Bldg Collapse in Sioux Falls, SD

[JAE]

Construction going on inside and the building collapsed - two people are believed to be trapped inside the rubble.

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[dik]

There's a bit of a posting in the Structural Engineering forum.

Dik

 

[allgoodnamestaken]

From what I can tell there's still one person trapped under there (At the time of this post) a construction worker. They said he had been banging making noise previously but had stopped.

Terrible.

 

[JAE]

Here's a photo of the wall in the process of being removed (between the two buildings to open them up to one space.
It doesn't look to me to be properly shored at all - either the wall or the floor above. Wow..just wow.

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[hokie66]

That is a frightening photo, possibly showing the man who was killed. Any idea who took the photo or why?

 

[jayrod12]

Are you freaking kidding? Quite clearly a load bearing wall, no appearance of shoring of any kind. I hope the contracting company is charged with everything possible.

 

[wannabeSE]

hokie66,
A new article states the photo is a screenshot taken from the construction companies facebook page shortly after the collapse

http://www.argusleader.com/story/ne...-rescued-downtown-building-collapse/94821244/

 

[TenPenny]

Something tells me that Hultgren Construction won't be so proud of that picture now.

 

[LittleInch]

The site by wannabe also had a lot of photos, including a couple towards the end inside the same section as that in the photo of the man knocking the wall down.

Its taken me a while to figure it out, but the photo by JAE appears to be looking into the two buildings from the main street with the coopers lounge on the right, hence that triple skin wall is holding up the rest of the building.

The rather light weigth trusses are holding up the roof which existed between the coopers brick building and the next building along the PAve building.

It would definitely seem as if it was that wall which collapsed, unsurprisingly as most of it had been demolished.

Utterly criminal behavior.

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[btrueblood]

Holy...not only a load-bearing wall, but being taken down from the bottom up, by hand...almost guaranteeing a catastrophic collapse.

 

[IceNine]

It looks like there's a wood stud wall to the left of the scaffolding. I wonder if this was their attempt at shoring...

 

[bimr]

The developer stated that he had no experience with this type of work (sound familiar?); the construction company has no structural plans, and no building permit. How is something like this happening in 2016?

http://www.argusleader.com/story/ne...reshadowed-problems-doomed-building/94994644/

 

[itsmoked]

How is something like this happening in 2016?

Third World Country?

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[JAE]

Here's an article that states that the tenants in the upstairs apartment saw 1" wide cracks forming in the wall prior to the collapse.

http://www.keloland.com/news/articl...d-city-about-cracking-minutes-before-collapse

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[BigInch]

How could anyone possibly think they wouldn't get killed just looking at that too closely. Just looking at the picture makes me shiver.

 

[ornerynorsk]

That is both criminal and heartbreaking. A young life gone trying to cheat some time and procedure out of a project. How is the most basic understanding of gravity not applied in a situation like this? As contractors with prior experience in structures, they had to have known better.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.