Трагедия на мосту Инци Рибейру: Обрушение 2001 года в Португалии

2001 bridge collapse in Portugal

The Hintze Ribeiro Bridge collapse, also known as the Entre os Rios tragedy (Portuguese: Tragédia de Entre os Rios), occurred in the evening of 4 March 2001, between Entre os Rios, in the municipality of Penafiel, and Castelo de Paiva, in northern Portugal. After days of heavy rain and flooding, one of the pillars of the Hintze Ribeiro Bridge, a 114 year old bridge over the Douro river that had visible signs of degradation, collapsed due to scour, dragging with it part of the deck. One bus and three cars fell into the Douro river, killing a total of 59 people, of which the bodies of 36 were never recovered.

The Hintze Ribeiro Bridge, also known as the Entre os Rios Bridge, was built over the Douro river between 1884 and 1886 to link the village of Entre os Rios to Castelo de Paiva. The bridge was named after Ernesto Hintze Ribeiro, President of the Council of Ministers of Portugal when the bridge was built. The bridge structure consisted of six pillars, with only two permanently exposed to the flow and two others implanted on a sand deposit. With the increase in sand extraction from the 1970s onward, the sand deposits around these two pillars began decreasing due to direct extraction, having almost disappeared by 1982, as reported in a survey carried out in that year. In January 2001, two months before the disaster, the local population demonstrated against the poor state of the bridge, claiming better road accesses. Firefighters of Entre os Rios initiated a search and rescue operation minutes after the collapse.

In the morning of 5 March, less than 24 hours after the disaster, the Portuguese Minister of Social Infrastructure Jorge Coelho resigned, claiming political responsibility for the disaster. Two days of national mourning were declared. The strong river current carried the bodies of the victims downstream more than 30 kilometres to the Atlantic Ocean. Bodies were found inside the retrieved vehicles and on beaches of northern Portugal and the Spanish region of Galicia. The last body found was on 22 May 2001, 79 days after the disaster. The Hintze Ribeiro Bridge had linked Castelo de Paiva, in the Aveiro District, and Entre os Rios, in the Porto District. After the loss of the bridge and until a new bridge was completed, residents of Castelo de Paiva had to travel an additional 70 kilometres to reach the Porto area. Dismantlement of what remained of the original bridge was started in June 2001, and a new bridge was built, 7 metres downstream of the original. In May 2002, the new bridge, also named Hintze Ribeiro Bridge, was inaugurated. The monument consists of a concrete plinth containing the names of all the victims, on top of which is a 12 metre tall bronze statue of an angel. The crypt and the statue have a combined height of 20 metres.