Italian Bureaucrats Convicted Over Infrastructure Collapse

The Morandi Bridge, which was located in Genoa, Italy, collapsed in 2018, resulting in the deaths of 43 people. Former Italian motorway boss among 32 convicted over Genoa bridge tragedy

The former head of Italian motorway operator ‌Autostrade per l'Italia was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Thursday for his role in a disaster that killed 43 people when a bridge collapsed near the city of Genoa in 2018.

Giovanni Castellucci was among 32 people convicted over the collapse of the Morandi bridge which sent vehicles plunging onto warehouses and a riverbed beneath the flyover during a summer storm.

At least some of the convictions are under appeal.

There isn't a lot of info, but the two sides of the debate seem to be that the collapse was either caused by the initial design, or the lack of maintenance. From my point of view, both can be true at the same time.

Here is a post from the 357 Magnum Archive: Everything Needs Maintenance – The Morandi Bridge Collapse. That post includes a link to a video of the explosive demolition of the remaining bridge structure, in preparation for new construction, and some info on the design of the new bridge.

This post contains more information on the replacement bridge. 357 Magnum Archive: Genova San Giorgio Viaduct Replaces Collapsed Bridge In Genoa, Italy

Some infrastructure collapse is clearly the result of negligence. The Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh, which collapsed on 28 January 2022, had received numerous warnings in the form of reports, photos, etc. before it collapsed. The bureaucrats and politicians ignored all the warnings, because maintaining infrastructure isn't sexy. It doesn't lend itself to ceremonies, and news stories. But it does keep people safe, and allow modern life to continue.

Some infrastructure can collapse as the result of a fire, such as the I-85 Bridge Collapse in Atlanta, or other external cause.

Maintenance you can plan for. Random acts of the universe, you cannot.

I'm not sure if these convictions in Italy represent Justice, or just the desire of the public to hold someone accountable, even if they aren't really the right person. I would like to see an incentive to make maintaining this stuff more likely, or we will continue to see bridges collapse, and dams collapse, and more types of infrastructure failure.

Liulan Reservoir Dam Failure in China

China apparently has quite a few dams that were built during the 1950s, that are not up to modern standards. Watch: Typhoon Maysak breaks dam wall in China, kills 2 and forces thousands to evacuate

Tropical Storm Maysak, initially brought days of extreme rainfall across the country's southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region. But now, the typhoon has triggered a massive flood that claimed two lives, affecting about 55,000 people in Nanning and forcing around 48,000 of the city's residents to evacuate

The dam was breached on 6 July.

Maysak has triggered multiple reservoir emergencies, increased river levels above warning levels and flooded several villages across Guangxi.

Some info on the dam. Liulan Reservoir: A medium-sized reservoir located in Hengzhou City, Nanning.

The construction of the Liulan Reservoir hub project began in August 1958 and was largely completed by 1960. A hydropower station was added at the dam's toe in 1974. In August 2024, the Nanning Municipal Government Service Bureau issued an approval regarding the implementation plan for the standardized management creation of Liulan Reservoir in Hengzhou City . In 2025, the Liulan Reservoir Irrigation District Continuation and Modernization Renovation Project was also accelerating its progress, with a total estimated investment of 382.53 million yuan for the project.

Translation: They realized that the dam need improvements, and began work. That work was scheduled to be complete in 2027, but they didn't make it.

I can't find the reference now, but I read somewhere that China has a large number of infrastructure projects done in the early days of communist regieme, that were not really engineered. That process continued for a long time. They are now dealing with infrastructure, in some parts of the country, that are not what we would consider safe.

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region is in the south of China, with a coast on the Beibu Gulf (off the South China Sea). It shares a border with Vietnam

NOW: A devastating situation is unfolding as Liulan Reservoir collapses following heavy rainfall from Typhoon Maysak in Hengzhou, Nanning, Guangxi, China. pic.twitter.com/vyuQn5nuyl

— Weather Monitor (@WeatherMonitors) July 6, 2026

The Dam Collapse that Didn't Happen

Since there was no catastrophe, this story didn't make much news, or I didn't see much about it, in the news. From Madalyn Buursma at WLNS Lansing: Water levels at Cheboygan dam stabilized

This was a story that was all too similar to the Edenville Dam collapse on 19 May 2020.

A series of storms dumping a lot of rain upstream of the dam. The spillways not in the best shape. The powerhouse not able to pass water through the turbines. The water got withing a few inches (5?) of overtopping the dam. Emergency crews brought in pumps to aid in getting water out of the reservoir.

The power house, which could pass a lot of water through the turbine, had been closed since 2023 when a fire in a nearby factor had caused the powerhouse to be shutdown. In what has to be a product of "lessons learned" from Edenville and Sanford dams, an emergency effort was undertaken, to get the equipment tested, the generators reconnected to the electrical grid, and the powerhouse back on line.

The result: Crews restart hydroelectric turbine at Cheboygan Dam

The hydro dam at the Cheboygan Lock and Dam Complex is officially online and river water levels are dropping, according to Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division.

The announcement comes after Department of Natural Resources officials worked with Consumers Energy, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to restore a former hydro dam powerhouse. The turbine hadn’t operated since a 2023 fire.

Using the turbine to generate power allows the people managing the dam to increase water flow by 30%. Taking that amount of control away from the dam operators was never a good idea. And while low-head hydroelectric power is deemed to be to expensive today, clearly that installation is capable of generating power, which since the infrastructure is in place is clean energy. While you might not build it from scratch today, why not use it for the rest of its lifespan?

Cheboygan, Michigan is on the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula. It is on the shore of Lake Huron, at the mouth of the Cheboygan River. It is about 19 miles southeast of Mackinaw City, Michigan, or about a 285 mile drive north of Detroit. The dam is right in the middle of the city, about 1½ miles from Lake Huron.

With the extra effort, and some dry weather, the situation came back under control, with the water levels falling.

Teton Dam Failure - Another Look

I usually don't cover an infrastructure failure more than once, but Grady, of Practical Engineering, has a new video review of the failure. It turns out that he worked on a similar dam after the failure.

Here is a reference from The US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation factsheet on the incident. Teton Dam History & Facts. (For more links, see below the embedded video.)

On June 5, 1976, Teton Dam in southeastern Idaho catastrophically failed during its first fill. Early that Saturday morning, bulldozer operators tried in vain to plug seepage holes on the downstream face of the dam. By 11 a.m., a torrent of water ripped through the dam, releasing more than 1 million cubic feet per second.

This is the Practical Engineering video The Wild Story of the Teton Dam Failure

For more from the Bureau of Reclamation, see this link. That collects a lot of info, including some interviews with people impacted by the failure, and there is a link to the final report on what went wrong from the independent panel assigned to investigate the failure.

My previous post on the Teton Dam failure is Teton Dam Failure and Legacy - Updated

Six Years to Replace Infrastructure

On May 19th, 2020, during a storm, the Edenville dam in Michigan failed. It was a Tuesday evening. The flood waters caused the Sanford Dam to fail on the 20th.

After a lot of finger pointing, and at least one lawsuit, it was decided to rebuild those 2 dams, and repair/upgrade two more that were also impacted by the storm but did not fail.

Refilling of Sanford lake began on April 15th.

This is Jordan Mowbray's video Final Test COMPLETE… Sanford Lake Refill Starts in DAYS! - Drone -Dam Collapse

When the plans were first announced to rebuild the dams, I was disappointed that they would not be hydroelectric generators, but that would have made permitting more complicated. They are only for flood control, and creating recreational lakes.

California Hydroelectric Failure on Friday the 13th

Do we have a fear of Friday the 13th? From The Sacramento Bee: Workers rescued after pipe break at Northern California powerhouse. At least there is no threat to the public.

New Bullards Bar Reservoir is one of the many flood-control/water supply reservoir in Northern California. It is not too far from the Oroville Reservoir. (See the video below for the map)

The incident occurred just before 3 p.m. at the plant’s penstock, a 14-foot-diameter, high-pressure pipe that carries water roughly five miles from New Bullards Bar Dam to the powerhouse along the Yuba River, according to the Yuba Water Agency, which operates the reservoir and powerhouse. Officials said the pipe burst during testing of a new protective valve. Contractors have been upgrading the penstock and tunnel since September.

There were contractors working on the penstock at the time of the failure. Five people had to be rescued by helicopter. The butterfly valve is one of the ways they can control waterflow into the New Colgate Powerhouse, near Colgate, California.

This powerhouse went into service in 1969. The fact that they were working on it is encouraging. At least they haven't been ignoring the infrastructure.

This is the Blancolirio video Colgate Penstock Failure! Friday the 13th of Feb 2026

Which Is More Disturbing, A Deliberate Attack or Crumbling Infrastructure?

Either way things are not good in Berlin. Berlin power cut leaves tens of thousands without electricity until Thursday

I didn't call it a terror attack, in part because the police are still investigating, and well, it would be an overstatement.

A fire broke out on Saturday, damaging the city’s power infrastructure and prompting a police investigation into suspected arson.

Thousands of residents in large parts of southwest Berlin have been affected.

Temperatures in Berlin are hovering around freezing, and they were expecting snow.

‘Power is expected to be restored to Berlin-Lichterfelde late in the evening on 3 January 2026.

‘Power is expected to be restored to all customers on Thursday afternoon, 8 January 2026.’

So you have a critical infrastructure component that is subject to attack, causing a multiple-day outage. You can't have technological civilization without electricity. Lights. Heat. Communications.

I wonder if they will do anything to harden the infrastructure or build some kind of redundancy. No, they won't do that. That would involve proper systems design, and no one does that. No one in politics certainly.

Infrastructure Rebuild in Michigan

When we build infrastructure, we don't do too bad as a technology-using species. We shouldn't wait for a disaster to fix things, but it often seems like that is all we do.

On 19 May 2020 at 17:46 EDT following a heavy rain storm, the earthen embankment of the Edenville Dam failed by way of static liquefaction. (See this excerpt from a video by Practical Engineering on static liquefaction; it is queued up to the relevant portion of the video.) The dam failure released enough water to overtop the Sanford Dam 16 kilometers downstream. While that dam was damaged it did not breach.

After some legal wrangling, bureaucratic finger pointing, and other nonsense, plans were put in place to replace the Edenville Dam, the Sanford Dam, the Smallwood Dam, and the Tobacco River Dam. A couple were damaged, all had been rated as being in very bad shape before the disaster, but politicians don't like to deal with infrastructure. It isn't flashy, and doesn't really help them buy votes from anyone. And so it is all too often replaced or repaired only after a disaster.

It is too complicated to relate the entire history of these dams, but the full video from Practical Engineering, not just the portion highlighted above, isn't a bad place to start.

This is Jordan Mowbray's video Edenville Dam Emergency Spillway Work Rapid Progress- Earthen Embankment - Dam Drone - Dam Collapse. Shows some of the current state of the rebuild of the dam.

If You Have Not Bothered to Patch Software Since 2018...

You deserve whatever problems come your way. FBI warns of Russian hackers exploiting 7-year-old Cisco flaw

While some of this problem dates to 2021, the underlying issue was fixed in 2018.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned that hackers linked to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) are targeting critical infrastructure organizations in attacks exploiting a 7-year-old vulnerability in Cisco devices.

The FBI's public service announcement states that the state-backed hacking group, linked to the FSB's Center 16 unit and tracked as Berserk Bear (also known as Blue Kraken, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, and Koala Team), has been targeting Cisco networking devices using CVE-2018-0171 exploits to breach organizations worldwide.

Critical infrastructure that can't be bothered about network security? Someone needs to be fired. Probably someone in the C-suite with the title of CFO.

Rebuilding Infrastructure

After the failure of the Edenville and Sanford dams in Michigan in May of 2020, Jordan Mowbray took a page out of Juan Browne's book and started documenting the rebuilding efforts.

Secord Dam was determined to be at risk of the same kind of failure, and so a lot of rebuilding was required. The work on the Secord dam was halted in 2024, after completion of the emergency spillway, because of a lawsuit filed against Four Lakes Task Force, the organization created to own the 4 dams after the disaster. (2 dams failed, 2 were either damaged or deemed to be in need of repair. There may be more dams in the mix.) That lawsuit was completed, and the work on rebuilding the main spillway was restarted.

This is Jordan Mowbray's video Secord Dam WORK has RESTARTED! HUGE Progress! - Drone - Dam Collapse

Here are a few links to prior posts on the whole situation.

• The Failure of Edenville Dam and the Cascade Failure of Sanford Dam
• 2020 Michigan Dam Failures: Forensic Report
• We Do a Fair Job With Infrastructure When We Don't Ignore It

A Story of a Bridge That Didn't Collapse

Infrastructure is still interesting. Well, it is interesting to me anyway.

The Washington Bridge in Rhode Island crosses Seekonk River from Providence to East Providence. It carries Interstate-195. Due to the problems uncovered in an inspection, the westbound span of the bridge was closed on December 11, 2023. (That is not a typo; the bridge has been closed more than a year.) There is a "rush" effort to demolish the impacted portions and get a contract to replace the bridge.

As Grady points out in the first video, this is basically a win. Sure, it would have been nice to replace the bridge without it being under emergency conditions, but the bridge did not fall down. No one was injured or killed. Usually when I write about bridges, it is because something has failed catastrophically.

This first video is from Practical Engineering. This Bridge’s Bizarre Design Nearly Caused It To Collapse. This video goes into the design of the bridge (it was a 1950s bridge built to coexist with a historic bridge.) How the design decisions made inspections difficult, and what eventually happened. It is a 20 minute video.

This is a video from YouTube channel Casey Jones - Professional Engineer titled Broken for Years! - Washington Bridge in Rhode Island. Casey Jones has some issues with the folks in charge of bridge safety in Rhode Island. This is a video that covers some statements by RIDOT, as well as analysis of vibration and movement patterns in the bridge. Is RIDOT lying to people? You judge. It is a 19 minute video.

What It Takes to Rebuild Infrastructure

People don't like to maintain infrastructure. Build a bridge, or whatever, and politicians will line up to have a dedication and say, "See what good things I am doing for the community!"

But every bridge, dam, or road, ever built needs to be maintained, and will eventually need to be replaced. That is too often ignored, until there is a disaster. And funds are almost never put aside for that replacement, even when they do fund the maintenance.

On 19 May 2020, shortly before dark the Edenville Dam in Michigan failed. Shortly after that, the dam downstream from Edenville, the Sanford Dam also failed. In the aftermath of the disaster two other dams were determined to be in serious need of repair. Actually, the need for repairs was well known even before the disaster. Suits and counter suits had started before the dams collapsed. The owner of the dams wanted to drain the lakes due to the risk. The state didn't want them to do so because of the impact on the environment. After the disaster more legal action was taken.

This video from Jordan Mowbray was posted on the 6th of April. Sanford Dam Progress! - High Water Flowing Through Dam! - Earthen Embankment - Drone -Dam Collapse. It shows the current state of the dam rebuild, and the associated park that was built. It is a 14 minute video, but I found most of the interesting bit was in the first half.

If you look at Jordan Mowbray's channel you will see that there is no progress on the rebuild of the Edenville dam. That is because about halfway through the reconstruction, a lawsuit was filed. That was resolved in March. Judge throws out Michigan home owners' lawsuits against Four Lakes Task Force. As soon as that ruling was handed down, The Four Lakes Task Force, the organization that has become responsible for the dams and the reconstruction effort, filed (or refiled) all of their paperwork with the state, and got approvals from all the regulators to restart construction of the dam.

There are some interesting videos at the YT channel above about what was done prior to the lawsuit, but I will only reference one. This video shows how the earthen embankment was reinforced with a Cement/Bentonite Cutoff wall. GIANT TRENCHER! Edenville Dam Earthen Embankment Soil Cement Bentonite Cutoff - Drone - Dam Collapse. It is a 5 minute video. Bentonite, in its various forms, is used in different waterproofing applications, such as sealing the outside of below-grade walls.

Is NYC Falling Apart?

There were 2 stories that I didn't see. I should probably pay more attention to "general news," but so much of it is insane.

The first is about exploding sidewalks. Caught on video: NYC manhole explosion causes sidewalk to buckle.

The sidewalk exploded, throwing bits of concrete up into the air. No one was hurt. (The embedded video below includes the security camera video of the event.) That happened on Friday the 13th of September.

Then a contractor drilled a hole through the ventilation duct of The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, that connects Midtown Manhattan with Queens under the East River. This caused the tunnel to be shut down. The embedded video below also contains a section on what that leak looked like, before they got it fixed. NYC river water floods into Queens Midtown Tunnel, snarling traffic and terrifying drivers.

MTA CEO Janno Lieber said a city-funded private contractor caused the damage while drilling to find pylons for the East River greenway and that the hole in the roof was 2½ inches in diameter, according to Fox News.

That happened on September 4th.

This is the Cash Jordan video NYC Sidewalks are Exploding… Why?

Neglect is the real thing that we're fighting against here.

Taum Sauk Dam Failure

I don't usually cover the same event twice, but it has been a couple of years since I had an infrastructure post on the 2005 Taum Sauk dam failure. And I really like Practical Engineering videos, because I like the way Grady Hillhouse explains things for those of use who aren't engineers.

This is Practical Engineering's video The Wild Story of the Taum Sauk Dam Failure.

That previous post on this incident is Taum Sauk Dam Failure, at the archives. You will find the Dam Failures case study for Taum Sauk, and a link the PBS review of the event on the 10th anniversary of the failure.

We Do a Fair Job With Infrastructure When We Don't Ignore It

The problem is, we ignore it. Building a bridge or a dam is often a big deal. Politicians talk about how great this project will make things. But maintenance is not so exciting, and we tend to ignore the fact that every bit of infrastructure we build will eventually need to be rebuilt, replaced, or demolished. We could, if we were smart, start saving for that expense the day the bridge/dam/whatever is completed. Politicians are not that smart, and so funds for completely foreseeable expenses are never available. Almost never.

On 19 May 2020, shortly before dark the Edenville Dam in Michigan failed. Shortly after that, the dam downstream from Edenville, the Sanford Dam failed. In the aftermath of the disaster two other dams were determined to be in serious need of repair. Actually, the need for repairs was well known even before the disaster. Suits and counter suits had started before the dams collapsed. The owner of the dams wanted to drain the lakes due to the risk. The state didn't want them to do so because of the impact on the environment. After the disaster more legal action was taken.

The Secord Dam, one of the 4 dams in the system that experienced 2 failures that day, was also in need of serious repair. After the Edenville disaster, the money was suddenly available for repairs to the dams in question. You can find the info on that dam repair at The Secord Dam page of the Four Lakes Taskforce site.

Or you could just watch the video below.

Of course that isn't the end of the story, since a new lawsuit has been filed forcing construction on the dams to be suspended. (Construction in the video will be suspended in October if something doesn't change, leaving 4 dams NOT COMPLETELY up to par. Great. Construction suspended on 4 mid-Michigan dams

The suspension is due to an ongoing legal battle that stopped work on the Edenville Dam back in June.

Now, work on the Smallwood Dam will be suspended in September. Work on the Secord Dam will be suspended in October, and work on the Sanford Dam will be suspended in January.

Homeowners in the area are objecting to the size of the assessments. Several properties, which are not buildable and have a market value of $5000, have each received an assessment of $33,000.

This is Jordan Mowbray's Secord Dam EMERGENCY SPILLWAY complete! Water Re-Directed - Drone - Dam Collapse #construction #dam

At least the engineers seem to have gotten things right.

Why Hydrogen as Energy Storage is Dumb

Hydrogen as "The Answer" to how to fix the problems with wind and solar is not the answer you think it is. Germany, the US, and the UK are all investing in the hydrogen, but there is a small problem.

The Hydrogen economy is basically an expensive way to apologize for the continued use of fossil fuels.

If you build a hydrogen power generating plant, that just happens to run on natural gas until you get your hydrogen supply sorted out, you can claim you doing Green Energy™.

This is the Sabine Hossenfelder's video “The most dumb thing" for energy storage: Hydrogen. The video is about 8 minutes long.

Neglect of Maintenance and a Bridge Collapse

On 28 January 2022 at 6:37 a.m. the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed. No one died, but several people were severely injured. It isn't fair to say that it collapsed without warning, because many years of bridge inspection reports described what was wrong, how it was getting worse, and what should have been done to fix it. Nothing was done.

Neglect? Maybe that should be criminal negligence. Though I doubt anyone who decided that "we have more important stuff to spend money on this year," like parades, and virtue signalling, will be held accountable in this life.

From 2005 onward, recommendations from inspection reports to repair parts of the bridge, didn't fall off the list, they just kept being repeated by each new inspection, year after year. Pittsburgh just didn't fix it.

17 years is a long time to ignore failing infrastructure. Every inspection report starting in 2007 specified the critical structural members of the bridge that were being corroded, and need to be repaired. The reports also called out drainage problems - clogged drain gates. These were also ignored, which accelerated the problems.

This is a good report on the collapse from Practical Engineering. This Bridge Should Have Been Closed Years Before It Collapsed.

Maintaining infrastructure is thankless work. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a really rewarding career. Inspections involve a lot of time out in the field seeing cool structures up close. And repair projects are often interesting challenges for contractors. But they’re not rewarding in the same way that designing and building new stuff can be. No one holds a press conference and cuts a big ribbon at the end of a bridge inspection or structural retrofit. Building a new structure is not just an achievement in its own right; it’s a commitment to take good care of it for its entire design life, and then to rehabilitate, or replace, or even close it when it’s no longer safe for the public.

This is the Practical Engineering video This Bridge Should Have Been Closed Years Before It Collapsed

The NTSB report on the collapse can be found at the following link. Collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge.

The report includes 3 videos. The 2nd video in the list, is partly an animation of the collapse of the bridge as recreated by the engineering forensics team. If you're interested in such things, it is only 8 minutes. It includes photos of the rusted portions of the bridge from prior years inspection reports.

Rust Never Sleeps is also the name of an album.

The Ongoing Problems With Wind Power

From REnews we get details on a suit. AEP sues GE over ‘defective turbines’

This article is focused on a lawsuit directed at GE's wind turbine division, but GE is not the only manufacturer that is having problems with the longevity of their turbines. GE does seem to be having more problems than their competitors, based on what the filing states.

American Electric Power Company, Inc. (AEP) is power generating company serving 11 state: Ohio, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

“Within only two to three years of commercial operation, the GE wind turbine generators have exhibited numerous material defects on major components and experienced several complete failures, at least one turbine blade liberation event, and other deficiencies,” alleged AEP.

The filing alleges that at the date of the complaint, 28 June 2024, a “significant portion of the wind turbine generators have completely failed or have otherwise been rendered inoperable, requiring immediate repair”.

I would really like video of that "blade liberation event," but I can't find it. One wind turbine, not belonging to AEP, just had a blade drop to the ground and shatter. Wind turbine blades do fail, sometime spectaularly, but there is usually not much excitement. They shred themselves due to manufacturing problems, and the turbine stops.

I can't find details on the specific problems that the GE turbines are experiencing, though apparently GE is also suing a bearing manufacturer. Cracked bearings in the gearboxes are one of the principle problems experienced by wind turbines, causing failure of the gearboxes. (See the video linked below.)

If you install a piece of industrial equipment expecting to get a 20 year lifespan, and that equipment fails after two years, you are going to be in trouble with respect to return on your investment. If you're a power company, counting on those generators, you are also going to have a problem with your customers.

Here is a video on the subject. The Problem with Wind Energy from Real Engineering. I have queued it up to the point where it is talking about the gearboxes in the wind turbines and their failure rate.

These heavy, 15 tonne gearboxes have been a major source of frustration for power companies. Although they have been designed to have a 20 year lifespan, most don't last 7 years without extensive maintenance.

While I have it queued up to the section on gearboxes, and their failure. The entire video, which is almost 17 minutes long, is a good explanation of the problem with wind power. Not just the problems with the gearboxes, but problems with getting the generated power to match the grid under changing wind speeds.

There are other videos, talking about the problems of composite airfoil manufacture of wind-turbine blades, and what causes them to fail, and videos on the difficulties of recycling the blades, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

So, is wind energy free? That doesn't even include the costs, financial and environmental, of disposing of wind-turbine blades, the mining of rare earth metals for permanent magnet generators, a market currently dominated by China, the epoxy and other compounds used to create the blades, etc.

A Bridge That Didn't Fall Down

Maybe that should be, "It didn't fall down yet." It will still be closed for months due to a crack that was found. Gunnison bridge failure means 300 mile detours, with no estimate for repairs, reopening

Inspectors don't yet know the extent of damage to a bridge on U.S. Highway 50, when repairs might begin or how long local residents will have to wait to regain use of this critical route between Gunnison and Montrose, transportation officials said on Friday morning.

300 miles is a long way for a detour. Even more problematic is the interuption to emergency services. It is a heavily used route for truck traffic in and through that area, but most of that can be rerouted easily.

A crack near the midpoint of the bridge, which was built in 1963, was first observed during an inspection last week. A more thorough inspection found the visible crack extended 3 to 4 inches, but ultrasonic testing on Thursday showed the crack extended through the steel.

At this point it isn't even clear when inspections will be complete, let alone what it will take to fix the bridge, or whether it will need replacing.

A Container Ship Hit a Bridge, and No One (in America) Noticed

Can we PLEASE stop with the conspiracy theories? Container ship hits bridge in south China, killing 5 and knocking section of roadway into the water | AP News

Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard about MV Dali and the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. If you are tuned into social media at all you might have heard about the barge colliding with the bridge in Oklahoma. Because OMG!!! A boat hit something! We must be under attack!

It couldn't possibly be that boats hit things, and that occasionally bridges fall down.

Five people died after a large container ship hit support pillars for a bridge over a river in southern China early on Thursday, sending a section of the roadway and five vehicles crashing down.

Three small trucks, a bus and a scooter fell off the bridge south of the city of Guangzhou, authorities said. The bus, the scooter and one of the trucks landed inside the empty ship, and the other two trucks fell into the water.

That happened in February.

Boats hit things. Bridges fall down. Dams fail. That is life. If you want the world to be absolutely safe, you might try holding your breath, because that has about as much chance of working as anything else does.