5 dead, 8 injured in balcony collapse in (Berkeley) California, police say

Fox News ^ | June 16, 2015

[Real Cynic No More]

Balconies probably should be idiot proofed, with a structural tieback into the building.

Even when idiot proofed, they can still be overloaded by idiots and caused to fail. And then the people will wonder why rents are so high.

The next thing that will happen is that some group of idiots will see how many of their fellow idiots they can cram into an apartment proper, and that apartment floor will collapse into the apartment below. If you cram people into a place like sardines, the pounds per square foot loading criteria will be far exceeded.

Guess how many pounds per square foot of point loading you can impose on a floor by stacking boxes of college text books? And if it's in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a group of dancing, out of control, drunken hipsters? And let's say your group just overloads it just up to the point of failure, and you move out of the apartment. And someone moves in after you move out, and they are in the process of carting in their boxes of books and furniture. Guess what. You've caused the failure, but the new tenants are the ones that suffer. How can any structural engineer design against that?

[DAC21]

“Alcohol involved”

Short answer, many of the victims are Irish.

[Dilbert San Diego]

How did they squeeze 13 people on such a small walk out balcony? It’s barely big enough for two people to go out there and get some air. And as others have said, could well have been shoddy construction.

[Doomonyou]

Wood decay. Wood joists in an unventilated soffit with some moisture and it can fail within ten years.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Back when a local power plant was being built, the construction workers thought it was great fun to fill the elevator, then in route up, jump and cause the breaker to trip.
Then we would have to send someone to reset the breaker.

We broke them of that on a hot day when we waited about an hour to reset the breaker.