After the Alarm

On 13 September 1918 the railway embankment leading up to the bridge over the Merwede Canal near Weesp slid away beneath the morning express from Amersfoort to Amsterdam. Forty-one people died in the wooden carriages. The inquiry traced the failure to water trapped inside a sand embankment, and the questions it raised are remembered as the starting point of soil mechanics in the Netherlands. The narrator's voice is synthetic (AI). Selection, research, writing and checking are done by a person.

On 13 August 1935 a record storm filled the Ortiglieto reservoir above Molare in eight hours. The main dam held; a smaller secondary dam, added late in the project to close a saddle in the ridge, was overtopped and collapsed, sending the reservoir down the Orba valley through Molare and the Borgo of Ovada. At least 111 people died, and every one of the twelve men charged was cleared in 1938 on the grounds that the rain was unforeseeable. The narrator's voice is synthetic (AI). Selection, research, writing and checking are done by a person.

The longest cantilever span ever attempted was bending in the summer of 1907, and the men on it could see it. A telegram that said stop reached the wrong office. At half past five on 29 August the south half went into the St. Lawrence in fifteen seconds, killing 75 men. Nine years later the rebuilt bridge dropped its centre span and killed 13 more. The narrator's voice is synthetic (AI). Selection, research, writing and checking are done by a person.