I always find how news outlets phrase this stuff (probably for legal reasons) kind of tortured… They can’t confirm either way if these poor people have died, so they say “aren’t accounted for.”
Either way, what a horrible tragedy. My heart goes out to these families and hope many of the folks that live there and are missing are alive.
Really? As somebody with a structural engineering degree that has studied the Hyatt collapse, I’m here to say that it was in no way obvious. The change made by the fabricator in the shop drawing submittals was subtle and was completely missed by the (well-qualified) individual who reviewed and approved the shop drawings.
ETA: In case I wasn’t clear, the design was fine (i.e. not “fucked”). The fatal error was made subsequent to the design stage.
That is a wild one. The VP of the concrete subcontractor was convicted on three counts manslaughter, but it was later acquitted. Can you imagine the precedent that would have set?! How much safer would everything be!
Perhaps you should check with a materials scientist then? I’m also not one (structural engineer instead; one who interacts with materials scientists regularly in my work) but I can assure you that is NOT how concrete works. Concrete, in fact, gains strength over time in the absence of deteriorating factors. Its asymptotic so the great majority of the strength gains are early in life (“28 day” strength being the number used for design purposes) but it never stops, even if the original batch was below the design strength or in some other way not optimal ('bad").
Well yeah, the original design, had they done it that way, would have worked. But the changes made, obviously did not. I suppose fair point it could be missed as not obvious when looking over the submitted changes. If you don’t SEE the problem, then you don’t know it is there. But when you DO see it, you can see, “That isn’t right.” And one would think that the fabricators who proposed the changes would have realized their error.
Per the interviews I have seen about the incident, and the quote from the wiki article, “Jack D. Gillum himself would later reflect that the design flaw was so obvious that “Any first-year engineering student could figure it out”, if only it had been checked.”
Again, not a design flaw.
Well, yeah. Kinda. “Figure it out” is doing some heavy lifting in that phrase. Sure, if you do the static analysis you’ll discover that the key nut connection in question is suddenly carrying twice the load it was designed to. That’s not the point. The issue is that the “if only it had been checked” part didn’t come to pass precisely because the importance of the change that was made by the steel fabricator was subtle. Important, yes, but non-obvious until given deeper scrutiny.
Forgive me, but aren’t fabricators aware that changing how something is made can effect how things stress and the loads they bear - which might effect other parts it is connected to? And thus any changes should be highly scrutinized?
As I understand it, this event is used as a warning now of how small changes can have big consequences.
Given that this building was designed and built 40 years ago, it’s likely that (assuming that a flaw in design or construction contributed to this disaster) the people most directly responsible have since retired and possibly passed on. Poor maintenance alone usually wouldn’t cause this type of catastrophic failure if the building was built right, but I’m sure more will be learned in the coming months.
And yet the Florida government insists that there is no such thing and that it can’t even be mentioned.
I suppose I should have used sarcasm font but thought it would be redundant.
Poe’s law applies. I can’t see you or note your body language or hear the sound of your voice, so it’s much harder to detect sarcasm, when there are plenty of people who legitimately believe what you just said.
I was thinking of a swimming-pool in the basement. That would give a void at the bottom of the building, and a potential weakening of the roof beams that span it. Of course, this ia Miami, not the UK, so the pool would be outdoors. And the eighties is a bit late for high alumina cement too. There were some cases in the UK of swimming pool roof beams cracking, and motorway bridges failing from salting the roads (again, not a problem in Miami) in the seventies.
Doubtless, someone will do a proper investigation, but any materials scientist has to go all CSI when they see something like this.
Heavy equipment on the roof would be a very unlike cause for this type of failure.
I can’t believe that a failure this catastrophic didn’t have some obvious indications and warning signs.
The original design wasn’t sufficient either, but it wasn’t as bad as what was built.
This is why it’s a good idea to have engineers at the contractor’s end of things, as well as for construction supervision on behalf of the client, but that’s not always the case.
Every day, in every way, USA is becoming more and more indistinguishable from a third-world country.
Correct. The original design still only would have supported 60% of the minimum load that building codes required.
Fair cop. I’ve played the Poe game too many times elsewhere to count on “obvious snark.” Even in fora (and with people) where I have reason to think I’m fairly well-known.
It ain’t getting better with more info…
Well, given it is Miami, I would not discount the potential salt problem. The stuff would be blowing in on a regular basis from the ocean breeze.
