Ponte Hintze Ribeiro

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Coordinates: 41 ° 4 ′ 45 "  N , 8 ° 17 ′ 47"  W.

Ponte Hintze Ribeiro
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
Ponte Hintze Ribeiro (Portugal)
Ponte Hintze Ribeiro

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

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