From Our Reporter Giovanni Caprara
Corriere della Sera, FirenzeSaturday 17 June 2000
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" The Finished Interventions to Restore the Tower Will not Revert to More Tilt" PISA- Michele Jamiolkowski, of Polish origin and chair of geotechnical engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin, has directed the odyssey for the rescue of the Tower, leading the international committee of ten experts in different disciplines. Has it been a difficult enterprise? "There has been good and other moments a little bit less good like those two years that we lost because the financing didn't arrive". The work is still not finished. "Another 3 billion lire will be necessary but now that the financing has been inserted in the discussion of the financial law, I am more confident". Will you continue to dig at the same pace? "Yes, but with much caution, checking each day the effects caused so that the Tower does not suffer dangerous counterblows. In practice, digging North provokes underground micro-collapses on the side favoring the lowering of the monument and the consequent reduction of the inclination on the side opposite, South". Will thelead weights stay for long? "No, we have already begun to reduce the number, eliminating two-three ingots per week. Before long they little will have disappeared". After the Tower is raised again by 42 cm, won't it start to lean again once past the promised period of stability of almost 3 centuries? "From the computer simulations, the monument would not be more prone to this tendency, instead it stays stable". |
Translated by Gary
Feuerstein, 30 July 2000, from the Corriere della Sera article
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