The highway of fear: transport of harmful loads on the wall of the Itans dam, Caicó/RN – Brazil

TRÁNSITO DE CARGAS PERJUDICIALES EN LA PARED DE LA PRESA ITANS, CAICÓ/RN - BRASIL

Abstract

The Itans dam, in the municipality of Caicó in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, north-east Brazil, was inaugurated in 1935. The construction is of mixed rockfill, built to provide water for local communities and agriculture. The growing flow of vehicles, especially trucks with dangerous fuel loads, is putting the structure of the dam at risk due to the weight of the loads, as well as sustaining the possibility of contaminating the water should trucks topple into the lake and thus compromise the water supply, fishing, and agriculture. The purpose of this work is to relate the problem of the transport of dangerous loads over the Itans dam in Caicó/RN with the conceptual limitation of technological risks, bringing the possibility of using hybrid risks to the agenda in light of the concept of the technique in its ontological sense. To achieve this goal, bibliographic and documentary research was carried out as well as some field work to acquire drone images and measure the flow of vehicles along this stretch. It was found that 63% of the flow of dangerous cargo is gasoline, but that in addition to trucks with dangerous cargo there is considerable traffic of trucks of different types, such as box truck and truck, reaching more than 180 vehicles per day. Finally, the authors highlight the urgent need to implement alternatives that reduce or mitigate the associated risks and emphasize the need to adopt the concepts of hybrid risks, in order to encompass the complexity and completeness involved in the overlapping of different elements of the object under study.