What makes successful structures and technologies so awe-inspiring is that it was mere mortals who figured out how to put them together. What makes the failures so horrifying is that from these same mortals we demand unattainable infallibility. Behold: The Biggest! The coolest! Simply the most awe-inspiring feats of engineering you’ll ever have to drive a full five miles out of your way just to get around.
1. The Big Dig
Bostonians have suffered for 12 years through the Central Artery/Tunnel Project (a.k.a. the Big Dig), the largest highway project ever attempted.
All told, the project uses enough concrete to build six sidewalks side by side from Boston to San Francisco. And wouldn’t that be useful!
They’ve removed enough dirt to fill Foxboro Stadium 15 times. That’s wasteful. They should fill it once, leaving the rest to bury George Wendt.
The tunnel under the Fort Point Channel had to go under a waterway, a bridge, and a railroad yard, and over an existing subway line.
The ground by the Fort Point Channel was too loose to support any digging. Workers first had to pump the mud full of calcium chloride and water to firm it up, then pipe coolant into the soil directly in front of the tunnel mouth to freeze it solid…
…then they’d drill through five feet of frozen soil, build the tunnel forward five more feet, and repeat the process.
The Big Dig had to relocate 29 miles of utility lines to make way for 5,000 miles of new fiberoptic cable and 200,000 miles of phone cable (enough to encircle Kelly Osbourne twice).
A. Since much of Boston used to be harbor, backfilled over 400 years with soil, excavations have collapsed. So…
B. …workers dig trenches in the bedrock, up to 120 feet.
C. They reinforce the trench by pumping it full of slurry, a mixture of clay and water, and dropping in steel beams.
D. Then they pump in concrete, which forms a wall to hold up streets and buildings while they tunnel underneath.
At press time the Big Dig is already $11 billion over budget. No, that’s not a typo. Remember, this is a job attempted by people who can’t pronounce the word car. The project burns through a mind-blowing $3 million a day and employs 5,000 people. Even though the federal government is footing 60 percent of the bill, this puts the overall price tag for each and every Massachusetts taxpayer at about $3,000.
When the Fort Point portion was done, it took 110 concrete columns secured to the bedrock to keep it all from collapsing on the subway line only six feet below, thereby granting Red Sox fans an extension on their miserable existences.
The Grand Scheme
What the hell are those kids doing down there?
Navigating through Beantown always meant driving on the 40-year-old Green Monster, a confusing, rickety elevated artery more congested than Ted Kennedy’s colon. Like the other Green Monster, it’s a monument to ineptitude, heartbreak, and failure.
A. The plan was to replace half the old highway with tunnels 10 lanes wide…with underground interchanges…under downtown Boston…without screwing up traffic.
B. They also built a new 10-lane bridge over the Charles River that just happens to be the widest suspension bridge ever constructed.
C. To make things interesting, they’re extending the Massachusetts Turnpike four miles—all the way through downtown to Logan Airport—with tunnels under South Boston and Boston Harbor.
D. The first link in this entire chain, the four-lane Ted Williams Tunnel (named for the famous ballplayer/human slushie) was finished in 1995. That’s one down…
Blunder Construction
Saluting America’s most memorable crumbling pieces of crap.
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
Nicknamed “Galloping Gertie” for its tendency to twist in the wind, the bridge became the freak show of Tacoma, drawing herds of people to witness her gyrations and ride her. Engineers had chosen not to reinforce the span against high winds, and on November 7, 1940 a mere 42 mph breeze caused ol’ Gert to rock so violently that cement waves as high as 28 feet rippled across the span, which snapped and collapsed into Puget Sound. (Luckily, three people got off just before it fell.)
U.S. Industrial Alcohol Company Molasses Tank
On January 15, 1919, a storage tank holding 2.5 million gallons of molasses exploded, creating a 15-foot tidal wave of sweetness that rushed at 35 mph through downtown Boston, leaving everything brown and sticky like a Mexican restaurant men’s room. Apparently, the tank wasn’t built to withstand fermentation, which had occurred as the temperature rose 40 degrees in three days. The Great Molasses Flood knocked down several buildings and an elevated train line and drowned 21 unfortunate (and evidently slow) people.
Hyatt Regency Skywalks
A dance contest at a Kansas City hotel on July 17,1981 ended with a thud when two skywalks collapsed, leaving 114 people dead and 200 more injured. The cause? The architects had demanded that the skywalks look “thin and airy,” so they, like you, were equipped with an undersize rod and nut. Engineers attached rods from the lower to the upper skywalk (instead of to the ceiling), expecting one nut to support the weight of both. It didn’t.—Laura Leu
2. The P-36 Oil Rig
This rig was the biggest in the world—until March 15, 2001, when a gas leak sparked three explosions, tearing the pontoons that kept it afloat.
The 40-story tall P-36 weighed more than 31,000 tons.
There were 175 people working on the rig. Ten were killed in the explosion, but the others were all evacuated by helicopter.
Seawater flooded in, and the rig began to list at a 30-degree angle. Support ships frantically pumped compressed air into the pontoons to try to force the water out.
When the water turned choppy, the rig capsized, plunging 4,400 feet to the ocean floor off Brazil.
Each day, the P-36 pumped 80,000 barrels of Saudi coffee.
All told, the Brazilian oil company Petrobras (owners of the rig) lost about $500 million.
Instead of legs, a semisubmersible rig like the P-36 uses a huge anchoring/mooring system to float on the surface, allowing it to operate in water over 1,000 feet deep. Up to 12 different anchors are used to hold the rig in place.
The more well-known jack-up rigs are anchored on legs that are built up from the sea floor—but they can usually only operate in less than 350 feet of water. Semisubmersibles like the P-36 are assembled completely in dry dock. They plant it on a pair of pontoons, like a Rosie-size catamaran, and partially flood the pontoons so they sink just under the surface but are still buoyant. Then they tow the whole thing to the site.
The anchors can be raised to move the rig. Held tightly between the anchors, it holds stable
in rough water—when it’s not sinking.
Semisubmersible rigs are connected by a thick pipe to the oil deep below the seabed—it’s a dangerous, highly pressurized umbilical cord.
Drill Bits
Grind through rock like Anna Nicole Smith through Ring Dings.
A. The drill head they use is a tube surrounded by three spinning cones, with teeth made of tungsten carbide steel or industrial diamonds.
B. While the drill, well, drills, workers at the top pump a lubricant into the space between the drill and rock.
C. Pressure whisks debris out of the hole and through the tube. But they have to keep an eye on the pressure—if it builds up, the whole thing could blow out and spew death. Heads up!
Chinese Delivery! Someday…
It took hundreds of years to build the other wall in China. This one will take less than 20. Now that’s progress!
Stage One (1993 to 1997)
A cofferdam was built: Giant 77-ton trucks dumped rocks into the water until they cut off a portion of the river. Entire factories were built on-site to supply equipment. The water was drained, workers dug the dry riverbed deeper to divert the river through it,
and the dam was then reinforced with concrete.
Stage Two (Projected to finish 2003)
They started building the main dam from the other side, using the same dam approach of first building a temporary cofferdam. A giant dam power plant is currently being built alongside the dam, along with a pair of dam ship locks to move supply vessels around the dam during construction.
Stage Three (2004 to 2009)
The remaining channel of the river will be walled off with yet another cofferdam, the real dam will be extended all the way across, then some politician will cut a ribbon, and voilà! Insta-lake. Now everyone can finally crack open their fortune cookies on the skulls of any remaining political dissenters.
3. Three Gorges Dam
When it’s completed in 2009, the Chinese will have built the largest dam in the world, with a reservoir you can see from the moon. The moon, Alice!
The finished Three Gorges Dam will be 1.2 miles wide and tower 607 feet high.
Crack addicts: Construction was so shoddy that the Chinese premier ordered much of the dam torn down and rebuilt. In 2002 a new series of fissures was discovered.
The total cost is estimated somewhere between $17 and $100 billion. (Wait—aren’t Asians supposed to be excellent at math?)
Three Gorges will eventually generate 18,200 megawatts of energy, or the equivalent of 18 nuclear plants—plenty to keep Madonna’s vibrator running for weeks.
The reservoir will be 370 miles long. That’s farther than the annoying drive from Boston to Philadelphia…with a bit less traffic.
It’ll hold 1.39 trillion cubic feet of water—150 billion more than Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead, enough to flood New Jersey to a depth of 6.7 feet.
Workers are pouring a full 35 million cubic yards of cement, which would be enough to lay a 16-foot-wide highway across the U.S.…more than 10 times.
Corruption is also rising, with 230 cases of embezzlement and $57 million vanishing, leading to a death sentence for one official.
The builders are taking out 133 million cubic yards of earth and dumping 38 million cubic yards of stone back in. They’re erecting 309,662 tons of metal structures (enough for 280 billion paper clips), using 390,108 tons of reinforcing bars (which could make 1.29 billion Slinkys—we can do this all day, people) and 2.5 million square feet of leakproof concrete walls.
The dam will manage flooding on the Yangtze River, which has killed over 300,000 people in the past century, while supplying electricity for an underdeveloped region.
Ships will be able to travel 1,500 miles inland, opening up a market of 380 million people. (Egg roll in 30 minute or money back!)
But where did they put all those people? The Chinese claim that the thousands who have moved “enjoy a better life, thanks to the assistance of the government.” OK, then!
On the other hand, human rights groups claim that Chinese police are relocating people by force. One Chinese government official admitted that if they can’t move everyone, they’ll just “have to use floodwater to force the people out.”
One slight environmental problem: Flooding all those towns and factories will release untold amounts of toxic waste that’s now buried on dry land. In addition, experts have estimated another one billion tons of industrial and human waste will be dumped into the reservoir each year. Everybody in the pool!
An estimated 123 different sources of radioactive debris will also be flooded. Um, waiter? Cancel that poached dog.
It’s the Humidity
Rising water levels will erase 13 cities and 140 towns and force 1.5 million people to move. It’s the largest resettlement ever undertaken for a civil engineering project, and the Chinese government hardly had to shoot any of them this time.
Who’s really the tallest?
It ain’t the height of your tower, it’s the rigidity of the structure. So they say…
Hint:
It’s not Canada’s CN Tower. After the currency exchange, it’s only 64 percent as tall (we never get tired of that joke). Here’s the deal: The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat measures height from the ground to the top of any architectural spires, but not antennae. To rate, it has to be an actual building, not just a giant perch-on-a-stick where you can spit on American tourists. (Sorry, Canada.) But the CN Tower does have a glass floor 1,122 feet above the ground that’s guaranteed to freak your shit right out. Which is cool.
Petronas Towers (Malaysia): 1,483 feet
Sears Tower (U.S.): 1,454 feet
Jin Mao Tower (China): 1,380 feet
Citic Plaza (China): 1,280 feet
Shun Hing Square (China): 1,260 feet
CN Tower (Canada): 1,815 feet*
Empire State Building (U.S.): 1,250 feet
4. Petronas Towers
These twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia stole the title of World’s Tallest Building from the Sears Tower in 1996. They were never apprehended.
The Petronas’ air-conditioning system, with a 30,000-ton chilled water plant, can be used to create a “pressure sandwich” to immediately contain any large fires that break out. (Chips not included.)
The towers have cores of reinforced concrete, stronger than the steel cores of the World Trade Center that collapsed under the intense heat of burning jet fuel.
The foundation is made of reinforced concrete (32,550 tons), requiring 104 supports up to 377 feet long.
Each building has the contour of an eight-point star, formed by intersecting squares at the tower bases.
They have only 88 floors (to the Sears’ 110), but these spires on top put Petronas 29 feet higher than the Sears Tower, much to Chicago’s chagrin.
A 192-foot-long enclosed skybridge connects the towers at the 41st and 42nd floors, 558 feet above the ground. Don’t cross it with a buzz.
Construction of the skybridge was a bitch. They had to hoist 493 different pieces, using winches mounted onto the 50th floors of both towers.
To avoid snapping in the wind and sending pedestrians plummeting to their messy deaths, the skybridge is mounted on enormous ball bearings, allowing it to sway back and forth. It really rocks if you play that new Nelly CD!
Who’s the longest?
Real bridges measure between their struts.
Akashi Kaikyo, Japan:
6,532 feet (completed 1998)
Great Belt (East Bridge), Denmark:
5,328 feet (completed 1998)
Humber, U.K.:
4,626 feet (completed 1981)
Jiangyin, China:
4,544 feet (completed 1999)
Golden Gate, U.S.:
4,200 feet (completed 1937)
5. Akashi Kaikyo Bridge
Completed in 1998, this is the longest suspension bridge in the world, with a main span of 6,532 feet and a total length of 12,832 feet (almost 2.5 miles).
Each cable on the bridge is made up of 36,830 wires of high-tensile steel, supporting more than 110,000 tons of bridge weight and transferring it to the towers.
All told, the bridge was made with the recommended minimum daily requirement of 199,902 tons of steel and 1.85 million cubic yards of concrete.
It would take eight Sears Towers or four Brooklyn Bridges to span the Akashi Kaikyo. But why bother?
Winds through the strait gust up to 179 mph. The Japanese Public Works Research Institute built the world’s largest wind tunnel just to test bridge models.
To install the cables, a line called a pilot hauler rope was trailed over the towers by helicopter. Then they suspended a catwalk from the rope so some crazy-ass construction guys could go up there and assemble the main cable strand by strand.
The support cables pass over two steel towers more than 600 feet above the road surface.
Amazingly, there were only six construction injuries and no deaths. Compare that to the Brooklyn Bridge, where building offed 27 people, three of whom bought it the hard way, getting the bends from working in compressed air below water level.
The towers were built by stacking 30 prefabricated steel segments on top of each other. The whole shebang was anchored with 230-foot-tall, 263-foot-across steel caissons sunk into the ocean floor and filled with concrete.
They built the thing to withstand a 8.5 Richter-magnitude earthquake. But should Godzilla wake up again, they’re fucked. It’s freakin’ Godzilla, man.
The unprecedented span cost the Japanese around $3.6 billion…that’s rotsa yen!
Paul Bibeau. Wonders of the Modern World. . February 2003.
