The pressure on the concrete blocks in each case would be massive. And a bridge has to hold up a very heavy superstructure. That’s nothing compared to the size of Hoover Dam or the Brooklyn Bridge, you say? Well, remember that a major dam is trying to hold back many millions of tons of water. And if the body started to decay, a large air pocket roughly six feet by two feet would form. A human body falling in wet concrete would create air pockets. Here’s a more detailed, structural engineering explanation of why this would happen. Even a massive structure like Hoover Dam would have crumbled and collapsed if there had been a body (or even a single shoe) in any part of the poured concrete, even after that concrete hardened. The main reason is that the structural integrity of the concrete would have been compromised by having a human body encased in it. But that’s not the main reason that we know that these types of deaths never happened. Not in the Brooklyn Bridge, not in the George Westinghouse Bridge in Pittsburgh, and not in Hoover Dam, which are the places where these stories are most prevalent.īut Professor, you say, the bosses and construction companies would suppress the news of such tragic death in order the keep the building process going. Many workers died during the building of highways, bridges, dams, and other major construction projects, but there is absolutely no evidence at all that any workers were entombed in poured concrete. Were the bosses that cold? Was the march of progress so heartless?
(By the way, Buzzkillerss, “having the same elements” is usually one of the signs of a widespread urban legend.) These story elements include: the integrity of “the concrete pour” can’t be compromised and as tragic as the death of the worker is, modern industrial-age projects must go on unimpeded. And the story almost always contains the same elements. This tale is told of nearly every major concrete structure built in the modern age. So, rather than dig the dead workman out of the concrete pool, construction supervisors and bosses let the body sink further into the concrete, and the poor workman gets entombed forever in the structure he was helping to build. Pouring concrete is a slow and tedious job, and once “the pour” is started, it can’t be stopped without ruining the whole block, and that section of the project has to completely re-done. Before he can be saved, his body slips beneath the surface and he drowns in the thick soup of the concrete. A worker falls into a pool of wet concrete that’s being poured as part of a major construction project. It’s a story that drives tour guides and historians of engineering crazy. Was the march of progress that heartless?
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