Crews have begun the delicate task of removing the superstructure of the old Tappan Zee Bridge. Special cranes are lowering part of the center span that weighs 10 million pounds onto a barge, a process that will take several hours.The bridge was retired last fall when the replacement Mario M. Cuomo Bridge opened. For months, sections of roadway near the shore on either side of the Hudson River have been removed. The next phase will see demolition of the cantilever bridge which has been cut into five sections.The steel will be cleaned and used as artificial reefs on Long Island.In the meantime, construction continues on the new $4 million, twin span bridge. Currently, all traffic is being routed onto what what will eventually be the Rockland County-bound span. The second, Westchester County-bound crossing is scheduled to open before the end of the year.---------- </s> It's safe to assume that motorists who regularly traversed the old Tappan Zee Bridge are thrilled to no longer be driving across it.

And considering the bridge's notoriety, it's also safe to assume that many of these motorists would like to see the Tappan Zee destroyed, annihilated, blown to smithereens in a most spectacular and most public fashion. (It finally closed in October 2017 after the first span of a replacement bridge opened to traffic.)

Instead, massive chunks of the "functionally obsolete" cantilever bridge, which for over 60 years carried seven narrow lanes of the New York State Thruway across the Hudson River 25 miles north of New York City, are now being dismantled, piece by piece, and loaded into barges. From there, the bridge segments will be given a quiet burial at sea off the coast of Long Island.

True, this drawn-out deconstruction process won't necessarily provide catharsis to the millions of motorists emotionally terrorized — so many headaches, so much anxiety — over the years by a perpetually congested and accident-prone bridge that even one of the nation's top infrastructure experts dubbed "the scary of scaries."

The Tappan Zee Bridge, will, however, provide an outmoded work of mid-20th century infrastructure with the opportunity to do good in its afterlife as part of a biodiversity-boosting artificial reef network.



Writes the New York Times:

By recycling the Tappan Zee, New York State has not only found an affordable and practical way to dispose of some of its massive parts, but is also significantly expanding a state-managed artificial reef program that aims to provide new habitats to increase the diversity of marine life, promote recreational fishing and diving and bolster economic development.

Hastily constructed on a modest budget in the 1950s, the Tappan Zee Bridge was designed to last 50 years maximum — an ill-sited quick fix. Yet as the shoulder-less bridge — at 3-miles-long, it was the longest in New York state — reached and then surpassed the 50-year mark, it began showing signs of deterioration and gained a (somewhat exaggerated) reputation for being a ticking time bomb. Because if there's anything more aggravating than being stuck in traffic, it's being stuck in traffic on a bridge that could collapse at any given moment. (Although deemed "deficient" by state transportation officials, the bridge was never officially classified as being structurally unsound.)

Later, as plans for a replacement bridge dragged on, the dreaded "hold-your-breath" bridge became much more of an obvious — and embarrassing — liability for the state. It was often cited as the "poster bridge" for crumbling infrastructure across America. For the over 130,000 daily motorists traveling between Westchester and Rockland counties, there wasn't much of an alternative.

Completed in 1955, the original Tappan Zee Bridge, which crosses the Hudson River at its second widest point, was never meant to last as long or carry as much traffic as it did. (Photo: Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

A 3-mile nightmare goes to heaven

Now that the new Tappan Zee Bridge, a $4 billion cable-stayed affair with a fancy LED lighting scheme and not enough rapid transit options, is partially open, attention has shifted to the fate of the decaying eyesore that still stands just to the south.

As New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (the new Tappan Zee Bridge is officially named after his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo), made clear at a recent news conference, even bad bridges deserve to go to bridge heaven.

Relays the Times:

'It's coming down, as you know, and it's a large structure so it begs the philosophical question: What does a bridge do in life after it is finished its life as a bridge? What is the afterlife? Is there a bridge heaven?'

'Well, there is a bridge heaven,' Mr. Cuomo continued. 'Bridge heaven is you spend all your life above the water serving people and then you go to bridge heaven' — which he added — 'is you go below the water.'

While some might argue that the Tappan Zee belongs in bridge hell, it's hard to find issue with the manner in which the bridge is being repurposed.

As the bridge continues to be taken apart in the coming months, large segments will be transported via barge to Long Island where they'll be strategically sunk at six artificial reef sites. As the Times reports, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)'s Marine Artificial Reef Program maintains 12 artificial reefs: eight in the Atlantic Ocean and two apiece in the Great South Bay and Long Island Sound. Decommissioned tugboats, barges and dinghies that once serviced the Eerie Canal as well as scrap metal and steel pipes salvaged from state transportation projects will join the old bridge parts as artificial reef material.

Transporting and sinking sections of the Tappan Zee Bridge and other materials comes with a price tag of $5 million, a cost partially covered by Tappan Zee Constructors, the private entity tasked with building the replacement bridge. Requiring 33 barges to transport an estimated 43,200 cubic yards of recycled remnants from the Tappan Zee alone, it's the largest artificial reef expansion project in state history.

Once these plus-sized hunks of concrete, steel and other materials settle into their watery graves, they'll boost marine biodiversity by providing crucial new habitat to a wide variety of marine life including sea bass, fluke, cod, blackfish, mussels and even crabs and lobsters. (All materials are cleaned before being sunk as to prevent possible environmental contamination.) The DEC notes that within time "the structure teems with sea life, creating a habitat very similar to a natural reef."

Parts of old Tappan Zee that won't be used as artificial reef-building materials will be sent to recycling center and scrap yards; some salvaged materials will even be reused in new infrastructure projects.

In addition to boats, old bridges and construction debris, New York City's old subway cars are used to build out artificial reefs. (Photo: scattered1/flickr)

A new home for 'other' New Yorkers

Some New Yorkers, including Long Island charter boat captain Joe Paradiso, believe that going the artificial reef route is the most beneficial when it comes to finding new uses for old bridges.

"Instead of going to a recycling plant or somewhere else, it's a much better use," Paradiso tells the Times, noting that the expanded reefs will not only benefit local fisherman and divers but the small, local businesses that they support including restaurants, hotels and bait and tackle stores. "Some of these reefs are just depleted and in need of more materials."

Bill Ulfelder, a scuba diver and executive director of the New York branch of the Nature Conservancy, also mentions another locally produced form of waste that's better off being sunk into the ocean than collecting rust in a junkyard: old subway cars.

"These iconic symbols of New York — subway cars and now the Tappan Zee — can keep on living," he tells the Times. "Now they're home for fishes, crustaceans and shellfish — other New Yorkers."

It's worth noting that in the process of taking down the old Tappan Zee Bridge and repurposing it into a home for undersea critters, two non-undersea critters that call the bridge home, a pair of peregrine falcons, have found themselves facing imminent displacement.



However, as the Journal News reports, the bridge's dismantling is being carried out in a most raptor-friendly manner.

Perched 400 feet above the Hudson in the old bridge's steel superstructure, the peregrines' nesting box — now protected from harm by a 100-foot buffer — will be left alone until after the chicks are hatched and safely leave the nest. And while the popular webcam that documents activity in the nesting box was removed ahead of the bridge's dismantling, experts are continuing to monitor the nest to ensure that all is safe for momma peregrine and her soon-to-hatch chicks.

In the meantime, wildlife experts have established a secondary nesting box atop a span of the new bridge, which the male falcon has reportedly been checking out. Officials hope that the male's discovery of the new nest means the pair will be encouraged to return next season, even though their old egg-laying haunt will have, by that time, vanished into thin air — or, more accurately, the bottom of the sea.

New York's Tappan Zee Bridge to live on as artificial reef

The Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River will at long last sleep with the fishes, thanks to the largest expansion of artificial reefs in N.Y. history. </s> Genoa Bridge Is Demolished, Erasing An Artifact Of Deadly Collapse

Nearly a year after a long stretch of the Morandi bridge collapsed in Genoa, Italy, a demolition team blew up the structure's remaining pylons Friday morning in a spectacular sight that local leaders say will help the city heal.

The collapse last August killed 43 people. Since then, the bridge that was once an icon of the city has served mainly as a reminder of the tragedy.

Ahead of the demolition, several thousand residents were evacuated from nearby apartment buildings and officials gathered under clear, sunny skies for a ceremony to mark the bridge's destruction.

The explosions shot spikes of dust and rubble high into the air. As charges detonated along the bridge's remaining span, blasts buckled the mammoth concrete pylons, quickly sending the whole structure crashing down and covering it with a shroud of dust.

On the ground, hydrants had been opened to spray water to try to reduce the amount of dust in the air, according to Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.

"The demolition of the east stump of Ponte Morandi has symbolic value," the Liguria regional President Giovanni Toti said. "It means that this skyline that reminds us every day of the tragedy of 14 August will no longer be there and that Genoa enters its future."

It was a sign, Toti said, that Genoa is overcoming the devastating effects of the bridge collapse.

The bridge was a vital connection in Genoa, carrying the A10 highway that emerges from a long mountain tunnel in the west and runs to the port city on the Mediterranean. The roadway is a key link between France and Italy — and it was particularly busy last August, when travelers were using it to reach holiday destinations.

Spanning a dry riverbed, railroad tracks and industrial areas, the Morandi bridge was built in the 1960s. Investigators believe poor maintenance or engineering flaws may have caused it to fail. The viaduct's steel rods were found to have badly deteriorated in the seaside air.

Genoa plans to rebuild the bridge with the help of star architect Renzo Piano — a native of the city who has waived his normally steep fee to help his hometown rebuild. When Mayor Marco Bucci announced last December, he said construction would likely take 12 months.

The design for the new bridge echoes nautical elements, with pillars that are curved like a ship's bow. Its key focal point are 43 sail-like posts, to commemorate those who lost their lives when the old bridge gave way. </s> The news stories that flooded front pages in the wake of Hurricane Irene late last month focused mostly on surging rivers, torn-up homes, downed trees, and the fate of New York City. But one story in particular caught my attention: the state of Vermont lost several of its historic covered bridges, those pleasant reminders of a bucolic North American past, beloved by so many-including, as of only recently, me. Just hours before Irene slammed into the Eastern Seaboard, my girlfriend and I were driving aimlessly around Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, filling to the brim our box of vacation memories, already bursting at the seams with scenes of sunrise in coastal Maryland and rainy hours whiled away in the American rooms of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. Partly on whim, partly because of fond childhood memories, and partly because it just seemed like a good way to organize the morning, we decided to see as many of Lancaster County's famed covered bridges as possible. By noon, when the rain started falling, I was hooked. The architectural impetus for covering a bridge has less to do with beauty than with sheer practicality. In the northeastern states and provinces of the U.S. and Canada, the arrival of the industrial revolution in the 19th century caused a massive population explosion, and a corresponding need to bridge the terrain's many rivers and streams in order to allow the free movement of people and goods across the land. Bridges made of stone, as those in Europe generally were, didn't make sense in North America, because violent temperature swings meant that the bridges would freeze and thaw and require maintenance every year. To build them instead with wood, plentiful anywhere in the Northeast, made sense. To then protect those wooden bridges with walls and a ceiling-after builders realized that such shelter would prolong a wooden bridge's lifespan tenfold, to nearly a century-made even more sense. While the existence of covered bridges can be traced back almost 3,000 years to ancient Babylon, they reached their architectural apex, and surely their greatest numbers, in 19th century North America. In Quebec alone, over a thousand covered bridges were built during the century and a half they were in vogue. But by the 1950s, stronger building materials had been developed, making it no longer necessary for builders to cover bridges in order to extend their lives and ensure that construction of new spans would be a worthy investment. Residents of towns with covered bridges were suddenly embarrassed by them, thinking the wooden structures evidence of backwardness compared to the modern steel bridges of which neighbouring towns could boast. Many bridges were demolished in the decades between when they stopped being built and the time, not so long ago, that people began to realize how special the remaining covered bridges were, and actively moved to preserve them. After that morning in Lancaster County, I began researching covered bridges, and found that there were nearly 100 still standing in the province of Quebec. I resolved that at the first opportunity I would head into the countryside to see some of them. With only minimal coaxing, I convinced two friends, Sam and Jack, to join me for a recent Sunday drive. Neither had any prior experience with covered bridges, but both are enthusiastic and willing to thoroughly immerse themselves in new things. I did sense some initial skepticism about my new obsession, though, so my friends proved an interesting experiment for observing how excitement steadily begins to grow in a bridge-hunting initiate. So how do you find Quebec's covered bridges? It's surprisingly easy. My new favourite website, www.coveredbridgemap.com, imposes the locations of Quebec's surviving ponts couverts on Google maps; by zooming in closely, you can carefully trace a route from bridge to bridge and back home. I drew up a short plan of action, including whatever historical and expository information I could find online for each of the bridges, and had Sam, acting as navigator in the passenger seat, read the directions as we went along. After getting slightly lost in Notre-Dame-de-Stanbridge, we rounded the last curve on a small dirt road and, to whoops and hollers (disproportionately mine, I admit), finally pulled up to examine our first bridge. Sam read from a brief history of the town and the bridge that I'd pulled off a local website. Built in 1884, the Des Rivières Covered B ridge is painted barn-red, the typical uniform for most North American spans. The interior is dark, all wood, weak light shining thinly through cracks in the walls and from the far end, like a short tunnel. The floor of the bridge consists of dusty wooden slats, some more stable than others, with noticeable grooves from one entrance of the bridge to the other, where vehicles have worn down the wood over the last century. Small spare boards thrust into spaces where the wall beams fall just short of their intended marks makes the construction feel spontaneous. Through a small cut-out window in one of the walls, you can watch the stream humming along, dipping below some willow trees on the bank, and disappearing from view - precisely what you would have seen in the same spot more than 125 years ago. We returned to the car, opened some lawn chairs from my trunk, and enjoyed thick slices of mango in the sun. Inside one of the next bridges we saw, someone had spray-painted in orange block letters: "VIVE L'AMOUR!" However vandalous, such an inscription is appropriate enough: another name for a covered bridge is a "kissing bridge," because young couples back in the day used the darkness of the bridge to cloak whatever heinous things young couples used to do. Even today, the dark interiors of most covered bridges continue to host the conjoined signatures of lovers past. I should probably admit that there's a bridge somewhere in Lancaster County sporting a careful engraving from my own set of Honda keys. The last stop on our route, the Balthazar Bridge in Brigham Township, was, as Jack declared, "the finale." Built in 1932, it spans a section of the Yamaska River that features a brief section of Class 3 rapids, as we learned from a group of kayakers who had just arrived from somewhere upstream. We stood on the bank throwing large sticks into the current, admiring how the water flowed smoothly over the rocks before forking around a small island and disappearing around the bend. Quebec's covered bridges, unlike New York's, don't have signs that say you can be fined $1 for driving over the bridge faster than a walk, but the idea, I think, is implicit. Ready to return to Montreal, I slowly coaxed my car over the precarious wooden slats and onto the other side, where, along the riverbank, a dozen cows sat fatly in the grass, mooing and chewing in the shade. "Oh shit, oh my God, oh shit!" So a woman cries-literally, cries-in a video that has circulated around the Internet in recent weeks, showing the collapse of her beloved Bartonsville Covered Bridge in Vermont into the raging waters of the Williams River below. The video is really sad: a few locals stand around in Hurricane Irene's fierce rains, watching the bridge-as if at the deathbed of an old friend, as if by standing guard they might prevent the inevitable. Suddenly, the bridge, built in 1870 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, crumbles into the water and is promptly swept away. While efforts have already been launched to eventually restore the Bartonsville to its proper place and glory, another YouTube video, showing the crumpled-up remains of the bridge where it washed up downstream, makes success seem unlikely. But maybe it's not even so obvious that covered bridges should be preserved at all. "Preservation is transformation," notes Roger McCain, a professor at Drexel University who has done some academic work on the economics of historical preservation, and runs an amateur website on covered bridges. If a bridge still exists with only a fraction of its original wood, is it still the same bridge? McCain believes that sometimes it doesn't even matter. "If you want to preserve something that's attractive and picturesque and lends distinction to your community, because it's either been there for a long or there once was something very much like that was there for a long time, then it makes perfectly good sense to maintain them," he says. Covered bridges can be pleasing to look at even if their historic aura is only a façade. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama has chosen this inauspicious year to "consolidate" 55 highway- and bridge-related programs in the U.S. Department of Transportation into just five stream-lined categories. That means that projects previously funded by the National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation Program will now have to compete for funds against other, admittedly more forward-looking projects under the department's new "Livability" goal. Other programs folded into this awkward category include "Recreational Trails" and "Safe Routes to School." The question begs itself: what politician would vote to divert funds from that latter program to maintain a covered bridge only a few romantics care about? Imagine the TV ad: "Barack Obama wants America's schoolchildren to plunge helplessly off cliffs. Is that change Virginia can believe in?" All the same, Professor McCain believes the impact of the federal preservation program being cut won't be nearly as destructive to the bridges as the recent floods. Besides, he says, it's really a decision local communities will have to make on their own. "A little federal money might encourage a local community to do more than they would do otherwise," he said. "But federal involvement in local issues is always political, and we can't make the whole world a museum." Sam, Jack, and I managed to get slightly lost again trying to find the highway, and were all late for various appointments we had in Montreal later in the afternoon. That didn't really matter. A day out in the country left us refreshed and fortified against whatever aggravations big-city life always promises to have in store. Perhaps even more than finding the bridges themselves, the joy, as ever, was in the hunt. Navigating unknown terrain, meeting unknown characters, turning one another on to good songs and interesting clouds - we agreed that while looking for covered bridges isn't necessarily the only way to see Quebec's countryside, it's as good an excuse as any to get out of the city on a beautiful autumn afternoon. Theoretically, you can just decide to go for an aimless drive in the country on a Sunday afternoon, but realistically, you never will. There's nothing specifically profound about the points on that map of covered bridges in Quebec. It's all about the connections you make in between. </s> Pieces of the Kosciuszko Bridge were lowered onto two barges and taken away on July 25 as part of an overall $873 million investment to replace the existing Kosciuszko Bridge with two new state-of-the-art, cable-stayed bridges. The first opened in the spring and the second is expected to debut in 2021. Steel cables were used to slowly lower the span approximately 125 feet—by an estimated 20 feet per hour—onto two barges joined together in Newtown Creek. The process lasted approximately 17 hours. </s> • A New York City subway line that was scheduled to close completely for 15 months won’t be shutting down after all, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday.
• Teams of engineers from Columbia and Cornell universities studied systems in London, Hong Kong, and Riyadh to find a cheaper – and quicker – solution that wouldn’t strand 300,000 daily commuters.
• “Smart” fiber optic cables, lidar, and “racked” cabling will be used to mitigate further damage in the rehabilitated tunnel.

When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo toured a subway tunnel nearly destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in December, he and an entourage of engineers from Columbia and Cornell Universities saw first-hand the tremendous damage that salt water can do to a century-old tunnel.

After the hurricane’s 14-foot storm surge inundated the L train’s tracks, it crippled a vital link between Brooklyn and Manhattan that carries more than 250,000 commuters every day. The only option, now more than six years later, seemed to be a complete closure of the tunnel for 15 months.

After carefully studying technologies in London, Hong Kong, and Riyadh, the team assembled by Gov. Cuomo – the de-facto leader of the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Administration – recommended a ten-fold solution that would avoid a complete shutdown.

First, it’s important to understand why the damage was so bad

New York’s subway is old. Very old.

The Canarsie Line, which now carries the L train service from 14th street in Chelsea, under the East River to Williamsburg, through Bushwick and eventually to Canarsie, began service in 1924. It’s only two tracks for its entire 10-mile length – a surprising anomaly, considering most of the system has multiple to accommodate express and local services.

Despite being the first service of New York’s 27 lines to receive an upgrade to a modern signal system, known as Communications Based Train Control, or CBTC for short, much of the electronic equipment was installed inside a concrete “bench wall” in the tunnel.

When the tunnel flooded, it got inside the wall and corroded the communications and signaling equipment.

The MTA was able to restore service following the storm, but warned for years that a complete shutdown would be necessary to remove and replace the destroyed infrastructure. In 2017, after three years of public input and several possible options, officials decided a 15-month closure beginning in April 2019 was the best course of action.

With just months until the closure was scheduled to begin, a cryptic tweet from the non-profit Transit Center foundation began to make the rounds on Thursday morning.

And an hour later, a scheduled announcement appeared on the Governor’s public schedule for 12:45 pm at his Midtown Manhattan office.

Assembled high above third avenue’s bustling traffic was the team of experts assembled by Cuomo, including the deans of Columbia and Cornell’s engineering schools alongside MTA acting chairman Fernando Ferrer and other agency officials.

Moments later, the governor would announce the cancellation of the closure that had seen Brooklyn rents plummet and businesses make contingency plans for the lost foot traffic and revenue.

The repaired tunnel will be the first of its kind in the US

Instead of replacing the cabling that’s stuck inside the concrete benchwall, contractors will instead repair any damaged portions of the wall and convert it into a walkway for emergency situations and repairs going forward. For this, they’ll use fiberglass patching that’s been used on other infrastructure projects and is a bonafide method of construction, experts said at the press conference.

New electronic equipment will be sheathed in low-smoke, fire resistant cabling and “racked” or hung from the tunnel in a way that it avoids further damage and can be easily repaired if need be. A ground wire will be placed underneath the track bed, as is currently done on some outdoor and above-ground lines.

“This is a design that has not been used in the US before,” Cuomo said. “It has been implemented in Europe, but has never been implemented in a tunnel restoration project. It uses many new innovations that are new, frankly, to the rail industry.”

Some night and weekend closures of one tube will still be necessary, the MTA said in a press release, allowing for a limited service to continue at the same time as construction.

The “de-coupling” of the infrastructure has “never been done before,” the governor added. Damaged cabling inside the benchwall will be abandoned and replaced with new electronics.

Fiber optic cables will also be installed along the entire 32,000 benchwall that can continuously monitor the tunnel for cracks or damage, before a catastrophe occurs. Lidar, a laser-like radar technology, can also be added onto trains for more thorough periodic inspections to the structure.

“This is really state of the art technology,” Lance Collins, dean of Cornell’s engineering school, said at the press conference. “This is an unusual application in that we’re using it in rehabilitation, but its proven technology.”

Other recommendations from the task force, all of which have been accepted by the MTA, include waterproof tunnel gates which can be closed in the event of high water to prevent flooding.

The technology could be rolled out to other infrastructure projects, too

The L train is far from the only piece of New York infrastructure experiencing a crisis.

The Gateway tunnel that connects New York and New Jersey via the Hudson River, which Gov. Cuomo also toured in December, is also badly in need of repair or a new tube for the critical Amtrak Northeast Corridor trains and commuter rail services. The Second Avenue Subway – a multi-decade boondoggle that only recently opened with three stops – could also use the technology, the MTA said.

“Human nature is to do what you have done that is tried and true,” said Gov. Cuomo. “No designer wants to give you a plan that hasn’t been done before, but you have to be willing to break the box.”
• New York Gov. Cuomo axes plan to shut down the L train, saves Brooklynites from commuting hell
• New York’s governor just killed a plan to shut down one of the most crowded subway lines in NYC – and people are freaking out
• New York Governor Andrew Cuomo killed a controversial plan that would have caused commuting hell for thousands of people – but it’s terrible news for people moving to the area
• People are slamming New York’s governor for taking over 2 years to come up with a plan to avoid shutting down one of NYC’s busiest subway lines </s> SEATTLE — A tunnel-boring machine has broken through a concrete wall beneath Seattle in a troubled multibillion-dollar project to replace a waterfront highway with an underground roadway.

The machine, known as Bertha, reached the end of a 1.75-mile journey Tuesday, years behind schedule. The machine broke down soon after it started drilling in 2013 and didn't crank up again until last year.

Crews will prepare the inside of the tunnel to handle double-decker lanes of highway that will replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which was damaged in a 2001 earthquake.

The $3.1 billion tunnel is scheduled to open in 2019. It was supposed to be done in 2015.

Tunnel proponents say it will allow Seattle to open up its waterfront along Puget Sound, which they say has been artificially walled off by the viaduct. Critics slammed it as an expensive vanity project. </s> Demolition experts brought down the two remaining towers of the highway bridge in dramatic fashion just after 9:30 a.m. local time (3:30 a.m. ET), making way for a new structure to be built on the site.

4,000 people were evacuated from their homes to clear the area, AFP reported, and explosives were attached to the legs and body of the bridge, which went down in about seven seconds in a flurry of smoke.

Water tanks were on hand to prevent the spread of dust after the explosion.

Italy's Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, attended the explosion, and crowds of locals watched from a safe distance.

For 10 months, the remains of the structure have stood awkwardly on the outskirts of Italy's sixth-largest city, a painful reminder of tragedy for thousands of its residents. The concrete viaduct collapsed in torrential rain in August 2018 after its cable stays gave way, throwing vehicles to the ground and killing scores of travelers. A picture taken on August 14, 2018 after the bridge collapsed. The incident shocked Italy and prompted a fierce debate about the safety of the country's infrastructure. Built in the 1960s, the Morandi Bridge was a vital link of the A10 highway that connects northwestern Italy to France, across the Polcevera river in central Genoa. It was one of the busiest bridges in the country, carrying freight and tourists to and from the port city. </s> A SECTION of a bridge connecting Babat Lamongan and Widang Tuban in East Java collapsed into the Bengawan Solo River on Tuesday, April 17, causing a number of vehicles to plunge into the water.

A video posted to Facebook shows the aftermath, with trucks visible in the water. According to a local news report, two truck drivers died in the incident.

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The bridge collapsed at around 11am Western Indonesian Time (WIB). Vehicles reported to have dropped into the river include a dump truck, a motorcycle and two small HGVs, known locally as “Truk Tronton”).

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Credit: Okan via Storyful
Large sections of the old Tappan Zee Bridge are to be sunk and used as material to build an artificial reef off the coast of Long Island.