An entire one-hour episode of Engineering Catastrophes examines the collapse of an old Hopple Street ramp over I-75 which killed a construction worker in 2015.
I-75 was shut down for 24 hours on Jan. 19, 2015, after Brandon Carl of Augusta, Ky., was crushed in the pancake collapse of an old Hopple Street ramp over southbound lanes of the interstate. A semi-tractor trailer drive also was injured in the collapse.
A crew from the Science Channel show spent several days in Cincinnati last April filming the site and interviewing people, including Cincinnati Public Radio reporter Bill Rinehart. The "Cincinnati Demolition Disaster" episode airs tonight at 9 p.m. and midnight.
The Enquirer reported in 2015 that "a piece of construction equipment was moving concrete when the bridge gave way," according to Cincinnati Police Captain Doug Wiesman. The equipment tipped as it slid, and the worker was pinned underneath it," the Enquirer wrote.
Airbags were used to lift the ramp off of Carl. It took more than four hours to recover his body.
Here is how Engineering Catastrophes describes the episode:
"Tragedy strikes in Cincinnati as a sudden bridge collapse leaves one of American's busiest highways at a complete standstill; using scientific methods, expert engineers investigate and reveal how a routine demolition so disastrously wrong."
Engineering Catastrophes, in its fifth season, says it has "experts look at engineering blundersthat have either caused catastrophes or are disasters waiting to happen. They use cutting-edge technology to examine what went wrong and to figure out if they can be fixed," according to the show's website.
