a gas pipeline.

Sometimes the sewer is indoors.

Sometimes it’s right beside you.

This teacher and her student were going over some notes

on his laptop computer.

Notice the wall panel

immediately behind the student’s head.

Their discussion was rudely interrupted.

But the Nanning incident was a fail of a different odor.

A routine pressure test of a sewage conduit

went horribly wrong.

The "poonami" rose more than 10 meters.

If you guessed the Nanning inspection team was using

compressed air to test the pressure, you are correct.

Talk about trapped wind.

[Narrator] Football, the beautiful game...

where precision and timing make the difference

between thrill and nil.

Small wonder it’s the world’s largest spectator sport.

No more so than in the Netherlands,

where football is practically a religion.

Of a population of 18 million people,

over 1.2 million play football.

That's one in 15,

making it the most popular team sport in the nation.

And one of the most popular teams in the Netherlands

is Alkmaar Zaanstreek, a club in the nation's

top professional football league.

Better known as AZ Alkmaar,

the side is nicknamed the Cheeseheads.

Their home is AFAS Stadium.

Opened in 2006, the stadium holds

more than 19,000 spectators.

Luckily, no one was at home when this happened.

The collapsed roof covered an area with nearly 1,400 seats.

The Cheeseheads had recently played to a packed stadium.

If the winds had blown harder that day,

this could have been a human tragedy.

So, what went wrong?

It might seem like a freak accident.

But the AFAS was not the only football stadium

to be brought low in this low country.

In 2011, a stadium in the city of Enschede

was expanded to increase capacity.

During construction of the extension,

the steel roof collapsed,

killing two workers and injuring nine.

Support cables were removed

before the permanent bracing was finished.

And in 2021, in Goffert Stadium in the city of Nijmegen,

the visiting fans got a bit too rowdy.

The away team won, but their fans lost their footing.

Luckily, no one was seriously injured.

The area had been for seated patrons.

But the seats were removed to increase capacity.

When all those extra fans started jumping,

the grandstand didn’t stand a chance.

But the AFAS stadium was a different story.

It was a relatively recent structure.

Alkmaar, a coastal city, gets strong winds.

Strong winds were blowing

across the Netherlands that day.

The Netherlands Meteorological Institute had issued

a code yellow due to wind gusts

of around 100 kilometers per hour.

The trigger was a downward wind load on the roof.

This was concerning,

because the roof was supposed to handle this kind of wind.

At first, the finger was pointed at the solar panels

on the stadium roof.

But the engineering firm that helped build the stadium

said the roof could withstand the weight of the panels.

They tested models in a wind tunnel.

It turns out this fail began

before the stadium was completed.

A separate investigation revealed a number of issues,

including weak welds.

Some were too thin,

increasing the chance of an overall failure.

Sure enough, one of those thin welds developed a crack

shortly after the stadium was completed.

Over time, as weather events stressed the roof supports,

the crack grew.

Meanwhile, rust started to weaken the structure.

The investigators determined the owner of the stadium

did not conduct any examination of the joints.

As the years passed,

the roof’s condition deteriorated in plain sight.

Until August 15, 2019.

The stress of the windstorm should be well within

the threshold of stadiums like this.

But investigators discovered the design was faulty.

The builders had not correctly tested the design

according to standards.

The Dutch Safety Board recommended

that owners of large public facilities, not just stadiums,

be required by law to conduct regular safety inspections.

It added: the government must keep its eye on the ball

and be prepared to hand out red cards.

[whistle blows]

The term "slapstick" originated in 16th century theater

with commedia dell’arte.

It comes from slapping a pair of wooden slats together

to maximize comic impact.

[slats clapping]

And 500 years later, wood isn't just a building material;

it’s still a critical component in the construction of a joke.

A costar in comedy’s greatest hits.

Comedy, like woodworking, is a precision craft.

If all the pieces don't fit together just right,

the whole thing falls apart.

A good gag is all about perfect timing.

You don't always need a fall guy.

But it helps.

And let’s not forget the element of misdirection.

The saw’s path comes back to taunt him.

[Man] Ow!

[Narrator] Check out the neighborhood strongman.

[Onlooker] Get your right hand.

[bleep]

This move is called the clean and jerk.

And it’s pretty obvious why.

[bleep]

[bleep]

It’s all in the knees, bud.

[laughter]

[bleep]

This frustrated fella probably feels like

he’s been sawing that log for hours.

[laughter]

So, he finally puts his foot down.

[laughter]

Table for two, please.

Everybody knows you can’t stand on the thing you’re cutting.

Well, maybe not everybody.

When sawing a board,

you’ve got to secure it on a stable surface,

preferably something with four legs.

Or two legs.

No need to mention this to your mother.

This guy's trying to impress his kids...

[Man] Then I'm a master axe-- You ready for this?

[Narrator] ...but loses his head.

Aw, nuts.

This poor guy’s never gonna have kids.

See the man walking alongside the truck?

We can't hear what he's saying,

and neither can the driver.

Which is a shame,

because he's probably suggesting

that that driver take another route.

Or maybe he's telling him he missed the sign

cautioning drivers hauling a heavy load.

Either way, this turned out to be a bridge too far.

This man is using his van as a tow truck to haul his shed.

He must’ve thought it would roll.

And it did, kind of.

But now his tow truck needs a tow truck.

[laughter]

[Man] Aw, [bleep]!

Dad, maybe it’s time to lose a few pounds.

And maybe tell mom the porch needs fixing.

Never mind. She knows.

[bleep]

[Man 1] Do one pop. [Man 2] Slowly!

[Man 1] Don't pop the outside wall off.

[Narrator] Looks like this bricklayer's

renovating his fireplace

because it wasn't getting enough airflow.

[Man 1] Whoops!

[Narrator] Now it is.

♪ ♪

Is that shelf-destruction?

More like self-destruction.

Sorry, that pun was a little on the nose.

[Woman] Yeah, I think I'm okay.

Set up.

Timing.

[Man 1] Whoops!

[Narrator] Punchline.

Where would comedy be without wood?

[Narrator] Glasgow, 1961.

[bell dings]

Long the engine of Scotland's industrial base,

the city is in decline.

Thousands of people are living in tenements.

But then comes the Red Road Flats.

One of the largest experiments in social housing in Europe.

Constructed between 1964 and 1969,

the Red Road Flats were the tallest

residential buildings in Europe.

Between 28 and 31 stories,

they were nearly 90 meters high.

Eight towers.

1,350 flats.

Shops.

Play areas.

Car parks.

But more important, hot and cold running water

and indoor toilets.

In short, a proper home.

Or so it seemed.

The Red Road Flats were inspired

by the modernist designs of Le Corbusier.

But the construction was shoddy.

The people who lived in them found them drafty

and difficult to heat.

Word got out,

and the local council struggled to find tenants.

Meanwhile, Scotland’s economy continued to shrink.

And so did Glasgow’s population.

By the mid-1970s, the Red Road Flats

became a symbol of Scottish decline.

In 2012, the Red Road Flats were consigned

to the rubbish heap of history.

That year, one of the eight towers was demolished.

And then, in 2013, another tower came down.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

In 2015, it was time to blow up the six remaining blocks.

From a distance, the demolition seemed to have worked.

The Red Road Flats looked flattened.

But the people closer to the action saw a different story.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

When the dust cleared, two of the tower blocks were shorter,

but still standing.

So, what went wrong?

When constructed, the Red Road Flats

were the tallest residential buildings in Europe.

But something else set these towers apart.

Something not visible from the exterior.

They were the only steel-framed high-rise buildings

in Scotland.

Everyone knows steel is strong.

But why were these two buildings stronger?

Why did six towers fall without a hitch,

while two towers met a hiccup?

Controlled demolition is an imperfect science.

There's no precise formula for blowing things up

so that they fall down-- all the way down.

Explosives known as cut and kick charges

are attached to the steel beams.

First, the cut charge ejects a jet of molten copper

that slices through the steel beam.

Then an explosive charge forces a wedge into the beam.

Finally, dynamite is detonated

to kick the steel out of position.

These near-simultaneous explosions destroy

the weight-bearing parts of the structure,

blow out the bottom of the building,

and gravity does the rest.

At least, that’s the idea.

♪ ♪

Too much dynamite increases the risk of flying debris.

Too little, and you have a controlled demolition fail.

Demolition engineers call this a stand-up.

According to a report, the demolition contractor

underestimated the robustness of the buildings.

The report gave them a solid excuse.

There was a discrepancy between

the original architectural drawings

and the actual size of the steel columns in the buildings.

It was a failure 50 years in the making.

The Red Road stand-ups were eventually pulled down

with machines.

Since then, Glasgow’s population has rebounded.

But it's yet to return to its high

of 1.8 million back in 1961.

As for the Red Road Flats, all that remains is Red Road.

[Narrator] Cranes.

They've been helping builders build taller

for thousands of years.

Levers and pulleys creating mechanical advantage;

an extension of the human arm.

They pick stuff up and put it down,

only higher up.

Or vice versa.

It's estimated that over 200,000 cranes

are in use globally.

♪ ♪

In the high-rise forest of Manhattan,

cranes are as familiar as taxi cabs.

One kind of crane in particular.

Meet the consummate Manhattanite.

The luffing jib tower crane.

The luffing jib tower crane is recognizable,

thanks to its hinged jib.

The hinged jib allows the crane to lift

while standing vertical.

This movement allows them to fit within tight spaces.

This is important when hoisting tons

in the tight quarters of Manhattan neighborhoods.

All those other buildings leave little room for error.

So, when there is an error, stuff gets broken.

On July 26, 2023,

early morning pedestrians on 10th Avenue in Manhattan

were greeted by a different kind of crane failure.

By coincidence, in the district known as Hell’s Kitchen.

The crane was attached to a building site

between 10th and 11th avenues at West 41st Street.

The crane was hoisting 15 tons of concrete

to the 36th floor of the condo development.

Luckily, the crane's operator escaped the cab

before it was engulfed in flames.

[sirens]

Over 200 firefighters responded to the alarm.

[sirens]

Even if it wasn't holding 15 tons of concrete,

the jig was up

and the jib fell down.

The 55-meter-long jib smashed into a building across the way.

And then crashed onto 10th Avenue.

But the fire didn’t fall.

[sirens]

It kept doing what well-fueled fires do:

burn.

As far as fires go, this one wasn’t big.

But it was tall.

Very tall.

Firefighters rose to the occasion.

They relocated to the roof of a building across the street

and aimed their hoses from there.

It took over four hours to bring the blaze under control.

Twelve people were injured, including three firefighters.

Fortunately, none of the injuries was life-threatening.

So, what went wrong?

The Manhattan matchstick was certainly not the first crane

to catch fire.

This crane in Vancouver was essentially

burned at the stake.

But unlike in Hell's Kitchen,

the Vancouver fire didn’t start on the crane itself.

It started in the construction project beneath.

♪ ♪

Back in New York, investigators discovered the fire began

when hydraulic fuel in the engine compartment

leaked onto a heated metal plate and ignited.

[sirens]

The crane operator tried to put it out.

But the cab’s hand extinguisher was no match for the fire.

The blaze intensified as firefighters tried

to figure out a means to control it.

[Onlooker] Oh, [bleep].

[Narrator] But there was no time to save the boom.

While firefighters dodged the wreckage

scattered over 10th Avenue...

[crash]

...45 stories higher, the big candle continued to burn.

If you're wondering where firefighters got the water,

they tapped the standpipes

of the building hit by the falling boom.

Many of the units in the struck building

were left uninhabitable.

The owners made an insurance claim for $83 million.

The construction firm was fined $25,000

for failure to safeguard all persons and property

affected by construction operations.

It turns out the guy operating the crane

had an unfortunate history of crane accidents.

He temporarily lost his tower crane operator's license

after a previous crane incident

that resulted in the death of a coworker.

It happened 15 years earlier and one block away.

[crash]

Hell’s Kitchen, indeed.

[crash]

[Narrator] Pubs.

The public house is a tradition stretching back

to the Roman invasion of Britain.

A place to connect and socialize

that was not a private residence.

Of course, one of the hazards of a public house

is public drunkenness.

When one member of the public consumes one pint too many,

the possibility of mischief increases.

But one pub in England's West Midlands

solved that problem, although not by design.

The Crooked House had one end

1.2 meters lower than the other end.

Patrons felt drunk even before they crossed

its crooked threshold.

And it was worse looking back.

As one visitor wrote around the turn of the 20th century...

[Visitor] The appearance of the interior

is even more striking and interesting.

Everything seems out of plumb,

and the general law of gravity set at defiance.

Here, walking through the slanting rooms and passages,

you have all the sensations peculiar to a visit

to the famous Tower of Pisa, in Italy,

or pacing the deck of a ship in a heavy sea.

[Narrator] So, what went wrong?

The Crooked House was not always The Crooked House.

Its actual name is The Glynne Arms.

The Crooked House was not always a pub.

It dates from 1765, when it operated as a corn mill.

Water flowed onto a mill wheel and turned the millstone.

In 1840, the millstone stopped turning.

That's when the beer started flowing

and the mill became a public house.

The Crooked House was not always crooked.

About 10 years after it started serving beer,

the pub started listing.

There was nothing wrong with the foundation.

The problem went deeper than that.

The West Midlands are known as Black Country,

thanks to the region’s long history of coal mining.

Remove all those chunks of coal underfoot,

and things change on the surface.

This is an effect known

as land subsidence.

The gradual settling or sudden sinking

due to subsurface movement of earth material.

After the coal was extracted, the empty tunnels

gradually eroded and collapsed into themselves.

This caused the ground above to drop.

In the case of The Crooked House,

the mine tunnel stopped beneath one end of the building.

The subsidence beneath

The Crooked House

was lopsided but gradual,

which is how the building

managed to stay standing.

Over the years, its various owners made adjustments

to keep the floors and the bartop level.

The south leaning wall was reinforced

with a brick buttress.

And a steel frame was added to keep everything upright

while still crooked.

The wonky building was beloved by locals

and drew visitors from all around the world.

In fact, the pub was on the bucket list

of engineering geologists all over.

A poster child of mining

subsidence-related geohazards.

Proof that sometimes what

went wrong is what went right.

Unfortunately, The Crooked House is no longer.

Ironically, its crookedness was not to blame.

In August of 2023, the building was gutted

in a suspicious blaze,

and then leveled by its new owners,

who were accused of being a bit crooked themselves.

In February of 2024, the local council ordered the owners

to rebuild The Crooked House and restore its crookedness.

Until then, patrons thirsty for a new tilt

can head to nearby Tipton,

just eight kilometers from the former location

of The Crooked House.

Though not as old nor as crooked as The Crooked House,

The Tilted Barrel is also the victim, and beneficiary,

of land subsidence.

♪ ♪

As for the rebuild of The Crooked House,

one loyal fan could not wait for the owners to take action.

He rebuilt the pub on his own.

Meanwhile, the owners of the original Crooked House

say they want to rebuild elsewhere.

Fine. Just so long as it's not on solid ground.