Hard Rock Hotel - Part 2 1

[JAE]

A continuation of our discussion of this failure.
Best to read the other threads first to avoid rehashing things already discussed.

Part I
thread815-459166

 

[dauwerda]

They finally recovered one of the two.

https://www.nola.com/news/article_dc727168-d97f-11ea-a979-0323d524e359.html

 

[NOLAscience]

The third, and final, body has been recovered from the Hard Rock Hotel collapse site.

https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/...rock/289-e2ed1625-40e3-4554-bbe0-b44672e493b8

 

[MTNClimber]

"Norma Jean Mattei, Ph.D., P.E. provided an update on the Hard Rock Hotel collapse live from Louisiana. The presentation is an overview of the building collapse that occurred during construction on October 12, 2019 and the recovery process. "

 

[NOLAscience]

Notes on video of Norma Jean Mattei linked above:

(1) She is incorrect on the direction that the video recorder David was driving. He was driving AWAY from Canal St, but heard a loud noise, stopped his car, stepped out and turned around, filming as soon as he turned around.

(2) The bottom floors (parking garage) is made of post-tensioned concrete, not "reinforced concrete"

(3) Canal St is shown vertically on the map, but in actuality is oriented very close to directly northwest.

(4) She wastes a lot of time talking about the Saenger Theater and Mardi Gras parade routes. It would suffice it to say that the architecturally important and historic Saenger Theater is across Rampart and Mardi Gras parades pass on Canal and Rampart in the late winter. No one needs the level of detail that she provides. I skipped ahead through this part, 30 seconds at a time.

(5) She does not discuss how the beams on the 16th floor were overloaded. They were being used more as girders, not beams, and they were W16s on the plans that were on file with the city permit office.

 

[OHIOMatt]

I was really hoping for some updates, this presentation did not provide it. I am pretty disappointed.

 

[hokie66]

NOLA,

Post-tensioned concrete is a subset of the more general "reinforced concrete", so she is not incorrect about that.

 

[jayrod12]

I also wanted to point out Hokie's point, but didn't.

NOLA, I find your "comments" to be especially nitpicky. I have not watched the presentation, but none of your critiques are of much importance to the people here in this thread except 2 and 5. And in 2, you're incorrect. And 5, we may never know the true answer to how they were overstressed except that potentially they're undersized. Perhaps that level of evaluation hasn't been completed yet.

 

[MTNClimber]

Sorry the title mislead you OHIOMatt. I just posted it because it contains content that wasn't talked about in this thread and thought it was relevant. I know most people following this thread are waiting for conclusive evidence as to why the building failed and who is to blame. Maybe I should of stated that this presentation will not provide that information.

 

[OHIOMatt]

No problem MTNClimber.

I will say one point that I took exception to was the discussion regarding shoring. She seemed to be questioning the design of the shoring. To this point, I had always assumed that the shoring had been designed adequately and that it started to buckle as adjacent members were remove and the building had to assume its self-weight. Maybe there is more to this.

 

[NOLAscience]

I find your "comments" to be especially nitpicky

I'm sorry if you do not approve of my comments. I was just writing up comments as I viewed the video, and I just thought noting these minor corrections in would help someone else watching the video and who might be confused by these discrepancies -- I thought it would head off many discussion Replies.

When discussing the building in #2, it's been said over and over that the parking garage is built of post-tensioned concrete, and in fact it IS made of post-tensioned concrete. Post-tensioned is a better term than "reinforced concrete" because it is more specific. (I know that doesn't make the term reinforced concrete 'wrong'. I could edit my comment, but then this discussion would make no sense.)

I stated #5 because I watched the video in hopes the cause would be discussed from a structural standpoint. Maybe I saved someone an hour by making that point.

 

[MTNClimber]

Maybe I saved someone an hour by making that point.

You watched that at 1x video speed? Yikes...

I'm with everyone else with wanting to know more details regarding the structural failure. The presentation isn't what we all hoped for (lacking certain details, too detailed about unimportant things, its slow, and the technical difficulties made it clunky) but she touched on a few good topics we didn't discuss in this thread including demolition timeline/hiccups and preliminary OSHA citations.

I think everyone needs to take it down a notch and not take this personally. I'm sorry if you felt cheated out of an hour of your life. Next time I'll let you know to skip around and watch YouTube presentations by slow talking engineers at 1.5x-1.75x (if you don't do this already, I suggest you start now).

 

[tw]

This has some new(ish) info:

https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_b6faa544-0d79-11eb-94cd-cb120d0be87d.html

 

[NOLAscience]

... and watch YouTube presentations by slow talking engineers at 1.5x-1.75x (if you don't do this already, I suggest you start now).

I know a bit about psychology and cognitive science, and I know that once you train your brain to expect speech at 1.5x to 1.75x a person's normal speech rate, you will have a very difficult time "untraining" your brain. And it's impossible to speed up people when they are live, right in front of you!

So, I'll stick with 1.0x and just jump ahead by 20-30 seconds and see if I think I've missed anything.

 

[dik]

any chance he could be considered as the constructor?

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?
-Dik

 

[OHIOMatt]

So, this seems like one of the more complex contractual issues that I have seen. So, from what I understand:
A. The owner of the property and apparently the hotel is 1031 Canal Development, LLC
B. The owner of 1031 Canal Development, LLC is
1. Mohan Kailas
2. Denzel Clark
3. Todd Trosclair
4. Others?
C. The general contractor is Citadel Builders, which is owned by Denzel Clark
D. Citadel Builders hired All-Star Electric as a sub contractor, which is owned by Todd Trosclair
E. The owners of 1031 Canal have filed lawsuits against Citadel Builders and All-Star Electric (among many others). So, in essentially the owners are suing themselves and their insurance companies.

What is not clear to me is the following:
A. Who held the contract with the architect?
B. Did the architect hire the consultants?
C. Did the general contractor hold subcontracts with all suppliers or did the owner direct purchase items?
D. I know lawsuits use the shotgun approach and everyone gets sued, but I cannot see how the Electrical contractor is a part of this failure.

The billable time for the attorneys will have to be measured in years, not hours.

 

[NOLAscience]

B. Did the architect hire the consultants?

Which consultants are you referring to? Do you mean the structural engineers?

I don't get why the owners are suing the electrical contractor, either. Maybe Trosclair was involved in other aspects of construction such as procurement of building materials.

 

[Tomfh]

I know that once you train your brain to expect speech at 1.5x to 1.75x a person's normal speech rate, you will have a very difficult time "untraining" your brain. And it's impossible to speed up people when they are live, right in front of you!

Are you saying a permanent change takes place in your brain? I know when you get used to 1.75x it sure sounds funny when you switch back to 1.0x, it sounds much slower than normal. However I find you eventually get used to it again.

 

[Comcokid]

So, in essentially the owners are suing themselves and their insurance companies.

Now you've got me wondering what their IRS situation is.

I've seen this before with an employer I unfortunately worked for. He had several companies on the books, with one company suing the other. It was part of a tax dodge scheme. His taxes had not been paid for several years using a loop-hole (of some kind) that taxes could not be completed as final income/expenses for a particular year were still unknown pending outcome of the suits. He also had one company declaring bankruptcy protection with one of the others as the major creditor. Part of a bankruptcy-for-fun-and-profit scheme.

 

[OHIOMatt]

NOLAscience

I am thinking all consultants including electrical, structural mechanical, etc. There just seems to be something off about how this whole project was structured. I know I have mentioned it in the past, but I think with this collapse and the FIU Pedestrian Bridge collapse, the industry needs to take a look at all of these non-conventional relationships that seem to be taking place.

While financial gain for the engineer is always a consideration, In cases like this, is seems that contractors have the ability to pressure the engineers to accelerate design and accept substandard construction much more so than when the tie to the owner was direct. In this case, the tie to the owner was direct, but the owner was also the contractor. It just seems like something is wrong.

 

[NOLAscience]

Are you saying a permanent change takes place in your brain?

In a word, 'yes'. Every one of your experiences changes your brain to some extent. Most changes are useful and miniscule and serve to strengthen useful pathways. Your brain acts like a neural network that learns statistically about the world. In the case of speed listening, you're training your brain's expectation of how quickly to expect information to arrive when listening to a person speak.

I remember listening to scientist Clifford Nass speak on NPR's Talk of the Nation a few years ago about how multi-tasking, which is really just frequent switching, has changed our ability to pay attention to one thing. He said that our brains have changed and we don't know how easy it would be to change them back. Since then I've tried to set aside my phone and concentrate on one thing at a time whenever possible. Here’s the quote:

FLATOW: So they - all because they have been multitasking. They've lost that ability to focus on one thing.

NASS: That's precisely right. Our brains have to be retrained to multitask and our brains, if we do it all the time - brains are remarkably plastic, remarkably adaptable. We train our brains to a new way of thinking. And then when we try to revert our brains back, our brains are plastic but they're not elastic. They don't just snap back into shape.
--

https://www.npr.org/2013/05/10/182861382/the-myth-of-multitasking

Here’s an interesting observation about listening as a 'podfaster':

https://science.slashdot.org/story/...istening-to-podcasts-at-3x-and-broke-my-brain

Some debate about whether it's good to speed listen, considering the podcast was carefully produced for 1.0x speed:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...ts-audio-perspec-0721-jm-20170720-column.html