The Bridge over the Lake 🌉 - Maracaibo, Venezuela

Hello community of Steemit ❤

The General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, also locally called Bridge over the Lake, is a bridge that crosses the narrowest part of Lake Maracaibo, in Zulia, in northwestern Venezuela, and connects the city of Maracaibo with the rest of the country. It was named in honor of General Rafael Urdaneta, a Zulian hero of Venezuelan independence. It is one of the largest in the world of its kind, the second longest in Latin America, only after the Rio-Niterói Bridge in Brazil and ranks 65th of the longest in the world.
This bridge made it possible to connect both sides of the lake and connect the city of Maracaibo in an expeditious manner with the rest of Venezuela. The initial projects for the bridge were discarded because it was considered that a metal structure would require a lot of maintenance, given the humid climate of the area. In addition to requiring little maintenance, in Venezuela cement is a less expensive material than steel and would maintain the aesthetic requirements of the work.

Regrettably this day April 6, 1964, the supertanker Esso Maracaibo of the Creole Petroleum Corporation, of 36,000 tons of displacement, loaded with 262 thousand barrels of crude oil, without controls and drifting as a result of an unexpected electrical failure of the ship, collides with the number 31 of the bridge over the General Rafael Urdaneta Lake, causing the collapse of 259 meters of structure.

Four vehicles, which were crossing the area at the time, rushed through the open gap from a height of approximately 40 meters, throwing an unfortunate balance of seven dead.

The Creole agreed to bear the expenses of the reconstruction of the bridge, and immediately began work under contract with the same construction consortium.

Until the next Steemit community post, I will tell you more about my city.