Terrible incident, happened this am while under construction


https://www.foxnews.com/us/new...l-collapses-injuries

Lucky it was not during the week. Canal street of all places. Downtown....

Further details here:
https://www.nola.com/news/arti...20-3fb22c77f304.html

According to Jonathan Fourcade of New Orleans Emergency Medical Services, an urban search-and-rescue team is preparing to sweep the building for three missing workers despite fear of an additional crane collapse.

This team is comprised of NOEMS paramedics, firefighters and other regional first responders trained to find people trapped in rubble.

+48Collapse of Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans under construction: See photos, video from scene
Collapse of Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans under construction: See photos, video from scene
The building sweep has three steps, officials said:

Launch a drone to check stability of building
Deploy search dogs to look for people trapped in the rubble
Enter with first responders
As of 12:30 p.m., Fourcade said officials were in the first step of the process.

City officials released a map showing the area in which surrounding buildings are being evacuated. The evacuation area is bounded by the Uptown side of Bienville Street, the river side of Basin street, the downtown side of Canal Street and the lake side of Burgundy Street.

How in the world does something like this happen, with modern construction techniques and 50,000 different regulations? In some third world country, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to hear of something like this, but in the US? I don't get it.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
How in the world does something like this happen, with modern construction techniques and 50,000 different regulations? In some third world country, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to hear of something like this, but in the US? I don't get it.

I don't get it either. It's amazing that the street was so empty and that there weren't more people injured or killed. I'm guessing they got overzealous on adding floors without enough support, or somebody either really cut a corner or forgot something or assumed someone else did it.

Best it happened during construction, and not when the building was finished and occupied.

Terrible and confounding collapse.

H&K-Guy

Thankfully it happened on a Saturday. There would’ve been a lot more trades working during the week.

Holy crap!

If this had happened during the week I'm sure the casualty count would be higher. The area around the site is very busy then.

Whenever I have to work in the French Quarter I normally park on the 300 block of Rampart St., just a couple of blocks from the construction site.

Live Feed from the site, better view of the damage.
https://youtu.be/SDjXHVOZQ9s

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
How in the world does something like this happen, with modern construction techniques and 50,000 different regulations? In some third world country, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to hear of something like this, but in the US? I don't get it.

I will be very interested to hear what an investigation uncovers about the cause.

Structural failures rarely happen, and if I had to guess I'd put money on workers stacking materials too densely. It happened in NYC a while back, where they stacked too much brick on the 6th story, and floor gave. Which created a chain reaction..

How does this happen?

Usually some form of incompetence - be it shoddy construction plans / work, building materials not up to specification, equipment failure, or plain stupidity by some portion of the crew.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if someone or some people go to jail over this. Incompetence is my guess.

It's clearly a cascading collapse, once it started it was going to continue until it reached a point that prevented further failure. That makes it very dangerous as it can initiate again if the wrong member or area becomes unstable.

How does it happen? It could have been a failure of a critical part, or a critical member or part may have been damaged by an accident. It could also have been as simple as an oversight in construction where two people or groups thought the other was securing a part of the project and both missed it causing a failure point.

I worked on the fallout from a large parking garage in Jacksonville that collapsed during the final stage of construction. After millions of dollars of investigation and analysis it turned out the structure was not designed in a way that was sufficient to support the dead load (the empty structure) let alone the live load too (cars and people). I was shocked that was the answer, but that was the answer.

quote:

Originally posted by arcwelder76:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
How in the world does something like this happen, with modern construction techniques and 50,000 different regulations? In some third world country, I wouldn't be surprised in the least to hear of something like this, but in the US? I don't get it.

I will be very interested to hear what an investigation uncovers about the cause.

Structural failures rarely happen, and if I had to guess I'd put money on workers stacking materials too densely. It happened in NYC a while back, where they stacked too much brick on the 6th story, and floor gave. Which created a chain reaction..

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that too many scissor lifts were parked too close to each other. Typically they need to be parked at least 6 feet from each other to distribute the load.

I don't know if it applies to buildings, bridges, or something else, but I thought a civil engineer acquaintance of mine mentioned something a while back about there being less safety margin being designed into structures more recently, something along the lines of how it used to be things were designed to withstand 125% of their load capacity without failing and now it is more like 110% or so. Not sure if my figures are correct but there was a substantial margin of difference. When you take this into consideration and have tolerance stacking, material quality, and poor design working together it can certainly cause something like this. Could also be all these things AND workers stacking things were they could promote failures like mentioned as well, but that still goes back to the items I just mentioned. IMNSHO, if you aren't designing/building to account for the more unlikely possibilities you're not designing/building it the way you should, regardless of cost savings and the other factors.

Very sad for the injuries and loss of life. Going a step further, it is concerning in general that we've gravitated from being a culture that was known for building things that last and making things of a more robust nature, to a culture of "just enough to get the job done" (we hope). Cost cutting and overly lean design doesn't turn out too well for anyone in the end. You can be cost effective and safe, with a great quality end result, without being cheap.

That is sad and troubling. I know down in Florida we had a walkway bridge collapse not long ago and several people were hurt. It was also a fairly recent build.

From Fox:



from the first frame of the OP video,

the two top floors are collapsing but something major is also going wrong at the far side of the building (dust cloud)




another video of the damage. very detailed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP4tbb8omHc

quote:

Originally posted by patw:
That is sad and troubling. I know down in Florida we had a walkway bridge collapse not long ago and several people were hurt. It was also a fairly recent build.

Yes, it was the new walkway that connected a Sweetwater neighborhood to the FIU main campus in SW Miami. Fortunately it happened before it was opened for use but it did unfortunately kill and injure a number of people that were both working on it and that were underneath it in vehicle traffic. The contractor filed for bankruptcy and was facing some legal charges as well last I heard/read about it.

I am a professional engineer and I have been in construction for 20 years. I know better than to speculate but hey it's the internet.

Just below the crane in the picture below you can see a large concrete column. I believe this is the top of the podium. It has the casino, retail, ballroom spaces below in the first floors, above would be the hotel room. The hotel rooms have a much lighter structure those are the floors that collapsed. The steel structure on the top is likely a mechanical penthouse, possibly a pool deck on that level also. To the left you can see concrete slabs that cantilever with little support on the outside edge. This is unusual. Usually there is shoring supporting the slab till the structure is complete. I suspect the cold form metal framing used to enclose the building was intended to be load bearing but isn't in place. The sheathing being used (yellow) is on the lower floors but not the floors that collapsed.

I suspect they loaded the floor slabs with the structural element on the exterior not being in place. The load could have been the studs being used to sheath the exterior.

Sad about the loss of life.