THAT CRAZY TOWER IN PISA G1sr03

 3. THAT CRAZY TOWER IN PISA

*The Dear Old Lady—that is what the people of Pisa call the tower—needs help.*

Three million people visit Pisa each year. That's a lot of people. Why do they come to this town in Italy? To see a tower. A look at the picture will tell you why. The crazy tower leans！ It is known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The tower looks as if it might fall at any time. In fact, some visitors stop at the tower just long enough to take a picture. Then they hurry away. Other visitors climb the 294 steps to the top—and come down, feeling like heroes.

Engineers say that the visitors are safe—at least for a while. But the tower does lean. It slants 14 feet 10 inches at the present time. The tower has been leaning for 800 years. And every year it leans a tiny bit more. If this keeps on, the tower will fall.

You may wonder what makes the tower lean. If you look at the picture, you will see that one side of the tower is deeper in the earth than the other. The foundation on which the tower rests has sunk into the soil on the leaning side. Why has this happened?

Pisa's tower weighs 14,500 tons. The soil of the town is a mixture of clay and sand and water. A heavy tower built on soil like this must have a very strong foundation. The Leaning Tower's foundation is just not deep or wide enough for the tower above it.

Can anything be done about the tower?

Yes, Italian engineers have several plans. They don't want to make the tower straight—just keep it from leaning any further. So all the plans call for a new foundation that won't sink.

But a new foundation can't be built while the tower is resting on the old one. The tower must be raised. And it must have something to rest on while the new foundation is being built.

The tower could be raised with jacks. They would be like the jacks we use to raise cars when changing a tire. Only these jacks would be giant ones. One plan calls for 15 of them to be placed around the tower. Each of the giant jacks would be on its own foundation. And each of them could lift 1000 tons. The 15 jacks would raise the 14,500-ton tower and hold it up while the new foundation is being built.

The Italian engineers are searching for the best plan to save the tower. They know that any plan will take a lot of money. They are trying to get the money from the Italian government. But many Italians refuse to believe that the old tower is in danger. “It leans and leans and leans," they say." But it will never fall down."

The engineers want to make sure that it won't.