Why was it that as soon as you said "brick built towers" and "certain skill", the first person that jumped into my head was Fred Dibnah? Then you said his name! I would listen to him for hours banging on about steeples and steam engines!
I live 10 minutes from the plant. There is a black line around the tower marking the spot where the section collapsed and construction stopped. If you look at the names of the victims, you'll notice a lot of repeated last names, not by coincidence. The builders of the towers were almost all locals and many families had multiple relatives die there. Also it is spelled Pleasants Power Station, named for Pleasants County.
A very similar cooling-tower scaffold collapse happened around this same time at a nuke plant in Oregon, but "only" killed eight guys. Freestanding scaffold is now standard.
@@4thfrom7 Scaffold and ladder jacking had proven useful and quick, far quicker than trying to build up the free-standing stuff on its own WHILE you're building a structure... The problem is that BOTH of those methods can only be relatively safe as long as they're engineered carefully and then executed precisely as prescribed... The fact is that in the field, circumstances almost never fit with what works in a laboratory or any other "controlled circumstances", and changes to methods have to come with the changes faced in the field... BUT this inherently raises the risks involved in such "quick and convenient" methods of construction. At the same time, progress of any kind only happens when we experiment. Experimentation REQUIRES risk... SO those risks get taken until they're proven too great to be sustained, and usually at the cost of damages, injuries, and lives lost. ;o)
Parkersburg native here. Had locals who were on the tower when it came down, may they rest in peace. This tragedy never should have happened. Have a cousin that was on site, had just gotten down and was on the way to their vehicle when it happened. Thank you for bringing attention to a disaster most aren't familiar with, but locally, is known quite well. RIP Roy & Larry Deem.
$1700.00 doesn't even cover a funeral. Insult to injury is an understatement. Why do the people of this region always vote for those who have zero value on their lives?
My stepfather was a truck driver on that project and was just arriving and about to head into the building when it collapsed. He helped dig out three victims before he couldn't handle what he was seeing. He never went back and ended up getting another job. He had occassional nightmares about even years later.
I'm native to Pleasants County, and still live 5 miles from the plant. We lost many relatives, including my great grandfather Emmett. Thank you for doing a video on it PD, but I must say it's a strange feeling of knowing exactly who, what, and where the video focused on. RIP Emmett Steele, our relatives, and the many other men killed on the tower that morning.
I lost my maternal grandfather that way; he was working with a crew pumping concrete for the head house of a grain elevator when their scaffolding collapsed and they fell 75 feet to the bottom of the silo. He lived about an hour after the fall. This happened in Clinton, Iowa, before I was born, so I never knew him.
Before you described how the collapse happened I was already thinking "you can't use day old concrete to support anything, it hasn't cured yet! And then OSHA gave me that sweet validation. Thanks for another good one, John.
My uncle was an ironworker and said that at the time. He had just come down off the tower and said "That concrete is still green" but nobody listened and then in minutes, it collapsed.
Well, it can be used for something, just not for much. After all, it did work once, and the second time they added some more corner cutting, pushing it over the edge and causing the structure to fail.
Fred Dinbah is a Northern legend, my mum once saw him in Blackpool. Knock down brick chimneys through the week, then work on ye steam powered engine at the weekend. Fred's story telling ability is captivating, he has a reasonable library of videos on TH-cam too.
@@MrAkurvaeletbe they were not on the scaffolding. They were working on that project, on site that day. That’s quite a rude comment, for someone who assumes there were only 50 guys working on that tower when it collapsed.
@@theinfamousb-ran5729 Then maybe you should've made your comment more clear. When you say they were working ON it, that's misleading. Especially when you say "luckily, they survived".
@@reversalmushroom yes because the tons of concrete and rebar falling from a great height was not dangerous to anyone but those guys on the scaffolding…. They were working on the tower. Just not in the air.
Always appreciate hearing Fred Dibnah's name mentioned. A fascinating character, and the only person who ever made me feel sorry for a chimney tower coming down.
One of the disturbing realities of this collapse was that the scaffolding wasn't even an engineered structure. It was described in the report as a "clever piece of engineering created by a very knowledgeable inventor" the creators had worked in the concrete industry and felt that the standard scaffolding method was too cumbersome and slow for building the hyper-parabolic shape of cooling towers and they could do it, in the words of John Gohlia, "Faster, Better, Cheaper" with a combination sliding form/scaffolding invention.
There is something eminently soothing about your voice, coupled with an incredible ability to both find and entertainingly present extremely fascinating events. Dunno why tHe AlGoRiThM suggested you to me, but I am so glad it did my dude.
@@PlainlyDifficult You're able to relay horrific things in the most soporific way, that's quite an ability! You put me in mind in that respect of the chap from Fascinating Horror. A collaboration between you two would be rather splendid!
Fred Dibnah is amazing. I’m an American and Fred’s dedication to these old smokestacks bringing them down and steam engines is second to none! RIP Fred!
I’m glad to see that there’s more than one fan of Fred. What a true treasure. I live in the US , but at 52 , I grew up around some of these older Victorian engines and still enjoy a good old engine show. I also, as a welder, have worked around some of these “old hands” that worked on the plants being built on the east coast (North Carolina,Sheron Harris plant to be exact) in the 70’s and early 80’s There were originally 3 units planned but 3 Mile island happened and only one was completed. I’ve heard some stories about the construction though. 🤔. Much love from Raeford North Carolina, USA 🤙🤙
My husband put up and tore down complex scaffolding all over a Chevron refinery for over a decade. He's gonna love this video! Will show him tonight. Thanks, mate!
Good one, John! I spent most of my working life in the construction industry (Heavy equipment hauling/relocation, mostly.) and I have never heard of this one. I always like how you explain the incidents, in a way that a layman can understand it, but a pro won't get exasperated, going "get on with it!" That's a fine balance, that I think a lot of people don't stop to appreciate! I always love your videos! Keep up the great work!
When I worked for an architecture firm we had a few clients in Dewees Island, SC. Everything on the island had to be “green/sustainable”. This meant NO CONCRETE. The wood pilings that the homes were built on (all in flood zone) were just directly pile-driven into the ground.
That was really nice of you to give Old Fred a mention, he really was a one of a kind There appears to be some movement on getting his home and garden (with a fully functioning mine and pit-head!) opened to the public again sometime, perhaps as a museum, you should get your name down for a early visit before it gets all health&safety sanitised 😉
I used to work round the corner from his home/garden many years ago, and I remember going on an open day on my lunch break. If it's been shut I hope it reopens to the public. I don't remember seeing the mine or Pit head but I only got 30 minutes for lunch.
Every time I go to Owensboro KY for Moonlite BBQ I drive past a coal plant with natural draft cooling towers and its hard to put into words just how big these things really are. You could fit an entire 20 story building inside one, and its parking lot. I remember this one from my favorite History Channel show, Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters; particularly bad engineering.
That is one I am very familiar with, there is good video of the antenna lift and failure. There was a formal investigation and the results are published. I would like to see a video on that too. There were a bunch of problems with that job, they were going too fast, cutting corners, and the service company designed their own hoisting system and gin pole mount without an engineer checking their work... The hardware used to attach the gin pole to the tower was defective, when they tested a U bolt from the same batch it failed at 50% of its rated load capacity, and the load they applied was 7 times greater than their napkin calculations had shown them... No engineer.
Watch Fred Dibnah's work, it is well worth it! The man is a character and has a crazy job! I showed it to a mate who works in construction, who showed it to a colleague who used to do the same work. Even he was impressed, but did mention he normally used a bit more rigging than Fred.
Historical side note: natural draft cooling towers were designed and patented by Dutch engineer Frederik van Iterson for Dutch State Mines (DSM) in 1917. The fist one was erected in 1918 near the Dutch mining town of Heerlen (my home town). They're still called "van Iterson torens" (van Iterson towers) in the Netherlands.
As soon as you showed the cooling tower I knew where this was going. I started watching this and thought, "Don't tell me the same kind of accident happened twice!" Then I realized I had the name of the place confused with one of the many power plants of similar design built around the same time. I can remember being in high school and a teacher telling us about this accident.
My great uncle and another relative lost their lives on this. It was a Friday and the boss made a deal with the men that if they finished by noon he’d still pay them all day. I still live in this area. I’m a union electrician, I’ve worked many days in pleasants power house.
Yikes imagine the terror of seeing the scaffolding start peeling off on the opposite side of the tower, and working its way around to inevitably rip out the floor under your feet.
I went down that fred D. rabbit hole. That guy is my hero. What a life he lead. He is a modern day legend. Thank God so much of his story was recorded because it would be hard to belive otherwise.. RIP Fred.
I've never even heard about this accident, and I live only about 70-80 miles from where it happened. I've also been to Marietta, Parkersburg, Vienna, and the surrounding area numerous times. It's crazy that something could have happened so close and in the same general occupation as me, yet I've never heard about it. It shows how quickly things like this can be lost to history. Thank you sir, for covering things like this and bringing them back Into the public eye.
If you travel rt2 near plant a memorial was placed listing all those killed in the accident. I was working near the power plant that terrible day. We traveled north to Sistersville WV and crossed ferry to Ohio and went south to Marietta to avoid the area. I think road was blocked at power plant because of recovery efforts. Sad day!
My dad worked on that tower the week before it fell. He could have been on that list. Lots of tragedies happened in WV over the years. The Point Pleasant bridge collapse. The time a barge full of fuel struck the railroad bridge in Parkersburg and exploded, blowing out most of the windows in the surrounding towns and taking the railroad bridge out of service for about a year. Mine cave ins, chemical plant explosions, etc. Life in WV is hard sometimes.
Oh my god, my family is from Saint Mary’s! The monument to this disaster is in my grandmothers backyard, she would take me on walks to go see it all the time as a kid. My grandfather and great uncle both retired from this plant!
Insane to see someone mention this plant. Working in the cable industry I lived in Vienna, WV but chose to run our Saint Mary’s route because my family knows everyone there, I passed this plant every day. This is the first I’ve ever seen mention of this incident, so thank you.
An engineer studies at college and registers for chartered status to gain employment: $100,000 in debt before they even begin work. A manager who has no technical skill, and BS's their way into the job, bully's workers into cutting corners and contributes to catastrophic failures killing those workers: bonus $100,000. Guess which one suffers guilt after a fatal accident, and guess which one moves on to another job guilt-free…
Ambient temperature and humidity are definitely important in the curing process. I wonder what April conditions were like? Low temperatures and a dry boundary layers affect bonding of the old pour with the new pour. I also wonder how the differing sections of reinforcing were bound together. Finally I have seen cracking in large pours that can warm significantly with the exothermic curing process. The subsequent cooling causes differential shrinking and stress cracking. These are wonderful structures but they’re inherent strength comes from their balanced loads so the early pours of a new lift can impact the strength initially. That only a few cubic yards had been poured suggests a seriously compromised structure beneath. The lack of pour samples is a concern.
Fred Dibnahs videos in discovery where the main reason i wanted to get into engineering as a 7 year old. Hes an inspirational person who seems to be unfortunately not very well known within my age group (30's). Thanks again John for the time you put into your videos
¡Gracias! Great work as usual. I remember this disaster from when I was a kid. One of the neighbor's Brothers was killed in it . :( it is one of the few memories from my youth anymore jajaja . Sadly not a laugh though as I mostly remember our neighbor crying and watching the news stories about it.
I live in WV, and this reminds me of when I was a kid back in the 80's, they were doing some upgrades on another large coal plant North of this one (Mitchell plant? Cardinal plant?, not sure, we've got a lot of them) that involved adding a new boiler, another cooling tower, and replacing the old smoke stacks with new ones capable of flue gas desulfurization. I remember looking up at the 1000 foot high stacks and 600 foot high cooling towers and being in total awe that something like that could even be built at all. The math and geometry involved in setting up the scaffolding and forms to get a perfect cylindrical hyperboloid curve hundreds of feet high is mind blowing. Nothing collapsed on that build, but a worker did fall from the top of the 1000 foot stack. Needless to say, he died.
April is a pretty cold month up there. Given that they were working on a mid-part of the tower, the previously installed sections may have been installed in even colder weather. This stalls the necessary chemical reactions necessary to bind the concrete together. Concrete formulations are changed every day due to humidity and temperature to try and counteract this, but they may have simply been rushing the already installed mix too fast to save time on the install. In a stressed concrete installation this is a fatal flaw. Fifty-one people died instantly because of this error. My condolences to the hundreds of families and friends of those this affected.
I’m not saying that all workers are innocent but I am saying a lot of the time we aren’t to blame. As an industrial mechanic everyday I’d go to my boss and give him the same two options: the way to fix it right or I can rig it. Guess which option he took 99% of the time.
My father used to work construction in the summer so we could afford to spend a week at Myrtle Beach, he was working on that tower the week before it collapsed, fortunately they had him doing road work the week it collapsed, otherwise he would have been on that list.
Talking about industrial mismanagement that ended in disaster: The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board recently published a new video, warning against the neglect of critical parts of the production line, especially high pressure vapour tanks, in a report about the disaster that happened at Loy-Lange box company in St. Louis, MO on April 3rd 2017. Google somehow found this report and put it onto my front page; and I think it is worth a watch.
3:40 Can't believe we got an actual face reveal for John in this one. Also is anyone really surprised that John is an eldritch horror casually observing and critiquing humanity's many failures?
Unfortunately, no matter how many regulations and requirements are legislated it will not change anything because the main cause of any such accidents has, is, and always will be enforcement or rather lack of.
@@dylanharding5720 I'm watching all his content on my computer, I used my Voicemeter software to check if the problem is on my end or with the video. It has a graphical display for each audio channel, and it clearly showed me that it's only John's latest videos that have the audio a disbalance for his microphone.
Good Day. Excellent video report, as always. AND, AS ALWAYS, those killed and harmed get screwed and the Companies and Lawyers "Make Bank"... Thank You & Best Regards
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
Here's the outro song in full: th-cam.com/video/9HgQ8qJSuVY/w-d-xo.html
Would fit right into a Boards of Canada playlist, nice
You ever thought about doing that 2017 explosion at the Loy-Lange Box Factory in St. Louis?
Why was it that as soon as you said "brick built towers" and "certain skill", the first person that jumped into my head was Fred Dibnah? Then you said his name! I would listen to him for hours banging on about steeples and steam engines!
Mind you, you cant miss the Ikea towers from my window!
one thing they didnt take into consideration is the change in temperature from fall into spring would have also caused changes in curing times
I live 10 minutes from the plant. There is a black line around the tower marking the spot where the section collapsed and construction stopped. If you look at the names of the victims, you'll notice a lot of repeated last names, not by coincidence. The builders of the towers were almost all locals and many families had multiple relatives die there. Also it is spelled Pleasants Power Station, named for Pleasants County.
Same here, from Pleasants County. One of my classmates lost not only his father, but 6 other relatives that day.
Ritchie County here!
See this is a good point he coulda put in the video cause this is exactly along the lines of what I was wondering happened with them
Across the river and north of you nice folks and I’m old enough to remember when this happened.
Wood County checking in
A very similar cooling-tower scaffold collapse happened around this same time at a nuke plant in Oregon, but "only" killed eight guys. Freestanding scaffold is now standard.
Thanks for the suggestion
Only...
@@jamesboyle6134 "only"
I'm still trying to get my head around the idea that it wasn't always standard. It just doesn't compute.
@@4thfrom7 Scaffold and ladder jacking had proven useful and quick, far quicker than trying to build up the free-standing stuff on its own WHILE you're building a structure...
The problem is that BOTH of those methods can only be relatively safe as long as they're engineered carefully and then executed precisely as prescribed... The fact is that in the field, circumstances almost never fit with what works in a laboratory or any other "controlled circumstances", and changes to methods have to come with the changes faced in the field... BUT this inherently raises the risks involved in such "quick and convenient" methods of construction.
At the same time, progress of any kind only happens when we experiment. Experimentation REQUIRES risk... SO those risks get taken until they're proven too great to be sustained, and usually at the cost of damages, injuries, and lives lost. ;o)
Parkersburg native here. Had locals who were on the tower when it came down, may they rest in peace. This tragedy never should have happened. Have a cousin that was on site, had just gotten down and was on the way to their vehicle when it happened. Thank you for bringing attention to a disaster most aren't familiar with, but locally, is known quite well. RIP Roy & Larry Deem.
I remember this
Thanks for the comment. RIP to your friends 🙏. Hopefully we can learn from it
Only $1,700/per worker so not that big a deal though, right? Imagine in some important people like police officers had gotten hurt./s
$1700.00 doesn't even cover a funeral. Insult to injury is an understatement. Why do the people of this region always vote for those who have zero value on their lives?
My stepfather was a truck driver on that project and was just arriving and about to head into the building when it collapsed. He helped dig out three victims before he couldn't handle what he was seeing. He never went back and ended up getting another job. He had occassional nightmares about even years later.
Good of you to make a note of Fred, for any viewers outside the UK, he's a national legend and widely loved by multiple generations
It's just plainly difficult to not simply take time to view another great video from John when he uploads
Thank you
Same, I was about to do chores and saw this video. I am stuck for the next 15 mins, lol
I just now found the upload. Plainly Difficult to surf away. 🙂
true! i'm not even suppose to be on YT... it's an overwhelming force that drag us back here
I'm native to Pleasants County, and still live 5 miles from the plant. We lost many relatives, including my great grandfather Emmett. Thank you for doing a video on it PD, but I must say it's a strange feeling of knowing exactly who, what, and where the video focused on.
RIP Emmett Steele, our relatives, and the many other men killed on the tower that morning.
I lost my maternal grandfather that way; he was working with a crew pumping concrete for the head house of a grain elevator when their scaffolding collapsed and they fell 75 feet to the bottom of the silo. He lived about an hour after the fall. This happened in Clinton, Iowa, before I was born, so I never knew him.
Sorry for your loss.
Before you described how the collapse happened I was already thinking "you can't use day old concrete to support anything, it hasn't cured yet! And then OSHA gave me that sweet validation.
Thanks for another good one, John.
Thank you!
I was just thinking that myself - this entire process is completely insane! That fresh concrete is just going to crumble under any load. And it did.
My uncle was an ironworker and said that at the time. He had just come down off the tower and said "That concrete is still green" but nobody listened and then in minutes, it collapsed.
🎶🎵🎶🎶🎵🎶 *Come with meeeee and you'll seeeee a thousand OSHA violations* 🎶🎶🎵🎶🎵
Well, it can be used for something, just not for much. After all, it did work once, and the second time they added some more corner cutting, pushing it over the edge and causing the structure to fail.
Fred Dinbah is a Northern legend, my mum once saw him in Blackpool. Knock down brick chimneys through the week, then work on ye steam powered engine at the weekend. Fred's story telling ability is captivating, he has a reasonable library of videos on TH-cam too.
I’m from the area. I have relatives that were working on this when it happened. Luckily they both survived. Thanks for covering this.
I live about a hour and 15 minutes away.
I doubt it, he said nobody survived, so someone is lying to you…
@@MrAkurvaeletbe they were not on the scaffolding. They were working on that project, on site that day. That’s quite a rude comment, for someone who assumes there were only 50 guys working on that tower when it collapsed.
@@theinfamousb-ran5729 Then maybe you should've made your comment more clear. When you say they were working ON it, that's misleading. Especially when you say "luckily, they survived".
@@reversalmushroom yes because the tons of concrete and rebar falling from a great height was not dangerous to anyone but those guys on the scaffolding…. They were working on the tower. Just not in the air.
Always appreciate hearing Fred Dibnah's name mentioned. A fascinating character, and the only person who ever made me feel sorry for a chimney tower coming down.
Thank you for doing this. My dad was there and helped with the recovery. It affected him greatly.
One of the disturbing realities of this collapse was that the scaffolding wasn't even an engineered structure. It was described in the report as a "clever piece of engineering created by a very knowledgeable inventor" the creators had worked in the concrete industry and felt that the standard scaffolding method was too cumbersome and slow for building the hyper-parabolic shape of cooling towers and they could do it, in the words of John Gohlia, "Faster, Better, Cheaper" with a combination sliding form/scaffolding invention.
There is something eminently soothing about your voice, coupled with an incredible ability to both find and entertainingly present extremely fascinating events. Dunno why tHe AlGoRiThM suggested you to me, but I am so glad it did my dude.
Wow, thank you!
Same!
@@PlainlyDifficult
You're able to relay horrific things in the most soporific way, that's quite an ability! You put me in mind in that respect of the chap from Fascinating Horror. A collaboration between you two would be rather splendid!
@@PlainlyDifficult Nah man, thank YOU!
Fred Dibnah is amazing. I’m an American and Fred’s dedication to these old smokestacks bringing them down and steam engines is second to none! RIP Fred!
It's always a good day when John uploads
Thank you!
I’m glad to see that there’s more than one fan of Fred. What a true treasure. I live in the US , but at 52 , I grew up around some of these older Victorian engines and still enjoy a good old engine show. I also, as a welder, have worked around some of these “old hands” that worked on the plants being built on the east coast (North Carolina,Sheron Harris plant to be exact) in the 70’s and early 80’s There were originally 3 units planned but 3 Mile island happened and only one was completed. I’ve heard some stories about the construction though. 🤔. Much love from Raeford North Carolina, USA 🤙🤙
Tricky! When it said "Power Station Disaster," I was expecting something radioactive, not a construction issue. Well played, sir. Another great video.
My husband put up and tore down complex scaffolding all over a Chevron refinery for over a decade. He's gonna love this video! Will show him tonight. Thanks, mate!
Good one, John! I spent most of my working life in the construction industry (Heavy equipment hauling/relocation, mostly.) and I have never heard of this one. I always like how you explain the incidents, in a way that a layman can understand it, but a pro won't get exasperated, going "get on with it!" That's a fine balance, that I think a lot of people don't stop to appreciate! I always love your videos! Keep up the great work!
Love that you name checked Fred Dibnap! My father’s hero and someone who I watched his programmes all the time!
“It worked!” “Great, let’s start skipping steps, cutting corners and overloading everything.”
"Yay poor workmanship! Yay cost-cutting! Yay trying to evade manslaughter charges!"
When I worked for an architecture firm we had a few clients in Dewees Island, SC. Everything on the island had to be “green/sustainable”. This meant NO CONCRETE. The wood pilings that the homes were built on (all in flood zone) were just directly pile-driven into the ground.
That was really nice of you to give Old Fred a mention, he really was a one of a kind
There appears to be some movement on getting his home and garden (with a fully functioning mine and pit-head!) opened to the public again sometime, perhaps as a museum, you should get your name down for a early visit before it gets all health&safety sanitised 😉
I used to work round the corner from his home/garden many years ago, and I remember going on an open day on my lunch break. If it's been shut I hope it reopens to the public. I don't remember seeing the mine or Pit head but I only got 30 minutes for lunch.
Every time I go to Owensboro KY for Moonlite BBQ I drive past a coal plant with natural draft cooling towers and its hard to put into words just how big these things really are. You could fit an entire 20 story building inside one, and its parking lot. I remember this one from my favorite History Channel show, Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters; particularly bad engineering.
Just wanted to take a moment and say thank you for these. I appreciate your commitment to content.
"Or just ignore my side tangent" yeah... I've got ADHD. 😂 I can feel myself hyperfixating on this rabbit hole all weekend.
Sorry
Watching the Dibnah laddering a chimney is a wonder to behold... 😁
th-cam.com/video/F04dGK1_wYA/w-d-xo.html
Fred Dibnah was an legend. Very intelligent bloke. Working-Class icon.
Great work as always John. 👍
Hey John, could you make a video on the Senior Road tower collapse in Texas? It's kind of an obscure but interesting accident that isn't well known.
And there's video of the accident. Once again failure to follow specified procedures ended up in tragedy.
That is one I am very familiar with, there is good video of the antenna lift and failure. There was a formal investigation and the results are published. I would like to see a video on that too. There were a bunch of problems with that job, they were going too fast, cutting corners, and the service company designed their own hoisting system and gin pole mount without an engineer checking their work... The hardware used to attach the gin pole to the tower was defective, when they tested a U bolt from the same batch it failed at 50% of its rated load capacity, and the load they applied was 7 times greater than their napkin calculations had shown them... No engineer.
Watch Fred Dibnah's work, it is well worth it! The man is a character and has a crazy job!
I showed it to a mate who works in construction, who showed it to a colleague who used to do the same work. Even he was impressed, but did mention he normally used a bit more rigging than Fred.
Always a happy Saturday when a Plainly Difficult video drops!
😬😬
@@PlainlyDifficult well, maybe not for the people IN the video. 😅🤔
Historical side note: natural draft cooling towers were designed and patented by Dutch engineer Frederik van Iterson for Dutch State Mines (DSM) in 1917. The fist one was erected in 1918 near the Dutch mining town of Heerlen (my home town). They're still called "van Iterson torens" (van Iterson towers) in the Netherlands.
As soon as you showed the cooling tower I knew where this was going.
I started watching this and thought, "Don't tell me the same kind of accident happened twice!" Then I realized I had the name of the place confused with one of the many power plants of similar design built around the same time.
I can remember being in high school and a teacher telling us about this accident.
My great uncle and another relative lost their lives on this. It was a Friday and the boss made a deal with the men that if they finished by noon he’d still pay them all day. I still live in this area. I’m a union electrician, I’ve worked many days in pleasants power house.
Overtaxing the lines possibly with weight inorder to take off at noon. Starting to make sense now
@@JTA1961 overtaxing the curing rate of the concrete, actually. But, yes poor decisions are often fueled by monetary gain.
Yikes imagine the terror of seeing the scaffolding start peeling off on the opposite side of the tower, and working its way around to inevitably rip out the floor under your feet.
First thing I thought of, you would know you were about to fall to your death but there would be nothing you could do.
No
Heartbreaking. Hope those who witnessed the horrors that day were able to find some peace.
I went down that fred D. rabbit hole. That guy is my hero. What a life he lead. He is a modern day legend. Thank God so much of his story was recorded because it would be hard to belive otherwise.. RIP Fred.
I watched a bunch of Fred's old videos. That guy was awesome! His views on chimneys and life are perfect!
Your perfect ratios of utter seriousness and humor are to be beaten by no one
Fred Dibnah's video on "Laddering" is calm, yet wildly intense. I'd recommend anyone with a fear of heights to watch and learn.
You get a like this time not just for excellent content, but also for Fred! Bless his soul
Always so nice to see a new Plainly difficult video!
Thank you
I've never even heard about this accident, and I live only about 70-80 miles from where it happened. I've also been to Marietta, Parkersburg, Vienna, and the surrounding area numerous times. It's crazy that something could have happened so close and in the same general occupation as me, yet I've never heard about it. It shows how quickly things like this can be lost to history. Thank you sir, for covering things like this and bringing them back Into the public eye.
If you travel rt2 near plant a memorial was placed listing all those killed in the accident. I was working near the power plant that terrible day. We traveled north to Sistersville WV and crossed ferry to Ohio and went south to Marietta to avoid the area. I think road was blocked at power plant because of recovery efforts. Sad day!
It's considered the deadliest construction accident in US history, not sure how it slipped under the radar
My dad worked on that tower the week before it fell. He could have been on that list. Lots of tragedies happened in WV over the years. The Point Pleasant bridge collapse. The time a barge full of fuel struck the railroad bridge in Parkersburg and exploded, blowing out most of the windows in the surrounding towns and taking the railroad bridge out of service for about a year. Mine cave ins, chemical plant explosions, etc. Life in WV is hard sometimes.
8:00am on Saturday and John’s here !
:D
Fred was and is a effing LEGEND! They don't make them like that these days!
Shout out for the Fred Dibnah mention! An absolute icon of my childhood
Oh my god, my family is from Saint Mary’s! The monument to this disaster is in my grandmothers backyard, she would take me on walks to go see it all the time as a kid. My grandfather and great uncle both retired from this plant!
Insane to see someone mention this plant. Working in the cable industry I lived in Vienna, WV but chose to run our Saint Mary’s route because my family knows everyone there, I passed this plant every day. This is the first I’ve ever seen mention of this incident, so thank you.
Always nice to see good old Fred getting a shout.
You have such a calming voice for a Biblically accurate angel.
An engineer studies at college and registers for chartered status to gain employment: $100,000 in debt before they even begin work.
A manager who has no technical skill, and BS's their way into the job, bully's workers into cutting corners and contributes to catastrophic failures killing those workers: bonus $100,000.
Guess which one suffers guilt after a fatal accident, and guess which one moves on to another job guilt-free…
"Our friend good old cost-cutting"
Yeah he's usually involved 🙄 I love Saturday with PD, the new meter is hilarious 🤣
Living in Williamstown when this happened. Very sad
Nice shout-out to Fred, a true legend 🙏
Ambient temperature and humidity are definitely important in the curing process. I wonder what April conditions were like? Low temperatures and a dry boundary layers affect bonding of the old pour with the new pour. I also wonder how the differing sections of reinforcing were bound together. Finally I have seen cracking in large pours that can warm significantly with the exothermic curing process. The subsequent cooling causes differential shrinking and stress cracking.
These are wonderful structures but they’re inherent strength comes from their balanced loads so the early pours of a new lift can impact the strength initially. That only a few cubic yards had been poured suggests a seriously compromised structure beneath. The lack of pour samples is a concern.
I generally love OPs vid but this one is damn near directly read from the wiki article. :(
Best channel on TH-cam! Thanks for posting. 👍
It's always nice seeing another video from you!
3:42 'and yet you don't want to see my face'
Idk about that one John, that avatar's lookin pretty cute~
:D
Your Ralph Nader cutout was spot on. Thanks for the video!
Mega John!
Fred Dibnah was awesome. I’ve watched a few videos of him “laddering a chimney.” Amazing stuff.
Fred Dibnahs videos in discovery where the main reason i wanted to get into engineering as a 7 year old.
Hes an inspirational person who seems to be unfortunately not very well known within my age group (30's).
Thanks again John for the time you put into your videos
Especially great music in this one, John! Keep up the great work!!!
Thank you John for an excellent video.
You should do a video about the miller park crane collapse or “big blue”. My uncle was working on the stadium at the time of disaster
I loved the Fred Dibner reference!! Nice touch. Fascinating Man!!
¡Gracias! Great work as usual. I remember this disaster from when I was a kid. One of the neighbor's Brothers was killed in it . :( it is one of the few memories from my youth anymore jajaja . Sadly not a laugh though as I mostly remember our neighbor crying and watching the news stories about it.
I like the retro touch if the barcode look top right when there's a break or part change....clever
Great documentary and kudos for referencing Fred Dibnah!
5:13 🫤 Was anyone else feeling uneasy watching that guy with the circular saw?
Really like the outro music, but it's a bit louder than the rest of the video and I wonder if you could please level them for future vids?
We love your faceless voice! Thank you for continuing to upload great videos!!
I live in WV, and this reminds me of when I was a kid back in the 80's, they were doing some upgrades on another large coal plant North of this one (Mitchell plant? Cardinal plant?, not sure, we've got a lot of them) that involved adding a new boiler, another cooling tower, and replacing the old smoke stacks with new ones capable of flue gas desulfurization. I remember looking up at the 1000 foot high stacks and 600 foot high cooling towers and being in total awe that something like that could even be built at all. The math and geometry involved in setting up the scaffolding and forms to get a perfect cylindrical hyperboloid curve hundreds of feet high is mind blowing. Nothing collapsed on that build, but a worker did fall from the top of the 1000 foot stack. Needless to say, he died.
April is a pretty cold month up there. Given that they were working on a mid-part of the tower, the previously installed sections may have been installed in even colder weather. This stalls the necessary chemical reactions necessary to bind the concrete together. Concrete formulations are changed every day due to humidity and temperature to try and counteract this, but they may have simply been rushing the already installed mix too fast to save time on the install. In a stressed concrete installation this is a fatal flaw. Fifty-one people died instantly because of this error. My condolences to the hundreds of families and friends of those this affected.
I’m not saying that all workers are innocent but I am saying a lot of the time we aren’t to blame. As an industrial mechanic everyday I’d go to my boss and give him the same two options: the way to fix it right or I can rig it. Guess which option he took 99% of the time.
Yay. A disaster. Good morning John.
Wish you'd do a video on pondcrete.
Love for you to finish the rocky flats story.
Thank you!
Me too!
I've listened to this channel way too much when at the very beginning, I hear in my head, "Psst...."
your channel is the best on yt
Wet and Windy
Hey John, the first two tracks from your nuclear disaster concept album are really good. I've been listening to them gaming this past week daily.
"Did ya like that?!" Fred Dibnah, legendary bloke!
I bwwn stuck on you radiation videos lately before thatvwas the dam failures like all of them will continue watching you sir
My father used to work construction in the summer so we could afford to spend a week at Myrtle Beach, he was working on that tower the week before it collapsed, fortunately they had him doing road work the week it collapsed, otherwise he would have been on that list.
I lived in Parkersburg then and I knew a couple workers on site but they weren't on the tower. I still remember the initial news reports.
YOU'RE THE MAN for mentioning Fred. I wonder if he ever realized how much of an impact he had.
I lived in moundsville for a couple years, used to drive past the plant every time I’d come from out of state. Never new about its past
Talking about industrial mismanagement that ended in disaster: The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board recently published a new video, warning against the neglect of critical parts of the production line, especially high pressure vapour tanks, in a report about the disaster that happened at Loy-Lange box company in St. Louis, MO on April 3rd 2017. Google somehow found this report and put it onto my front page; and I think it is worth a watch.
Great as always!👍☘️
If you wanna see impressive brick built structures with odd shapes look at bottle kilns.
Well done for the video and giving Fred Dibnah a shout out.
3:40 Can't believe we got an actual face reveal for John in this one. Also is anyone really surprised that John is an eldritch horror casually observing and critiquing humanity's many failures?
Great channel. Excellent work
I love Fred’s old videos !!
You need to do a video on the Church Rock uranium mill spill. Just saw a blurb about it on tv.
Unfortunately, no matter how many regulations and requirements are legislated it will not change anything because the main cause of any such accidents has, is, and always will be enforcement or rather lack of.
Look into Marble Hill in Madison Indiana. That was over 35 yrs ago. Another interesting story. Worth looking into.
Got a "Fuchashima Tourism Board" ad before this video.
Hey John, all your latest releases have the audio slightly off to the left channel. Looks like around ~3dB difference with your microphone.
Okay so I'm not the only one to notice.. It seems some are worse than others though.
@@dylanharding5720 I'm watching all his content on my computer, I used my Voicemeter software to check if the problem is on my end or with the video.
It has a graphical display for each audio channel, and it clearly showed me that it's only John's latest videos that have the audio a disbalance for his microphone.
Good Day. Excellent video report, as always. AND, AS ALWAYS, those killed and harmed get screwed and the Companies and Lawyers "Make Bank"...
Thank You & Best Regards
hi john good night from malaysia and always a good video
Thank you