this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2026
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There was a big indoor pool area close to where i grew up. One day the concrete ceiling just fell down because they used a steel that was eaten up by the chlorine fumes over time. A bunch of people died being trapped under the massive concrete slab. These were also highly regarded engineers who designed and built that thing.
Hmmm. That sounds like it could be what happens to those cheap apartment blocks that fall down in Florida on the regular. Sea air, steel supports...
If it's the one in Switzerland I was referring to, it wasn't some cheap construction job. It was actually recently inspected, and one of the steel hangers was found broken. The inspector then just had it fixed and never bothered to inform anyone, they just assumed it had been broken from the start. They were convicted of negligent homicide as a result.
Ah, consequences. More countries need that.
So it wasn't an engineering fault but a lapse in inspection. Maintenance is required for all engineering. Always has been.
Typically, inspections like these are also done by engineers. If you work in a field like this, it is improtant to keep up to date with current developments. Like in this case, since it was built it was found that the alloy used wasn't that great when contacted by chlorine. So an engineer seeing a broken hanger (along with some brown spots on other hangers) should have at least reported it and not just assumed it had always been like that. They should also have reported the brown spots. Typing this I do realize this was in 1984, and you couldn't just go on the internet to check if brown spots meant anything. Then again, as one of my engineering mentors always said; "Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.".
that's bloody awful! Was this the one in Switzerland?