Ponte Hintze Ribeiro
Coordinates: 41 ° 4 ′ 45 " N , 8 ° 17 ′ 47" W.
Ponte Hintze Ribeiro | ||
---|---|---|
Collapsed bridge | ||
Official name | Ponte Hintze Ribeiro | |
use | Road traffic | |
Crossing of | Douro | |
place | Entre-Os-Rios | |
construction | Truss bridge | |
overall length | 200 m | |
Longest span | 40 m | |
completion | 1886 | |
location | ||
|
||
Destroyed on March 4, 2001 |
The Ponte Hintze Ribeiro (also Ponte de Entre-os-Rios ) was a 115 year old truss bridge in Portugal. On March 4, 2001, it collapsed after a severe flood, killing probably 59 people.
General
The bridge was built in 1886 at Entre-Os-Rios and connected the towns of Penafiel and Castelo de Paiva across the Douro. It was named after the Portuguese Prime Minister Ernesto Rodolfo Hintze Ribeiro . The pillars were made of stone and had a metal superstructure. It was only passable in one lane.
collapse
On Sunday evening of March 4, 2001, at around 9.15 p.m., the fourth of the six pillars was washed away, whereupon the superstructure with a coach and three cars fell 50 m into the depths of the Douro. The then mayor of Castelo de Paiva Paulo Teixeira raised serious allegations because, in his opinion, the bridge was no longer designed for the traffic loads of 1800 vehicles per day and heavy trucks. The strong current (caused by the flood) made the search for the victims and the wrecks much more difficult. Some of the dead washed up on the west coast of Spain and France days later. The exact number of casualties could not be determined for a long time due to the unknown number of passengers on the bus, officially it was later assumed that 59 dead, 36 bodies are still missing.
The interior minister responsible, Jorge Coelho, and five other state secretaries resigned that night , with the then government around Prime Minister António Guterres assuming responsibility for the accident and imposing two days of national mourning . The disaster then shocked and deeply saddened the whole country and led to a public discussion about the safety and testing of public bridges in Portugal.
Residents had blocked the bridge in January and demanded a new building. Just on the day of the accident, two of the blockers should be brought to justice.
As stated in one of the later legal proceedings in 2006 by the LNEC ( Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil dt. National Research Institute for Civil Engineering), the bridge has been considered "in danger of collapse at any time" since 1982.
swell
- Portugal bridge collapse 'kills 70'. In: BBC News . May 3, 2001(English).
- Trial report. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original (Portuguese). ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )
Web links
- Ponte Hintze Ribeiro. In: Structurae
- Frank Sellke: Ponte Hintze Ribeiro. In: Bridge Web.
- 4 March 2001 - Tragédia. (Video, 4:33 minutes) News videos about the collapse on Youtube.de (Portuguese).
- Entre-os-Rios: familiares das vítimas queixam-se de falta de apoio psicológico. In: TVI24 . March 3, 2016(Portuguese).