New York, the ultimate symbol of American power, the capital of the world.

But the foundations of this ultra-modern metropolis are crumbling.

Alex, a 36-year-old actor, came face to face with this reality one warm September evening two years ago.

I was pretty surprised by the amount of rainfall and water.

You know, they said New York City got more rain in one day on September 1st than it gets in the entire months of September.

The downpour didn’t deter Alex from taking the subway, the main mode of transport for 9 million New Yorkers.

But on the L line, a key route linking Brooklyn to Manhattan, his journey turned into a scene from a disaster film.

So I think it might have been close to here.

So we had the train coming in.

Yeah, this looks right.

Or maybe even a little bit further down, that red pipe.

And I got out and there was this massive wall of water coming down on the Manhattan-bound side.

I started taking this video.

I mean it was like Niagara Falls.

You know, it’s a crazy amount of water, the sky jumps through, everybody’s just trying to get home.

The torrential rain was flooding the station.

Within seconds, Alex had water up to his ankles.

Whenever the station started filling with water, I started worrying about electricity and could that be conducted through the water, I don’t know.

So yeah, that’s when I got out of there.

That evening, similar surreal scenes were unfolding all over New York.

Flash floods submerged subway platforms, while passengers tried desperately to find a way out.

Miraculously, no one was killed or injured.

But the subway, which normally runs 24-7, had to close.

It was a failure for the MTA, the New York Transport System.

Karen Gregorian, one of their technical officials, took us to one of the 300 pumping stations meant to siphon water out of the subway.

Pump has to stay always in automatic operation.

My big pump and small pump.

Certain areas, they are high tides together with the storm.

It creates a very significant impact to our system.

But this system has hardly been updated since the start of the 20th century and is now out of date.

All these pump plants, they are all designed during construction of the subway system, most of them.

120 about.

Our pump plants are being upgraded for a bigger inlet size to bring the water out of the tracks quicker.

to upgrade the size of the pumping equipment and get bigger pumps and more units.

These upgrades have become a necessity, because even in dry weather, the subway is always on the verge of flooding.

Between groundwater and the ocean, seepage is a constant challenge.

More than 50 million litres of water have to be siphoned out every day for the trains to run.

So even small hiccups like pipes bursting, as Alex experienced, can mean mobile emergency pumps have to be lowered onto the tracks by hand.

It’s a precarious and obsolete system that makes this city a castle built on sand.

And for a majority of Americans like Alex, this is an analogy that rings true across the country.

We have a lot of crumbling infrastructure.

Our bridges, we can’t seem to fund.

You know, creating new things and keeping the things we have in good repair.

So yeah, it feels very symbolic of some of the pieces of the rest of the country.

This is the underside of the United States.

Although a dominant superpower on the world stage, on the ground its infrastructure is decaying, with roads riddled with potholes and railway tracks falling into disrepair.

And when disaster strikes, there’s no hiding the widespread deterioration.

The incident in Baltimore in which a bridge hit by a cargo ship collapsed is just the latest example.

While the ship instigated the catastrophe, experts have been quick to condemn the bridge’s instability.

And all over the country there are thousands of other bridges in similarly poor condition.

Want a piece of the bridge? Wah, See? Look at it.

That’s what’s happened to this whole bridge.

The country was founded and established through the construction of sophisticated infrastructure.

structure but for decades the powers that be have not invested enough to maintain it and now the deterioration can no longer be ignored this negligence has put the health and safety of the American people at risk in Hawaii mismanagement of the power grid sparked off a huge wildfire causing a hundred deaths and wiping a town off the map It kind of looks a little bit like a small version of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

In other areas, it’s the public water system that has collapsed, depriving whole cities of drinkable water.

The water has a bad smell, a urine smell or a sewage smell from the infrastructures breaking down.

Elsewhere, it’s the railway network which is poorly maintained by private companies, resulting in the derailment of trains transporting dangerous materials in residential areas.

I can’t be in here.

It’s not, I don’t feel good at all.

I’m sorry.

Faced with the crisis, President Biden has allocated $1.

2 trillion to funding improvements to infrastructure.

But will it be enough? In the meantime, Americans are demanding justice.

Show me what democracy looks like This is my democracy How did the richest country in the world end up here? We pull back the curtain on this superpower struggling to stay on its feet.

Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

The historic capital of American steel.

The city boasts close to 500 bridges, most of which were built at the start of the 20th century.

Many of them are in poor condition and at risk of collapse.

Just ask Tom.

He used to work for the city.

Until recently, he managed the maintenance of its bridges.

Pittsburgh has more variety of bridges than any other city in the world.

From cable bridges, to suspension bridges, you know, the different types of engineering on these bridges.

It’s just a shame the city don’t take care of their bridges.

An experience that has left him disgruntled, because despite his warnings, in January 2022, a road bridge he was responsible for collapsed.

The 140 meter long Fern Hollow Bridge.

Miraculously, no one was killed and only 10 people were injured.

In a dramatic coincidence, Joe Biden was on his way to Pittsburgh that day to present his expansive infrastructure plan.

Were you worried that there had been an explosion or that there had been.

.

.

We weren’t sure whether the gas had caused this.

We just weren’t sure.

Investigation revealed that gas wasn’t involved.

The structure had simply given way.

This red bus was passing through at the time.

Its mounted cameras at the front and rear captured the collapse.

When I got that call that morning from 911 and I went out there, I was in awe.

It was just, I could not believe what I was looking at.

And I was just totally dumbfounded.

This is what happens when people get reports and don’t do nothing with it.

My first time out on that bridge, when we were working on it, checking on the holes, I mean, some of the holes, I could have stuck my head through them, on the main support legs on the bridge.

It just blew me away.

You know, and for them, the city, not to do anything.

According to Tom, disaster could strike here again, as other local bridges are also in terrible condition.

There’s something to see.

Especially this one, located at the heart of Pittsburgh’s historic district.

Built in 1938 and 240 meters in length, the Charles Anderson Bridge is one of the city center’s main thoroughfares.

Want a piece of the bridge? Want a piece of it? See? Look it The metal is so corroded that it can be broken by hand.

That’s what’s happened to this whole bridge.

The structure has been ravaged by rust.

The bridge hasn’t received any maintenance in years.

I can’t remember the last time it was painted.

And the lack of upkeep has taken its toll.

Large pieces have even started to fall off.

Wow It’s about 60 pounds, 70 pounds.

Where’d this come from? Wow.

Can you imagine if it had fallen down here? This hits him in the head.

It’s gonna kill him.

The region’s cold winters necessitate the use of salt on the roads.

Combined with water and frost, this makes for an extremely corrosive cocktail.

If you don’t maintain that rivet, these rivets, you get moisture inside.

And that’s what, the water gets in, freezes, and it pushes.

You know, and then it breaks down the steel and that’s what you’re having.

Tom also alerted City Hall to the concerning state of this structure.

But once again, his warning fell on deaf ears.

I reported it.

I was told, don’t worry about it.

Tom ultimately resigned in protest.

But it wasn’t until a year after the collapse of Fern Hollow Bridge that City Hall finally decided to close this bridge to vehicles.

And the wider problem still hasn’t been addressed.

There’s a lot of bridges in this city in this condition.

It’s just a matter of time.

If they don’t act now and fast, there’ll be other bridges collapsing also.

The closure of Charles Anderson Bridge has redirected the 20,000 vehicles that used it every day towards this much smaller bridge.

Look at the bridge.

According to Tom, it’s just as damaged.

What’s more, it wasn’t designed to accommodate this many cars driving the risk of collapse even higher.

The section here was.

.

.

was broken away.

It was pushing out.

And if it would have fallen out, if the concrete would have fallen out, the bearing and everything would have collapsed under its own weight.

So they did emergency repairs to do this work right here.

And it was only supposed to be temporary because this bridge was supposed to be replaced.

Because of the other bridge being closed now, this bridge has to stay here much longer.

Tom has always felt that City Hall prioritizes spending on improvements that are immediately visible to the taxpayer.

He sees the budget he was given as evidence of this.

My last year on the job, I had like somewhere around four or five million dollars to do replacement steps and rehab steps.

And for the bridges? Half a million.

So I spent over $4 million on steps and I only spent a half a million on bridges.

That doesn’t make sense.

Thank you.

The day of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, Joe Biden announced a $40 billion investment in repairing the country’s 46,000 damaged bridges.

But experts estimate there are actually five times as many in need of major repair.

This lack of maintenance is affecting every area of infrastructure, making the daily life of Americans in some cities a waking nightmare.

In the South, an entire city seems to have been completely forgotten.

Jackson is the capital of Mississippi, the poorest state in the country.

Apart from some picturesque streets in the center, the city has fallen into ruin.

Its pothole-ridden roads, dilapidated buildings and abandoned shops make for a shocking sight in the world’s richest country.

Gino, a veteran who now runs a charitable organization, has witnessed Jackson’s decline firsthand.

In just a 20-year time period, it went from being.

.

.

One of the nicest neighborhoods in the city to what you see today, you know.

At least 4,000 houses here are abandoned, the result of a downward spiral that started in 1970, when Mississippi, then a segregationist state, was required by the courts to end segregation in schools.

When they allowed black people to move into South Jackson.

.

.

All of the white people left.

They left.

They just picked up and left.

This mass exodus of the white population had immediate consequences, including a sharp drop in tax revenue for the city.

Without funds, the local infrastructure deteriorated, prompting fresh departures.

Jackson went on to lose 60,000 residents, more than a quarter of its population.

That’s just how deep it is.

Like Gino, those who stayed feel abandoned.

This pothole at its deepest point probably read at almost five feet at its deepest point.

Why are not a lot of these holes fixed, you know? I know a lot of them got to do with money, right? And the city deprived the money.

You see all those abandoned houses, guess what? It’s not being paid.

So now we can’t afford to do stuff like a pothole.

But the biggest scourge lowering Jackson residents’ quality of life is the failing water network.

The pipes are riddled with poorly patched up holes, allowing lead pollution and bacteria into the water supply.

After a flood at the end of 2022, brown sludge started coming out of the taps, as this video by a resident shows.

Like the rest of the city, Jean, a 44-year-old widow, was supplied drinking water by the army for two months.

Nowadays, she has to sort it on her own.

Because it’s a filter, because our water was brown.

And it’s not brown today, but normally it do be brown.

They say boil it five minutes.

I don’t trust them.

So now I don’t cook, I don’t brush my teeth.

I bathe in it because, of course, I don’t have a choice.

But cooking and putting it in my mouth, no, I don’t do.

I do wash my dishes, but I have a jug of Clorox always here because whatever contaminating in that water, I feel like my Clorox will clean it.

To make matters worse, the water pressure is extremely weak.

That’s the water pressure from either side all the way up.

That’s the maximum.

And the main sewer line is constantly clogged, as in many streets in the city.

Jean, who owns a house, can’t take it anymore.

It was the worst mistake of my life, buying a house here.

The capital.

This is the capital of Mississippi, Jackson.

And it’s like garbage.

A federal judge has recently intervened by transferring the city’s water management to an independent body.

As they await repairs, Jackson’s 140,000 residents have been left to fend for themselves.

This morning, Gino and his charitable organisation have put together a special initiative for the first day of school.

On the agenda is the distribution of school supplies, basic necessities and, of course, water.

A lot of the school people don’t want to let the kids drink water from the water fountain.

So we try to go ahead and have water together so that they can get drinking water.

Across the nation, the American people are bearing the brunt of these structural failures.

And the disasters seem to be ramping up, not least on the country’s railroads.

Since the conquest of the American West, railways have always been built by private companies for use by their giant freight trains.

Derailments and collisions are staggeringly frequent.

Every day, there’s at least one accident that results in a hazardous spill.

One extreme case left the whole country reeling.

A derailment that unleashed a chemical catastrophe.

It took place a year ago in East Palestine, a village in Ohio.

Now, every time Zuza, a young 31-year-old mother, goes home, she makes a pit stop first.

Not to eat or drink, but to protect herself.

This is my gas mask, my respirator.

I use this so I can at least enter my house for more than a few seconds.

I got it at a hardware store in town.

Should be wearing a hazmat suit, but this is the next best thing.

The filters in here are meant to keep the particulate matter and the gases at least somewhat filtered, so it’s not directly entering my lungs through my nose and mouth.

This is my only choice of protection between me and the environment in East Palestine.

Zuza takes these extreme precautions because of the health scares her village of 4,700 residents has been experiencing since the accident.

I don’t really feel very comfortable coming into town, so I mean, for me, the atmosphere.

.

.

This is uncomfortable and frustrating.

Generally though, the people who are living here are either getting sick and afraid and don’t really want to be here but feel trapped, or they are in complete denial.

East Palestine’s curse are these tracks belonging to Norfolk Southern, one of the main freight companies in the United States.

Their network links up the gigantic petrochemical plants in the north-east of the country.

But instead of circumventing the village, the railway track cuts East Palestine in two.

It’s a highway on rails where every 30 minutes, just metres away from residents’ houses, freight trains of up to 200 wagons drive past, many of them carrying toxic materials.

We’re going to go over the railroad tracks.

The train was right across this.

The derailment site is literally right here.

On the 3rd of February 2023, a freight train close to 3 km in length derailed in the middle of town.

The wagons loaded with hazardous materials caught fire.

When they heard the alert sirens, Zuza and his team were ready to go.

Her partner went outside to see what was happening.

Oh my god That’s bad, dude.

That’s out of control.

Oh shit.

She filmed the gigantic blaze from her car.

So it was burning for about a half a mile of track.

It was very long.

You can see the size of this cloud just compared to the houses.

It was just enormous.

And this was about an hour after it actually derailed.

That night officials ordered the evacuation of a radius of 1,600 meters around the derailment, home to 50% of the village’s residents.

48 hours after the incident, to put out the still raging fire, the railway company made a radical decision.

With official approval, they blew up five wagons containing a toxic substance.

The result? a mushroom cloud visible from 30 kilometers away.

Five days later, the residents were allowed to return.

But like Zuza, 200 families are still refusing to move back into their houses.

My eyes are burning down here real bad.

I don’t really want to be here much longer.

I’m just going to grab my mail and throw it in here real quick.

She lived in a rented apartment in this house with her son and partner.

So this is a duplex.

Other people live here.

A peaceful life abruptly turned upside down.

How do you feel? Sick.

We pulled a bunch of stuff out trying to come back one time.

So there’s just stuff everywhere.

We had to leave so quickly.

But when they walked through, I cried because it smelled so bad.

I can’t be in here.

It’s too, it’s not, I don’t feel good at all.

I’m sorry.

I mean, you guys are more than welcome to walk around, but I don’t want to be in here anymore.

But Zuza is still required to pay rent.

A situation made even more challenging because the derailment disaster cost her the work that previously paid her bills.

The evacuated residents were rehomed at the expense of the railway company Norfolk Southern.

Zuza is currently living here, 50 kilometers from East Palestine, with her nine-year-old son.

Alright, so this is our hotel room.

Today, Madik is doing well.

But on the night of the derailment, Zuza feared for her child’s life.

Something was seriously wrong.

He was hanging off the side of his bed, vomiting everywhere, shaking, gasping for air, saying, I need water, I need water, I can’t breathe.

I don’t want to say panic, but I immediately was on high alert at that point.

So I made sure he was okay to walk, and I said, we’ve got to go right now.

After the disaster, Malik’s school closed.

For the past four months, his studies have taken place online.

But for Souza, living in cramped temporary accommodation is preferable to returning to East Palestine.

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