Originally published at: Watch: Hundreds of people panic and flee from skyscraper that suddenly started wobbling for no apparent reason | Boing Boing
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Of course we can’t see it because nobody on the entire planet knows how to hold a phone without it wobbling…
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that suddenly started wobbling for no apparent reason
Obviously they forgot to bless the fengshui in it’s building spirit, it’s angry.
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Winds were light?
That’s probably the problem, right there. Architects and Engineers tend to test for extreme conditions, but sometimes neglect reasonable conditions such as a light wind. It sounds to me as though the building started to wobble at its resonating frequency. It’s for reasons like this that cylindrical chimneys and smokestacks have spiral channels around them, to stop exactly that sort of thing.
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one summer, i worked in an office on the 96th floor of WTC tower 2 way back when. talk about a wobble! that was a sway that was completely safe, and part of the engineering. but man, it used to unnerve me. so for these people running like hell, yeah – i feel you.
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Worked on 60th floor of WTC 2. Whenever I’d go to the bathroom, I’d hear the building creaking as it swayed in the wind. That did not make me feel good.
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My guess is that this building had an active tuned mass damper that fritzed out. Or worse but less likely, was remotely attacked… Terrifying!
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There’s a typo in the article. It’s the SEG Plaza, not the SEC Plaza.
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I’ve felt vibrations on bridges at a mall before and was like ffuuuccckkkk thattt.
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Same experience on the Stratosphere in Vegas. In that case, you can see the whole horizon which noticeably tilts back and forth when it’s windy.
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I’ve experienced a shimmying skyscraper thanks to a distant earthquake. (Locals not in tall buildings didn’t notice anything.) Funny thing is, it hit exactly when I was standing up from a chair, so for the first few seconds I thought it was something wrong with me. Am I faint? Developing an inner ear problem? A sudden onset of Guillain–Barré?
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Hundreds of people panic and flee toward smartphone that suddenly started wobbling for no apparent reason
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i’m waiting for someone to comp in a shot of Gojira stomping around back there as the crowd flees - srsly, that footage needs a big rubber monster
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I am a construction estimator for high rises in Los Angeles. I am guessing that the foundations were either experiencing liquefaction, or differential settlement.
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I can sympathize. I’d just gotten to China and was meeting with some people in a warm, crowded room in a tall building. Was feeling like crap from heat and jetlag. At some point the computer in front of me starts swaying to and fro. I figure I’m passing out and grab onto the table like a drunk. Everyone starts excitedly talking in Chinese. I figure they are rattled by the foreigner losing their shit in front of them.
Nope. It was an earthquake.
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Would a 20 story building have an active mass damper?
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Given that China has had problems with lax/corrupt building inspections, leading to structurally insufficient buildings going undetected until they collapsed, I’d be pretty nervous in that situation, too.
It’s so bad in this case that just watching the video, I wasn’t even sure what building is wobbling. Most of the video clips seem more interested in the crowd, and the only bit that is even briefly focused on the buildings, the person filming isn’t just failing to hold the camera steady, they can’t seem to decide what they want to film and keep panning back and forth, pointlessly, between buildings and crowd.
Ha, I’ve had that happen during an earthquake, and more than once. Just as I start getting worried, wondering what’s wrong with me that I feel like everything is swaying, I realize it’s the world, not me. It’s kind of weird to think, “Oh thank goodness, it’s just an earthquake.”
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Traveling on business to San Francisco, I was once on the 30th floor or so when it started shaking.
The locals were suitably calm about it. One of them said it felt like a 2.7 on the Richter scale.
I checked the news later and he was spot on. I was a bit shaken but impressed.
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