Posted on 06/26/2021 11:28:59 AM PDT by rxsid
True Dat! Engineering schools have the highest dropout rates.
We won’t find one single point of failure,
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The video of the collapse indicates that the center section closest to the pool dropped first... but the rest of the building dropped straight down almost immediately after. Then about 10 seconds later, the ocean side section went down and it followed the same pattern of the south (pool) side dropping first to be followed almost immediately by the rest of the building....so that in both cases, both sections essentially came straight down. What that tells me is that the entire support structure was weak as stink but in all cases of failures, something goes first and in this case, it was the support structure closest to the pool that let loose first. Since the rest was already weak (overloaded) the transfer of load put it over the top and down it came.
IIRC the downtown Miami YMCA that existed in the 1970s was built using beach sand in the concrete. I don’t know when it was originally built but by the late 70s the concrete was spalling off the front and falling onto the sidewalk. I believe it was condemned and torn down in the 80s.
So there were indications, reports, and warnings.
Yep. I saw that headline all over the place recently.
“The city has put the original plans on their website”
Do you have that linky ?
Still can’t find info on builders...looking though
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It may not be important... failure has numerous general categories and an endless number of specific failure mechanisms that fall under them. The builder will of course get a lot of scrutiny but it may have been a fine building and the failure has nothing to do with the builder. Here are the primary general ones that fit most applications, not just foundations and buildings but equipment and other things as well...
Pre-design selection and specification criteria.... A designer can’t be told that they need to be designing a structure to handle X load when it actually 2 X that you need. Similarly, you can’t tell a designer that the structure is located on the Canadian Shield as opposed to swampland in Mexico City. What are all the standards that are required and are they in fact suitable? Lots of standards are not and this is one of the reasons that they are constantly being revised...
Design..... Plenty of ways for calculations and design methods to go wrong during the design stage and not get caught before things get built.
Manufacturing and fabrication of the components and sub-components.... Fabrication errors, wrong or substandard materials, QC/QA errors and inadequate inspections etc.
Construction and installation.... endless number of ways that things go wrong when it is all put together including the quality of the materials and workmanship that everything else is built on...
Commissioning.... poor setup of all the components and stuff that isn’t checked out to confirm that is running right and so the purchaser in the end just ‘lives with it’ and it might degrade faster.
Maintenance... stuff needs to be maintained properly. Can’t expect good life out of a car if no one ever changes the oil.
Operation....This is all about operating whatever it is that was purchased in accordance with its original design limits. Don’t expect to get the same life out of a car that is driven daily on pot hill alley at 100 mph as opposed to a smooth freeway at 60 mph. Can’t have a dance floor or a balcony designed for 200 people and jam 400 on to it.
And so it goes... lots of ways for things to go wrong.
AND the report was written over 2-1/2 years ago! If I lived in Champlain Towers North...I’d have been out of there already! I’m not that far from there but in a single-family house. Everything corrodes or weathers much faster in this environment.
I have a friends who live in a house built by Carl Fisher on Miami Beach after the 1926 hurricane. The house has a basement and it has 3 feet of water in the basement at high tide. But the house has stood strong for 94 years.
I agree with everything except that the pool is in the sw corner. The only thing left standing is the entire west side and the tip that turns south. The entire north and east side is gone. Furthest from the pool
I found this. It shows north and west sides. You can see parking entances.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/DcmN8KJFhaoeo5iD6
The entire north and east side is gone. Furthest from the pool.
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Two comments.... 1. I don’t think that is true. What you might want to do is scroll through the pictures at the link that Ex91B10 gave in Post 23. The west section is actually the part that is farthest from the pool. 2. In the end, it might not matter or be as relevant as one would think. What is needed is a complete plan for where all the pillars are, what the basement and parking area looks like, where they are with respect to the pool, how all of that was accounted for in the design etc. Here’s a basic question... I’m assuming that there was basement parking but did it extend under all the buildings?
All those comments assume that the pool and its location had something to do with the failure but it’s too early to make that call....
Wow, incredible.
"AND the report was written over 2-1/2 years ago!"
And yeah, if the structural defects were that bad in 2018, imagine what they were before the collapse!
From page 7 of the PE's report:
The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.
Yup, and according to the PE's report, that area near the pool appears to have had the most structural damage that, if wasn't fixed soon, would "cause the extent of concrete deterioration to expand exponentially"
It looked that way to me as well, and once a progressive collapse is in motion, it’s well, progressive.
But the forensics will evaluate everything, including the video evidence, and there’s plenty of concrete and rebar on site to test and evaluate. This will be the topic of discussion and study at ACI, ASCE, ICC etc. for quite a few years.
https://www.engineering.com/story/deadly-collapse-of-the-algo-centre-mall-roof
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tO1L3SKhfU
Salty water is a dangerous thing to be dealing with when it’s just carbon steel and concrete that are the structural elements... This is a much smaller collapse but there are some similarities.
Thanks for posting the drawings... I see that pages 22 and 59 are for the basement. Looks like it was designed for 122 parking spots and it extended over the whole footprint of the building and the patio area to the south of the building right up to the pool.
Well run condo associations have an ongoing facilities audit which tracks and schedules repairs and maintenance. Monthly assessment charges fund reserves to pay for these. Someone needs to check the board of directors to see if they were adequately reserving and doing repair work.
Thx.
All true, But I still have a hunch that the builder might have cut a few corners...like the contractors who built the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston.
Where these buildings owned by the city? Or owned by private landowner?
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