6 February 2017
Bova Marina – an interesting retaining wall failure video
Posted by Dave Petley
Bova Marina – an interesting retaining wall failure video
According to Wikipedia, Bova Marina is “is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Catanzaro and about 30 kilometres southeast of Reggio Calabria”. A video appeared on Youtube yesterday showing a rather spectacular retaining wall failure, which appears to be driven by a landslide occurring on the slope behind:
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There is very little detail about this event on the internet at present. An article on strill.it, in Italian, suggests that significant distress was observed in this wall back in September, and that the final collapse occurred at about 10 am on 4th February. The road, SS106, was closed off before the collapse at Bova Marina occurred.
I am unsure as to the exact location of this event, but the site shown in Google Earth below looks like the most probably candidate. Can anyone confirm?
It’s clearly the good location… a very interesting tool here is google street view (https://www.google.com/maps/@37.934538,15.9198927,3a,75y,67.6h,79.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRTyAoNRJ2n4g4Acbkbcmow!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1). Very easy to see some failure artefacts on the image provided (poor concrete, lack of drain, corroded reinforcement rebars…).
Looks like the right spot! N37° 56.074′ E15° 55.202′
Much easier than finding locations in China.
The RW is on the west side of the small tunnel. Google street view shows the wall with considerable distress prior to collapse.
Good video of the end result with surrounds available via…
https://www.facebook.com/Deliapolis/videos/1837932353113219/
The second video in the series shows close ups of the damage. The remains of some anchors visible in the video.
Yes, that’s the spot.
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.9345981,15.9195934,3a,75y,110.49h,85.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sXbCLT8LsV7M8PU3G5QvBNQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656