here are 9 of the biggest engineering disasters! 9. sampoong department store, seoul, south koreaon june 29, 1995, in the space of 20 seconds, the sampoong department store in seoul, southkorea fell to the ground, killing 502 people and injuring 937 others.
Offshore Engineer Job Singapore, criminal negligence, blatant disregard forethical engineering practices, and shoddy construction led to the largest peacetimedisaster in south korean history. the problems can be traced almost exclusivelyto the future chairman of the building, lee joon.
under his insistence, the building was changedfrom being an office building to a department store halfway through its construction. to install the escalators, several key supportcolumns had to be eliminated. later, joon had a fifth floor added to thebuilding. despite serious warnings, joon simply hiredhis own company to do work others refused to do. not only was the building not meant to supporta fifth story, but his extra level was made with a thick, extra heavy, heated floor. air conditioning units that were added tothe roof quadrupled the load the structure
was designed to sustain. to make matters worse, the building was constructedwith substandard concrete and had only half the 16 steel reinforcing bars it needed. also, the concrete columns were thinner thannecessary and were reduced even more when fire shields were installed around the escalators. in april 1995, extensive cracks were spotted,yet nothing was done. these fractures grew exponentially on theday of the disaster, but because management didn’t want to lose the day’s revenue,they refused to evacuate the building. top executives, however, left as a precaution.
seven minutes before the collapse, the buildingbegan to pop and crack, and employees sounded the alarm, but it was too late to avert disaster,and a total of 1,500 people were trapped inside. 8. hotel new world, singapore on march 15, 1986, all six stories of hotelnew world collapsed in less than 60 seconds. the building housed a hotel, a bank and anightclub, all of which disintegrated into piles of rock and twisted metal, burying 50people inside. it was the worst disaster singapore had experiencedsince world war ii, and it shocked the nation. singapore’s newly formed civil defense forcelaunched rescue and recovery efforts immediately,
and they continued for seven days. engineers and other experts from around theworld were called in to assist the delicate rescue operation. at first, they merely removed beams and otherremains from the top and sides of the ruins, but not many bodies were recovered. on the second day, assisted by foreign expertswho were in singapore to build a mass transit system, rescuers began to tunnel into therubble. sound-detection equipment was used to helplocate the 17 lucky survivors. after intensive research, investigators discovereda terrible error in the original design of
the building. the structural engineer had completely leftout the building’s “dead load,†in other words, the weight of the building itself,during the design process. as a result, it wasn’t strong enough tohold itself up. tragically, hotel new world was doomed fromthe beginning. 7. three high-rise office buildings, rio, brazilon january 26, 2012, a 20-story building in rio de janeiro, brazil spontaneously collapsed. the gigantic high-rise crashed into anotherten-story building as well as a third smaller
building, reducing all three structures toone huge pile of rubble. the impact sent an enormous wave of dust throughthe streets of cinelandia square, killing at least 17 people. if the disaster had occurred just a few hoursearlier, it would have resulted in mass casualties. fortunately, the district, home to many officebuildings and brazil’s prized municipal theater, was pretty desolate due to the latehour of the collapse. authorities suggested that illegal constructionwork had weakened the 20-story building and caused it to fragment, which triggered a chainreaction and brought down the two smaller buildings.
this catastrophe has led brazilian authoritiesto call for reforms for stricter building and renovation regulations. 6. skyline plaza, virginia, usa on march 2, 1973, tragedy struck the skylineplaza complex in bailey’s crossroads, virginia. one of the complex’s towering apartmentbuildings collapsed, leaving a huge, eerie cloud of dust and debris where it once stood. perhaps surprisingly, construction hadn’teven completed at the time of the disaster. the building was not due to open until august.
although there was no flaw in the design perse, the forms supporting the concrete columns on the 22nd floor were prematurely removed. the cement hadn’t yet hardened completelyand couldn’t bear the weight of the 24th floor. the failure of these columns put an increasedamount of pressure on the rest of the columns on the 23rd floor until the entire floor buckledand slammed down onto the floor below. the building had not been engineered to withstandsuch a huge increased load, and the tremendous weight proved catastrophic. each floor gradually succumbed and plummetedonto the story below in a devastating ripple
effect. fourteen construction workers died and 34were injured. michael hill, 31, ran all the way down thestairs from the 23rd floor when he saw cracks appear in the ceiling. he made it to the fourth floor when he wasforced to jump out of a window. he broke both his arms but hey, he survived! 5. royal plaza hotel, nakhon ratchasima, thailandon august 13, 1993, at around 10:00 am, the once splendid six-story royal plaza hotelin nakhon ratchasima, thailand came crashing
down in less than 10 seconds. that’s 1.6 seconds per floor! tragically, 137 people were killed and 227more were injured in the collapse. rescuers dug through the rubble with jackhammersand crowbars, desperately searching for signs of life. according to rescue teams, trapped survivorshad been using their cell phones to call for help. a pregnant woman was pulled from the mangledpile of steel and debris 2 days after the collapse.
unfortunately, at the time of the collapse,the hotel was being used for several meetings and seminars, including a large teacher conferenceand a thai oil company meeting with more than a hundred attendees. police detained the owner of the royal plazahotel, the architect, and an engineer over allegations that three stories had been addedto the building in 1990 without proper architectural review. also, a huge amount of water was being storedon the roof of the hotel ahead of an expected water shortage. 4.
ronan point, london, englandin east london, on may 16, 1968, a single match triggered the collapse of an entirecorner of a massive 22-story building. ivy hodge, a 56-year-old cake decorator livingon the 18th floor, got up early to make herself a cup of tea. when miss hodge lit her stove, the spark fromthe match triggered a devastating gas explosion. the blast tore through the joints connectingthe walls to the floor and threw her to the ground. the load-bearing walls came apart, leavingthe four apartments above her without any kind of structural support.
the four floors came down, tearing throughthe floors below like falling dominoes until an entire corner of the building lay in ruins. the building was in fact new, its constructioncompleted just five days prior to the collapse. when ronan point came tumbling down, 260 peoplewere in residence. surprisingly, only four were killed in thedisaster, while 17 were injured. although the building was rebuilt and thejoints strengthened, public confidence in high-rise tower buildings took a huge knock. many high-rise blocks, including ronan point,were eventually pulled down to make room for less intimidating low-rise housing.
ivy hodge was treated for burns, but ultimatelyshe and her gas stove, which she took with her to her new address, both survived. 3. deepwater horizon explosionthe single largest oil spill disaster in history was ushered in on april 20, 2010. the deepwater horizon semi-submersible mobileoffshore drilling unit suffered an explosion, causing a massive oil leak into the ocean. the unit, also called a modu, was owned andoperated by transocean, and was drilling for bp in the macondo prospect oil field about40 miles (60 km) southeast off the louisiana
coast. the explosion caused the deaths of 11 workersand serious injury of 17 others. the deepwater horizon had frequent issueswith maintenance that were never taken too seriously. internal bp documents show that bp engineershad concerns as early as 2009 that the metal casing that bp wanted to use might collapseunder high pressure. according to a number of rig workers, it wasunderstood that workers could get fired for raising safety concerns that might delay drilling. preliminary findings from bp's internal investigationindicated several serious warning signs in
the hours prior to the blowout. equipment readings indicated gas bubblinginto the well, which could signal impending trouble. the heavy drilling mud in the pipes initiallyheld down the gas. a house energy and commerce committee statementin june 2010 noted that in a number of cases leading up to the explosion, bp appears tohave chosen riskier procedures to save time or money, sometimes against the advice ofits staff or contractors. if you ignore enough warnings, you’ll eventuallypay the price and that is exactly what happened to bp.
loss of life, loss of profit, loss of reputationand the single biggest environmental catastrophe in recent history. that’s a pretty high price to pay for greed. 2. highland towers, selangor, malaysia at 1:35 pm, on december 11, 1993, a landslidewith the force of 200 jumbo jets slammed into the foundations of block one of the highlandtowers apartment complex. the highland towers complex consisted of three12-story residential buildings built at the base of a steep hill just outside of malaysia’scapital city, kuala lumpur.
the retaining walls and drainage system hadbeen poorly designed, and maintenance was pretty much non-existent. the situation grew more dangerous when anotherdevelopment company began construction on a ridge just above highland towers. the land was stripped and exposed to erosion,and some of the drainage pipes were blocked with branches. ten days of non-stop rain put an enormousamount of pressure on the pipes. at various points on the hill, the pipes burst,and the water content of the soil rose to dangerous levels.
eventually, a landslip took down a large retainingwall. a colossal one hundred thousand square metersof mud slid into block one, carrying it forward and eventually snapping it. three people were pulled out alive on thefirst day, but 12 days of frantic searching failed to unearth any more survivors. in the aftermath, 48 bodies were recovered. block two and block three were evacuated andstand empty to this day, like grim, overgrown tombstones. 1.
twin towers, new york city, usawithout a doubt, one of the most terrifying building disasters in recent memory is thecollapse world trade center, on september 11, 2001. the twin towers were masterfully engineeredusing lightweight steel, a central core, and an egg-crate design creating a redundant structure. in other words, if one column or support wereto fail, another would take its place. what’s more, each building was made to handle5,000 tons of lateral wind-load. the weight of the jets didn’t come closeto overcoming the strength of these perimeter columns.
the real problem proved to be the 90,000 gallonsof burning jet fuel that sent plumes of black smoke trailing into the sky over new yorkcity. the fire itself didn’t melt the steel columnsholding up the building; it only weakened them. and, though reduced to 50 percent of theirprevious strength due to the temperature of the inferno, the columns were still capableof holding up the building. the real issue came down to the uneven temperatureof the fire, which distorted the steel on one side of skyscraper. the stress proved too much, and eventuallythe floors buckled and began a domino collapse,
pancaking down one on top of the other. each tower weighed 500,000 tons. and it took just ten seconds for these immensebuildings to collapse, hitting the ground at a staggering 124 mph. despite the fact that there were no specificengineering flaws involved in the design of the twin towers, engineers continue to studythe buildings to learn more about redundant design and progressive collapse; and mostimportantly, with the aim of formulating life-saving safety and evacuation procedures in the future.
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