Episodes

• Charm City Catastrophe

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  A ship breaks a Baltimore bridge; a Dutch stadium loses its top; a Manhattan crane catches fire; plus a crooked English pub and a "poonami" in China.

• Fault Line Fiasco

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  Earthquake-proof buildings fall down in Turkey; two gantry cranes bump into each other; a battery factory blows up; and a bridge collapses in Dresden.

• Tanker Truck Tragedy

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  A Philadelphia overpass catches fire; a radio telescope plummets, plus a sinking airport and Nigeria’s collapse crisis.

• Columbia's Fatal Flaw

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  Was the space shuttle Columbia an accident ready to happen? A Chinese bridge takes a deadly hit. A terrible mistake leads to a deadly stage collapse.

• The Sinking City

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  Lightning bolts cause construction mayhem, cities all over the world are sinking, cooling towers are collapsing, and India’s bridges are falling down.

• Super-Sized Collapse

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  Fails include an Italian supermarket collapse, amusement parks ablaze, India’s tunnel rescue, a light rail fail and a roofless stadium.

• Episode 1

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  When a Dutch city replaces a bridge, a breeze turns a bridge into a giant sail. Controlled demolition seems simple, but why do some buildings just fail to fall? The ground beneath our feet is not as solid as it looks: welcome to the wonderful world of sinkholes. Buildings are built to stand the test of time. But sometimes time runs out and what’s supposed to be up for decades, goes down in seconds.

• Episode 2

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  It’s an 800-year-old icon with a state of the art smoke detector. How did Notre Dame catch fire? We go up and down them. Sometimes we fall down them. We don’t think about stairs until they make us. Smokestacks push our junk into the sky. But when they become junk themselves, they get blown to bits. When the earth quakes, even the biggest structures can fail. Can a building be earthquake-proof?

• Episode 3

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  Glass: it’s both practical and beautiful. But when it fails it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Excavators. When what goes up, must come down, these daring destroyers are the machines to get it done! The Georgia Dome dropped like a stone, but in Detroit, the Pontiac Silverdome roof fell, but the building didn’t. Two cranes, fifty tons of steel, and one giant hole. What could go wrong? Everything.

• Episode 4

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  Construction relies on cranes to hoist the next high-rise, but when they fail, they make one big mess. Amusement parks use intense G-forces to thrill us. But when the ride stops suddenly, that power can turn against us. Hurricanes and typhoons; these ferocious winds can knock you off your feet or blow down a building. Escalators are great for moving a lot of people, but not so great when they fail.

• Episode 5

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  The Hard Rock in the Big Easy suddenly crumples, turning construction into destruction. Tunnels create direct routes from A to B, until they cave in. A bridge construction in Miami, hailed as the first of its kind, suddenly collapses, becoming the worst of its kind. Electricity is a miracle of modern science, until the power fails.

• Episode 6

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  When this UK power station reached the end of the road it took all the power with it. Crawler cranes lift heavy things. But when operators make errors, they can bring the mightiest crawler down to earth. Landslides: when soil gets wet, the ground is no longer solid and everything goes downhill from there. On axles, tires support mighty loads. But when axles fail, tires go rogue.

• Episode 7

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  Concrete: when it fails, the very floor beneath your feet can collapse. Waterproof, fire proof, sound proof; asbestos was a miracle product that seemed too good to be true... because it was. Tailings dams hold mining waste – but when they fail, the results are catastrophic. Two buildings explode sending flames and debris flying through the streets, and create a mystery for emergency workers to solve.

• Episode 8

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  Italy’s Morandi Bridge was an engineering marvel, until it was a national embarrassment. Steam pipes keep New York warm, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sometimes blow its stack. Shopping malls have their problems, especially when the burden is too much to bear. Billboards are the highest form of advertising but when they come down, they come down hard.