quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
From Fox:

I'm not a structural engineer, but there does not appear that there is any way they could safely salvage that building aside from imploding it and starting from scratch with hopefully better design, process, and/or materials.

Love the people standing in range for pics.

You could not pay me enough to work that kind of construction. I'm surprised there isn't more dead and missing.

Some drone footage of aftermath.

This underscores the need to ban hotels. All hotels should be banned if only one life is saved. IF, hotels are not banned outright, then those over two stories should be labeled assault hotels and banned or restricted.

People going to hotels must pass a background investigation.

We must have common sense hotel control.

Cut it out. People died.

You do not need to be injecting that incredibly OLD AND LAME crap into this thread.

Thanks for that info GA Gator, is there any way to salvage the building or is it going to have to be torn down?

It can be demolished down to the top of the podium.

After seeing the drone footage the steel on top is likely for an architectural element. The Hard Rock in So FL has a guitar on top of the building. There are also large pallets of CMU blocks on the roof. Also you can see some of the exterior studs deformed where the floor above collapsed. This makes me think these studs are intended to carry the load of the portion of floor slab above. If these weren't of a significant gauge to be structural they would have blown out. There are also locations were studs were installed then a bay is skipped and studs installed. This is likely intended to support the floor slab. There is a section of exterior wall that remained in place even though the bays beyond collapsed. There is structural steel exposed in this section of the wall but the other walls do not have this. This may be to support other architectural elements.

Revised, steel on the roof is for the top out of the elevator shaft.

This is the general area where the debris dust cloud first appeared (very rough guess)

from:

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

(same video that jelly posted)

quote:

Thanks for that info GA Gator, is there any way to salvage the building or is it going to have to be torn down?

^^^^
Too soon to tell. It depends on the cause and the damage caused by the collapse. It will take time. Money, insurance, and psychological issues will play a role. All speculation at this point in time.

I'd bet it isn't an engineering failure, but was caused by a faulty construction process. But it is hard to tell, so we will have to wait and see. Glad it wasn't worse.

The developers have been rushing this to completion. They wanted it open before the new Four Seasons opens. I spoke with one of the investors in the FS today while at work

Like Para, my first thought was I wouldn't be surprised hearing about it happening in some third world country but in the US?

But then again, there's a condominium building in San Francisco that is tilted to one side unintentionally.

quote:

Originally posted by snwghst:
The developers have been rushing this to completion. They wanted it open before the new Four Seasons opens. I spoke with one of the investors in the FS today while at work

There is a saying in construction "nothing turns a garden variety problem into a full blown disaster like a can do attitude. "

Owner says we need the project completed by such and such date and companies are quick to say "we can deliver"

quote:

Originally posted by GA Gator:

quote:

Originally posted by snwghst:
The developers have been rushing this to completion. They wanted it open before the new Four Seasons opens. I spoke with one of the investors in the FS today while at work

There is a saying in construction "nothing turns a garden variety problem into a full blown disaster like a can do attitude. "

Owner says we need the project completed by such and such date and companies are quick to say "we can deliver"

My friend owns several hotels. He is having a new one built to replace the antiquated one he had there. If they don't complete by July 2020, they pay a penalty of $3k per day to him. Perhaps something along these lines was in effect in this hotel.

My wife’s brother travels this road pretty much every day and drive through about 10-15 minutes before the collapse. As others have said, thank goodness this was Saturday- not only would more people have been working the site but there would have likely been more on the street as well.

Noticed in the OP video that the construction crane was vibrating at the start of the video. Not sure if that was cause or effect.

It could be a design issue, could have been construction error, could have been that the contractors put stuff where it shouldn't have been and overloaded the roof.

Even one life lost is a tragedy but I was surprised this wasn't much worse.

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 suspect that some corners were cut or some idiot thinking about the weekend instead of his work screwed up. Which then resulted in some internal vertical columns collapsing and the whole thing came down like a house of cards. What is amazing is how similar that collapse is to a building being brought down with high explosives. That indicates to me that the vertical columns going floor to floor basically exploded under load. BTW, when a concrete column fails it happens so quickly that it can actually look like an explosion. My hunch is that an investigation will reveal that the cause was some load(s) of concrete that were really bad. Another potential cause was the construction was going up so fast that the concrete columns weren't fully cured as each floor was added. However due to the localized nature of that collapse I suspect it was a bad batch of concrete, perhaps a "Friday" load.

What I find amazing from that drone footage is how well the crane structures held up on either side of the collapse zone. There had to be a lot of stress on them as the structure collapsed but yet they look still solid. I imagine if they fell, the injuries could have been more with the size they are and the larger area that could have been effected.

I also marvel at how some of the older buildings we have in the U.S. are still standing today. The Empire State Bldg.,is one them. There can be great achievements but also devastating failures.

On a related note, an interesting story:

The Design Flaw That Almost Wiped Out an NYC Skyscraper. It is too long to be copied here, and I did not wish to drift the thread. For those interested here is the link:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the..._the_skyscraper.html

in the OP video, you can go to settings and increase resolution to 1080p

also can set playback speed to 0.25