Engineering Catastrophes

Air is all that supports a stadium roof in snowy Syracuse, New York. A drawbridge in Chile gets some key details backwards, and a metro line in congested Mexico City has some potentially disastrous design flaws.

A towering symbol of Glasgow can't endure the windy Scottish weather, and a Japanese airport is slowly sinking into the sea. In Venice, Italy, a so-called pedestrian bridge is a slip-and-fall accident waiting to happen.

Serious construction shortcuts spell disaster at a Turkish ski resort, and hundreds of buildings lean perilously over a Brazilian city. Also, Mexico City's sewer system is overwhelmed by the subsiding metropolis.

A missed measurement imperils a pedestrian bridge in Calgary, Canada, and reflections off an office building in London can fry eggs in the street. Also, a stadium in Malaysia suffers repeated disasters.

Wind turbines off the coast of Denmark can't handle the elements, and signs in Argentina point drivers down a road to nowhere after a tunnel collapses. Also, a hotel in Las Vegas is so unsafe it never opened.

Louisiana has the most poorly-engineered roads in America, and improvements to Australia's busiest railway line made things much worse. Also, tunneling projects cause major problems in Italy and Seattle.