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Mass casualty building collapse in Miami

shadow_operative2.0

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smuggs
smuggs

This is rich coming from the guy who's own fucking temple lies in ruin. 

Deej
Deej

Say "conc." one more time  

Jiggy-Z
Jiggy-Z

Does not appear to be a sinkhole from other video footage, but who knows. Two recent collapses: Minneapolis Bridge over the Mississippi and Hard Rock Cafe in New Orleans had ongoing work at the t

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Nicole44

Nicole44 22063

Posted
Posted

I don’t have a fan club…lol.

Officials will be bringing those families inside the reunification center to the site of collapse at 2 p.m. Sunday as many have requested to see the area.

It’s a small gesture to those who are desperate for news of any kind, with 156 people still unaccounted for, according to the last update from officials.
 

https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/06/27/family-members-inside-reunification-center-growing-frustrated-over-lack-of-updates/
 

So in about an hour the families are going to the site. 🥺 

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Nicole44

Nicole44 22063

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“At around 1:46 p.m., two Miami-Dade County buses pulled up to the Grand Beach Hotel on the 9400 block of Collins Avenue to shuttle families of the dead and the missing to the pile of rubble where they hope to pray and, in many cases, mourn.

Victim advocates with the Miami-Dade County police department helped shield the families’ faces with clipboards and umbrellas as they boarded the buses, which will be making trips in shifts for families waiting at the reunification center.

Many family members were crying, and some were wearing t-shirts adorned with photos of their missing loved ones.”
 

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article252403423.html#storylink=bignews_latest

Things were getting pretty heated today before that. Many of the families want other rescuers (teams that have been sent from Israel and Mexico.) I can’t possibly imagine the level of frustration they are all feeling but I hate this for the rescuers. Lots of arguing with the spokesmen for the fire department etc…Hopefully, the victims being able to see the scene will allow them to start grieving. There’s very little that could have been done to save their loved ones from the moment of the collapse. It sounded like you had brief minutes (based on survivor accounts probably two minutes tops) to assess the situation and run for your life. Many people went to their balconies to see what was happening instead. 🥺❤️

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Doc Reeves

Doc Reeves 6434

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19 minutes ago, shadow_operative2.0 said:

Doc, you lead the fucking world in being an idiot on how to start a thread. You legitimately got a lecture from imma, not many can say that. 

Did I? Shit, I don’t remember.

Regardless, I’ll take my lumps for not starting threads up to peoples standard if you just take you anti-gay bullshit to an appropriate thread.

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ABSR

ABSR 5315

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, AUS-97HORN said:

not to be morbid, but usually to be on the HOA you have to be a homeowner who lives in the associated homes......

Don’t squash his premise too quickly. I bet they have openings.

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bolverk

bolverk 29690

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Lengthy article with some new (to me) details with various theories.

One victim was on the phone with her husband just before the collapse and she mentions seeing a hole in the concrete near the pool - then the line went dead. Nightmare fuel.

Possible Failure Point Emerges in Miami-Area Building Collapse
Some engineers looking at the failure of a 13-story condo tower in Florida said the collapse appeared to have begun somewhere near the bottom of the building.

The investigation into what may be the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history has just begun, but experts who have examined video footage of the disaster outside Miami are focusing on a spot in the lowest part of the condominium complex — possibly in or below the underground parking garage — where an initial failure could have set off a structural avalanche.

Called “progressive collapse,” the gradual spread of failures could have occurred for a variety of reasons, including design flaws or the less robust construction allowed under the building codes of four decades ago, when the complex was built. But that progression could not have occurred without some critical first failure, and close inspections of a grainy surveillance video that emerged in the initial hours after the disaster have given the first hints of where that might have been.

“It does appear to start either at or very near the bottom of the structure,” said Donald O. Dusenberry, a consulting engineer who has investigated many structural collapses. “It’s not like there’s a failure high and it pancaked down.”

Spoiler

 

The early examinations came as rescuers on Sunday spent a fourth day pushing through the enormous heap of debris created when half the 13-story building, Champlain Towers South, fell away early on Thursday. The death toll climbed to nine as additional remains were found, and more than 150 people remained unaccounted for.

While a number of bridges, overpasses and buildings under construction fail each year, the catastrophic collapse of an occupied building — absent a bomb or an earthquake — is rare, and investigators are struggling to understand how it could have come with so little urgent warning.

“It would be like a lightning strike happening,” said Charles W. Burkett, the mayor of Surfside, Fla., where the collapse occurred. “It’s not at all a common occurrence to have a building fall down in America,” he said. “There was something very, very wrong with this situation.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, was sending scientists and engineers to do a preliminary review, hoping to identify and preserve materials that might help understand the collapse. Officials said they expected a number of local, state and federal agencies also to be involved in the inquiry, though it was not clear which agency would lead the effort.

The search for an explanation comes with a sense of urgency not only for sister buildings near the complex but also for a broad part of South Florida, where a necklace of high-rise condos, many of them decades old, sits on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, enduring an ever-worsening barrage of hurricane winds, storm surge and sea salt.

Structural engineers were shocked that a building that had stood for decades would abruptly crumble on an otherwise unremarkable summer night.

But three years before the deadly collapse, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the building.

While no definitive conclusions could be drawn from the surveillance video, which was shot from a distance and reveals only one perspective of the disaster, some of the engineers reviewing it last week said it seemed to suggest that the failure began at a specific point near the bottom of the structure — perhaps as far down as the parking garage beneath the building, or on the first few floors.

From what can be seen in the video, part of the structure first slumped, seemingly falling vertically in one giant piece, as if the columns had failed beneath the southern edge of the center of the building, not far from the pool. Like a nightmarish avalanche, the failure quickly spread and brought down the entire center of the building. Seconds later, a large section to the east also toppled.

Mr. Dusenberry, whose impressions matched those of several other structural engineers who examined the video, said such a failure “would suggest a foundation-related matter — potentially corrosion or other damage at a lower level.” But he said it was not certain that corrosion was the culprit, and added that “you certainly can’t rule out a design or construction error that has survived for 40 years.”

One other clue that a problem started at the bottom of the building: Immediately before the collapse, one of the residents saw a hole of sorts opening near the pool.

Michael Stratton said his wife, Cassie Stratton, who is missing, was on the phone with him and was looking out through the window of her fourth-floor unit when, she told him, the hole appeared. After that, the call cut off.

Rick De La Guardia, an engineer based in Miami with experience in forensic investigation of building component failures, said that the collapse could have also started higher than the foundation, possibly on the second floor, based on his cursory review of the columns in the floor plans and his review of the video.

Explanations for an initial failure at the bottom of the building could include a problem with the deep, reinforced concrete pilings on which the building sits — perhaps set off by an unknown void or a sinkhole below — which then compromised the lower columns. Or the steel reinforcing the columns in the parking garage or first few floors could have been so corroded that they somehow gave way on their own. Or the building itself could have been poorly designed, built with substandard concrete or steel — or simply with insufficient steel at critical points.

Evan Bentz, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Toronto, said that the best evidence so far had come from the video and some simple reasoning — pointing a finger of suspicion at the supporting columns in the underground parking garage.

“The primary purpose of all the columns in the basement is to hold the structure up in the air,” he said. “Because the structure stopped being held up in the air, the simplest explanation is that the columns in the basement ceased to function.”

The extreme rarity of major building collapses in the United States deepens the mystery, engineers said, especially considering that Champlain Towers South had remained upright for four decades and had no obvious failure before much of it tumbled to the ground.

“It stood for 40 years and it collapsed relatively suddenly,” said Glenn R. Bell, director of Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures, a program in the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Why did it collapse at that moment?”

The 2018 report from the consultant, an engineer hired by the condo owners’ association to examine the building, helped set in motion plans for a $12 million repair project that had been set to start soon — more than two and a half years after the building managers were warned about the structural damage.

The corrosion of reinforcing steel identified in that report could have been a critical issue if it occurred on or near the supporting columns and was pronounced enough, Mr. Dusenberry said.

“If I were an investigator, I would check this as an issue,” he said.

But other structural engineers said that some level of corrosion was common in old buildings and was unlikely to bring a building down on its own.

A crucial clue is still unknown, Professor Bentz said, and “that would probably be found under the debris where the collapse seemed to start.”

The structural fiber of the building was largely reinforced concrete. That means the floor slabs upon which apartments sat were made of concrete that was poured around horizontal lengths of rebar, or stout steel rods, that provided critical strength when the concrete dried. Likewise, the columns that held up the slabs were created by pouring concrete around vertical stretches of rebar.

The corrosion of the rebar in the slabs, as revealed in the 2018 report, was probably significant only if it occurred in places where the slabs joined with the columns, Mr. Dusenberry said. Corrosion there could have weakened the connection to the columns, potentially leading to a failure, he said.

The same idea holds for the reinforced concrete pilings — deeply buried, vertical supports on which the entire building sat, said David Peraza, a structural engineer at Exponent, an engineering and scientific consulting firm.

A previously reported academic study showed that the entire coastline in the area of the building has been settling, or sinking, at the rate of a couple of millimeters a year. But the deep piles would have provided stability, Mr. Peraza said.

Danger would emerge only if there had been something like a void or a sinkhole that had caused one or several piles to settle downward and left the others unchanged. That could have threatened the structure that sat atop those piles: columns in the underground parking garage.

“Whether there’s something geologically under the building that caused this, that’s definitely something that’s got to be investigated,” Mr. Peraza said.

Another possibility is improperly installed piles, he said.

One last theory under consideration is the possibility that heavy construction next door in 2019 could have damaged the Champlain Towers building. An email released by the city on Sunday revealed that a member of the condo board had gone to the city for help at the time, expressing “concerns regarding the structure of our building.”

Town officials declined to intervene, suggesting that the residents hire someone to monitor any impacts.

Clues to any of those problems will be clear only after the rescue operation ends, recovery begins and engineers dig all the way to the bottom of the debris pile, Mr. Peraza said. He added that investigators should also examine construction documents that describe exactly how the piles were built.

Gregg Schlesinger, a contractor and lawyer in Florida, said that cracks and a kind of crumbling in the concrete known as “spalling,” also identified in the 2018 report, should have been a “red flag” if it seemed serious at the time. If that were the case, he said, engineers should have dug deeper to find out what was causing the deterioration.

“There are questions that are relevant around spalling where the concrete falls off of the structural elements,” Mr. Schlesinger said. “But no real research was done into why this stuff was coming off the wall and what was causing that.”

The weeks ahead will involve a meticulous dig to unearth clues that Mr. Dusenberry likened to an archaeological excavation.

Engineers will record each layer photographically, possibly with drones, before moving on to the next.

Collapsed portions of the building will most likely be taken apart piece by piece and reassembled at another location where experts can assess them. They will also do “petrography” on the concrete — studying it chemically and microscopically to test its strength and quality. They will measure the thickness of the slabs and columns and the positioning of the steel to see if it all matches the design drawings.

Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer who represents the condo association, said that members of the association board — the ones who survived — had been left dumbfounded and hoping for answers. Nothing in the 2018 assessment presented to the board had suggested that the building was at risk of collapse, she said, and the board’s “deliberative” approach to doing necessary repairs had been based on the assumption that there was time to do it right.

“The sense of urgency is directly tied to the wording used and the consequences outlined in the report,” Ms. Berger said. “All boards can do is rely on the advice of the professional advisers that they engaged.”

 

 

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dcar00

dcar00 14274

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6 hours ago, bolverk said:

Lengthy article with some new (to me) details with various theories.

One victim was on the phone with her husband just before the collapse and she mentions seeing a hole in the concrete near the pool - then the line went dead. Nightmare fuel.

Possible Failure Point Emerges in Miami-Area Building Collapse
Some engineers looking at the failure of a 13-story condo tower in Florida said the collapse appeared to have begun somewhere near the bottom of the building.

The investigation into what may be the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history has just begun, but experts who have examined video footage of the disaster outside Miami are focusing on a spot in the lowest part of the condominium complex — possibly in or below the underground parking garage — where an initial failure could have set off a structural avalanche.

Called “progressive collapse,” the gradual spread of failures could have occurred for a variety of reasons, including design flaws or the less robust construction allowed under the building codes of four decades ago, when the complex was built. But that progression could not have occurred without some critical first failure, and close inspections of a grainy surveillance video that emerged in the initial hours after the disaster have given the first hints of where that might have been.

“It does appear to start either at or very near the bottom of the structure,” said Donald O. Dusenberry, a consulting engineer who has investigated many structural collapses. “It’s not like there’s a failure high and it pancaked down.”

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The early examinations came as rescuers on Sunday spent a fourth day pushing through the enormous heap of debris created when half the 13-story building, Champlain Towers South, fell away early on Thursday. The death toll climbed to nine as additional remains were found, and more than 150 people remained unaccounted for.

While a number of bridges, overpasses and buildings under construction fail each year, the catastrophic collapse of an occupied building — absent a bomb or an earthquake — is rare, and investigators are struggling to understand how it could have come with so little urgent warning.

“It would be like a lightning strike happening,” said Charles W. Burkett, the mayor of Surfside, Fla., where the collapse occurred. “It’s not at all a common occurrence to have a building fall down in America,” he said. “There was something very, very wrong with this situation.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, was sending scientists and engineers to do a preliminary review, hoping to identify and preserve materials that might help understand the collapse. Officials said they expected a number of local, state and federal agencies also to be involved in the inquiry, though it was not clear which agency would lead the effort.

The search for an explanation comes with a sense of urgency not only for sister buildings near the complex but also for a broad part of South Florida, where a necklace of high-rise condos, many of them decades old, sits on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, enduring an ever-worsening barrage of hurricane winds, storm surge and sea salt.

Structural engineers were shocked that a building that had stood for decades would abruptly crumble on an otherwise unremarkable summer night.

But three years before the deadly collapse, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the building.

While no definitive conclusions could be drawn from the surveillance video, which was shot from a distance and reveals only one perspective of the disaster, some of the engineers reviewing it last week said it seemed to suggest that the failure began at a specific point near the bottom of the structure — perhaps as far down as the parking garage beneath the building, or on the first few floors.

From what can be seen in the video, part of the structure first slumped, seemingly falling vertically in one giant piece, as if the columns had failed beneath the southern edge of the center of the building, not far from the pool. Like a nightmarish avalanche, the failure quickly spread and brought down the entire center of the building. Seconds later, a large section to the east also toppled.

Mr. Dusenberry, whose impressions matched those of several other structural engineers who examined the video, said such a failure “would suggest a foundation-related matter — potentially corrosion or other damage at a lower level.” But he said it was not certain that corrosion was the culprit, and added that “you certainly can’t rule out a design or construction error that has survived for 40 years.”

One other clue that a problem started at the bottom of the building: Immediately before the collapse, one of the residents saw a hole of sorts opening near the pool.

Michael Stratton said his wife, Cassie Stratton, who is missing, was on the phone with him and was looking out through the window of her fourth-floor unit when, she told him, the hole appeared. After that, the call cut off.

Rick De La Guardia, an engineer based in Miami with experience in forensic investigation of building component failures, said that the collapse could have also started higher than the foundation, possibly on the second floor, based on his cursory review of the columns in the floor plans and his review of the video.

Explanations for an initial failure at the bottom of the building could include a problem with the deep, reinforced concrete pilings on which the building sits — perhaps set off by an unknown void or a sinkhole below — which then compromised the lower columns. Or the steel reinforcing the columns in the parking garage or first few floors could have been so corroded that they somehow gave way on their own. Or the building itself could have been poorly designed, built with substandard concrete or steel — or simply with insufficient steel at critical points.

Evan Bentz, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Toronto, said that the best evidence so far had come from the video and some simple reasoning — pointing a finger of suspicion at the supporting columns in the underground parking garage.

“The primary purpose of all the columns in the basement is to hold the structure up in the air,” he said. “Because the structure stopped being held up in the air, the simplest explanation is that the columns in the basement ceased to function.”

The extreme rarity of major building collapses in the United States deepens the mystery, engineers said, especially considering that Champlain Towers South had remained upright for four decades and had no obvious failure before much of it tumbled to the ground.

“It stood for 40 years and it collapsed relatively suddenly,” said Glenn R. Bell, director of Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures, a program in the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “Why did it collapse at that moment?”

The 2018 report from the consultant, an engineer hired by the condo owners’ association to examine the building, helped set in motion plans for a $12 million repair project that had been set to start soon — more than two and a half years after the building managers were warned about the structural damage.

The corrosion of reinforcing steel identified in that report could have been a critical issue if it occurred on or near the supporting columns and was pronounced enough, Mr. Dusenberry said.

“If I were an investigator, I would check this as an issue,” he said.

But other structural engineers said that some level of corrosion was common in old buildings and was unlikely to bring a building down on its own.

A crucial clue is still unknown, Professor Bentz said, and “that would probably be found under the debris where the collapse seemed to start.”

The structural fiber of the building was largely reinforced concrete. That means the floor slabs upon which apartments sat were made of concrete that was poured around horizontal lengths of rebar, or stout steel rods, that provided critical strength when the concrete dried. Likewise, the columns that held up the slabs were created by pouring concrete around vertical stretches of rebar.

The corrosion of the rebar in the slabs, as revealed in the 2018 report, was probably significant only if it occurred in places where the slabs joined with the columns, Mr. Dusenberry said. Corrosion there could have weakened the connection to the columns, potentially leading to a failure, he said.

The same idea holds for the reinforced concrete pilings — deeply buried, vertical supports on which the entire building sat, said David Peraza, a structural engineer at Exponent, an engineering and scientific consulting firm.

A previously reported academic study showed that the entire coastline in the area of the building has been settling, or sinking, at the rate of a couple of millimeters a year. But the deep piles would have provided stability, Mr. Peraza said.

Danger would emerge only if there had been something like a void or a sinkhole that had caused one or several piles to settle downward and left the others unchanged. That could have threatened the structure that sat atop those piles: columns in the underground parking garage.

“Whether there’s something geologically under the building that caused this, that’s definitely something that’s got to be investigated,” Mr. Peraza said.

Another possibility is improperly installed piles, he said.

One last theory under consideration is the possibility that heavy construction next door in 2019 could have damaged the Champlain Towers building. An email released by the city on Sunday revealed that a member of the condo board had gone to the city for help at the time, expressing “concerns regarding the structure of our building.”

Town officials declined to intervene, suggesting that the residents hire someone to monitor any impacts.

Clues to any of those problems will be clear only after the rescue operation ends, recovery begins and engineers dig all the way to the bottom of the debris pile, Mr. Peraza said. He added that investigators should also examine construction documents that describe exactly how the piles were built.

Gregg Schlesinger, a contractor and lawyer in Florida, said that cracks and a kind of crumbling in the concrete known as “spalling,” also identified in the 2018 report, should have been a “red flag” if it seemed serious at the time. If that were the case, he said, engineers should have dug deeper to find out what was causing the deterioration.

“There are questions that are relevant around spalling where the concrete falls off of the structural elements,” Mr. Schlesinger said. “But no real research was done into why this stuff was coming off the wall and what was causing that.”

The weeks ahead will involve a meticulous dig to unearth clues that Mr. Dusenberry likened to an archaeological excavation.

Engineers will record each layer photographically, possibly with drones, before moving on to the next.

Collapsed portions of the building will most likely be taken apart piece by piece and reassembled at another location where experts can assess them. They will also do “petrography” on the concrete — studying it chemically and microscopically to test its strength and quality. They will measure the thickness of the slabs and columns and the positioning of the steel to see if it all matches the design drawings.

Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer who represents the condo association, said that members of the association board — the ones who survived — had been left dumbfounded and hoping for answers. Nothing in the 2018 assessment presented to the board had suggested that the building was at risk of collapse, she said, and the board’s “deliberative” approach to doing necessary repairs had been based on the assumption that there was time to do it right.

“The sense of urgency is directly tied to the wording used and the consequences outlined in the report,” Ms. Berger said. “All boards can do is rely on the advice of the professional advisers that they engaged.”

 

 

its possible it was a sinkhole that started near the pool but it was obvious from the video it wasn't from the roof or high up.  

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Jiggy-Z

Jiggy-Z 3432

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OK.  Whats going on in these pictures?:

Before.  Look at the parking garage area in the left foreground. The columns appear to be painted or bare concrete washed by the sun.

spacer.png

Miami-building-collapse.jpg

 

Now look at the same area after the collapse and some demo work:

spacer.png

 

From the preceding two pictures, it appears that there was a parking deck above the white portion of the columns both at the intact building and at the pool deck.  In the first picture you can even see where a car fell down to the below deck farther back in the intact building structure.  It looks like the  parking deck just fell straight down as did the pool deck.  So straight down that cars and pool furniture were not mangled.

The collapse video does not show this area clearly, but just behind it is where the first section of main building started to collapse.  The pool deck area is where there were problems from the engineering report.  The collapse of the second main structure might have caused this area to pancake when its debris hit the parking and pool decks as well.  Looks like the tenants in the standing structure were dammed lucky that the collapse stopped at just a portion of the upper deck parking/pool deck area. 

Now look at the whole pool deck area:

spacer.png

It seems odd that where the second collapse came down on the pool deck, the deck collapse stops at the edge of the debris field, yet where the building did not come down by the top (passed the still standing umbrellas), the pool deck and parking structure nevertheless collapsed without direct hit.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105158

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11 minutes ago, Jiggy-Z said:

yet where the building did not come down by the top (passed the still standing umbrellas), the pool deck and parking structure nevertheless collapsed without direct hit.

If it was connected to the adjoining structure via rebar (and it likely was), then the collapse of the adjoining part may well have just pulled that part of the deck free, and down, along with it.

It looks like MAYBE the collapse started where that part of the building met up with the pool deck.  In other words, the failure point was the juncture of the pool deck and the building support structure.  And once that goes, then it's a cascade failure, pulling down both the remainder of that structure and the portion of the pool deck that was tied in by rebar.

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Jiggy-Z

Jiggy-Z 3432

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

If it was connected to the adjoining structure via rebar (and it likely was), then the collapse of the adjoining part may well have just pulled that part of the deck free, and down, along with it.

It looks like MAYBE the collapse started where that part of the building met up with the pool deck.  In other words, the failure point was the juncture of the pool deck and the building support structure.  And once that goes, then it's a cascade failure, pulling down both the remainder of that structure and the portion of the pool deck that was tied in by rebar.

You could not pay me to work on that site.  the whole thing still looks sketchy as shit.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105158

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Jiggy-Z said:

You could not pay me to work on that site.  the whole thing still looks sketchy as shit.

Verdad.   But I'm sure that the fire dept etc. had structural engineers look as closely as possible at the remaining structure....all that said, it's a dynamic and unpredictable environment, so....fuck that.

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

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1 minute ago, crash_davis said:

Shower thoughts: It'd be cool if there was an NTSB type team like they have with plane crashes. Piece by piece put the building back together to determine root cause. People could even move back in after the NTSB team is done.

Actually, there is, more or less, and they're down there:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/560311-federal-government-sending-scientists-to-investigate-miami-area%3famp

 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105158

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Posted
3 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

Actually, there is, more or less, and they're down there:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/560311-federal-government-sending-scientists-to-investigate-miami-area%3famp

 

Great.  Now there's going to end up being a crappy TV series about a special office of the NIST, set in Miami.

Fortunately, it's already been cast.....

"They wanted us to believe that the collapse was caused by random corrosion, but.....we're not falling for that........YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAH!"

giphy.gif

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crash_davis

crash_davis 23113

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4 minutes ago, phdhorn said:

Actually, there is, more or less, and they're down there:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/homenews/administration/560311-federal-government-sending-scientists-to-investigate-miami-area%3famp

 

Will be interesting to see how they can determine anything in all that rubble. "hey look, a big broken piece of concrete. here's another. omg, here's another."

I guess they can rule out if a blast or some sort of incendiary device was the catalyst. Short of that, it'll all look like broken concrete. But what do I know.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105158

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, crash_davis said:

Will be interesting to see how they can determine anything in all that rubble. "hey look, a big broken piece of concrete. here's another. omg, here's another."

I guess they can rule out if a blast or some sort of incendiary device was the catalyst. Short of that, it'll all look like broken concrete. But what do I know.

I imagine they can look at how the concrete broke (I suspect that pieces that broke/flaked off before the collapse look different than those that shattered/split of as a result of the collapse?)  And, they'll look at corrosion in the rebar/reinforcement.  I wouldn't be surprised if that's where the "smoking gun" is.

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Will be interesting to see how they can determine anything in all that rubble. "hey look, a big broken piece of concrete. here's another. omg, here's another."

I guess they can rule out if a blast or some sort of incendiary device was the catalyst. Short of that, it'll all look like broken concrete. But what do I know.

The science of building forensics seems to have come a long way especially since 9/11. This agency was formed from that event. I've been reading various things from structural engineers and they can do an amazing job of pretty much pinpointing most building failures, even this one eventually.

I don't believe this agency has authority over this particular investigation, but will work with the local and State inspectors to take all the findings and use them to improve building construction nationally. Which is essentially with the NTSB does for the airline industry.

Edited by phdhorn
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Nicole44

Nicole44 22063

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Allyn Kilsheimer has been hired to consult on the Champlain Tower South partial building collapse. He's worked at major disaster sites, including the Pentagon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Miami Dade College garage collapse. After an initial walk-through of the Champlain East and North towers, Kilsheimer says he saw no visible evidence of any major structural concern, according to a press release.

Although the focus right now remains on rescue and recovery efforts, many are asking how something like this could happen. One of those people is John Pepper, president of PE Group Consulting Engineers. Pepper has more than 50 years of experience and says he's never seen anything like what happened in Surfside, despite working several structural collapse investigations throughout his career.

"This is something that is very major. We're in uncharted territory. This hasn't happened before," said Pepper. 

He gave some insight as to what investigators and engineers will be searching for to figure out why the 12-story condominium building came down. "In my experience, it's a rule that you don't see major damage without minor damage, so it was likely multiple factors," explained Pepper. He says engineers will be examining the way the pile of rubble sits now and its position in regards to how the building stood before. "The way the columns fell, the ones that aren't completely crushed will fall left or right, they'll be pushed or pulled in certain ways," he said.

Forensic engineers will also look at the foundation, concrete, evidence of leaks, groundwater and focus on corrosion from the salty ocean air. "They'll be looking for things that don't look right, columns that are broken, how they're broken and corrosion on the columns which is quite likely a factor," Pepper said.
https://www.wtsp.com/amp/article/entertainment/television/brightside/how-engineers-will-find-out-why-the-surfside-building-collapsed/67-d1b47deb-b76d-48d2-aa0e-dc88d442add4?__twitter_impression=true

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DDD Dad

DDD Dad 14339

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9 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

Allyn Kilsheimer has been hired to consult on the Champlain Tower South partial building collapse. He's worked at major disaster sites, including the Pentagon after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Miami Dade College garage collapse. After an initial walk-through of the Champlain East and North towers, Kilsheimer says he saw no visible evidence of any major structural concern, according to a press release.

Although the focus right now remains on rescue and recovery efforts, many are asking how something like this could happen. One of those people is John Pepper, president of PE Group Consulting Engineers. Pepper has more than 50 years of experience and says he's never seen anything like what happened in Surfside, despite working several structural collapse investigations throughout his career.

"This is something that is very major. We're in uncharted territory. This hasn't happened before," said Pepper. 

He gave some insight as to what investigators and engineers will be searching for to figure out why the 12-story condominium building came down. "In my experience, it's a rule that you don't see major damage without minor damage, so it was likely multiple factors," explained Pepper. He says engineers will be examining the way the pile of rubble sits now and its position in regards to how the building stood before. "The way the columns fell, the ones that aren't completely crushed will fall left or right, they'll be pushed or pulled in certain ways," he said.

Forensic engineers will also look at the foundation, concrete, evidence of leaks, groundwater and focus on corrosion from the salty ocean air. "They'll be looking for things that don't look right, columns that are broken, how they're broken and corrosion on the columns which is quite likely a factor," Pepper said.
https://www.wtsp.com/amp/article/entertainment/television/brightside/how-engineers-will-find-out-why-the-surfside-building-collapsed/67-d1b47deb-b76d-48d2-aa0e-dc88d442add4?__twitter_impression=true

Let me be the first to thank you for posting this in plain text.  /spystud

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