Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in

Hard Rock Hotel under construction in New Orleans collapses... 119

Status
Not open for further replies.
Wow, obviously not good. Really pulling for the worker on the scaffold (on the southwest elevation (yellow side) about 3 floors up from the podium (white) level).

Video seems to start a little after the collapse starts.

EIT
 
Never have been a proponent of PT flat slab construction. Too many things can go wrong that can lead to what you see here due to the lack of redundancy, if nothing else.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA, HI)


 
If you watch the beginning over and over, it looks like the top two slabs deflect a column line or two in from the edge. The edge of the top slab rotates and is pulled back. Looks like those slabs failed in flexure first.

That one crane in the background tilts forward as if it was resting load on the slab and the slab just gave way.
 
The images linked by stookyfpe show steel framing, steel form deck, etc. Not PT flat slab at the levels which collapsed. It looks like the transfer floor is intact.
 
Jeremy,

The video is the final stage of the failure. Most of that side of the building had already collapsed. What we see here appears to be the last few dominos to fall.
 
msquared48 said:
Never have been a proponent of PT flat slab construction. Too many things can go wrong that can lead to what you see here due to the lack of redundancy, if nothing else.
Click to expand...

Purely based upon photographs, I think the PT deck (transfer level and those below it) fared considerably better than the structural steel with metal deck-slab.

Lower levels with PT:

CAPTURE_PT_qqemen.png


Upper level with structural steel + metal deck:

capture_sd_ognb2u.png
 
5da25518b3a12.image_q6pwiy.jpg



Check out the steel framing and deck orientation in the cantilever...where those small canti tubes supposed to hold the floor up? The shoring appears to fail, but this appears to be some weird, inadequate framing
 
That is going to be a mess to clean up.

The video is curious. It was shot by hand and started while the collapse was in progress. So it had started several seconds earlier and that person was super quick to the draw or it was just a strange coincidence. I'd be interested to hear more about why he started recording.

RIP to the departed.
 
There was one recording started by a guy in the construction industry who claimed to have heard from a block away the sound of something hitting the ground, he thought glass, near the construction site. I assume he's heard a similar noise before, so he stopped his car and started to look for the source while recording. This is the one that catches the steel frame chasing 4 or 5 workers as they flee across the street.
 
Ingenuity...

The podium slab protected the thinner slabs below.

My opinion has not changed.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA, HI)


 
Mike,
You are entitled to your opinion about flat plates, but your comment was misplaced here. This collapse would seem to have nothing to do with the concrete construction at and below the podium level.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

NOLAscience
  • Locked
  • Question
Hard Rock Hotel Collapse -- New Orleans -- Part 5 1
Replies
19
Views
33
phamENG
phamENG
XR250
  • Question
Milton Crane Collapses
Replies
17
Views
67
3DDave
3DDave
thebard3
  • Locked
  • Question
German 'Hotel' Collapse
Replies
14
Views
15
JStephen
JStephen
Craig_H
  • Locked
  • News
Saskatoon Hollow-Core Building Collapses during Construction
Replies
7
Views
19
jayrod12
jayrod12
NOLAscience
  • Locked
  • Question
Hard Rock Hotel Collapse -- New Orleans -- Part 4 3
Replies
3
Views
10
Cool_Controls
Cool_Controls
Back
Top