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Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 03 148

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I have looked in detail at the original plans and it looks like they changed the foundation from precast concrete piles (50tons each)at 3ft spacing to “PIF” at 150 tons with a much greater spacing but it does not appear that they added more reinforcement to the pile caps to account for the additional bending and shear introduced by this change. It seems odd to me that no one is discussing the foundation pile cap design and this change which is an obvious red flag. The significant lack of ductility/redundancy as evidenced by the extent of the collapse strongly suggests the root cause is a flaw in the initial design.
 
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JohnRBaker said:
Another apartment complex in Florida has been ordered evacuated as a precaution after city officials became concerned over a recent report about the buildings:

North Miami Beach building deemed unsafe, evacuations ordered

A Jan. 11 report on the Crestview Towers condominium complex said it "was structurally and electrically unsafe."

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Phil1934 said:
North Miami just ordered evacuation of 50 yo Crestview Condos 7 miles north of this one.
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Likely all PR moves to show the public that we're listening & we care too. Puts customers at ease, or so it's intended to.
 
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Js5180 said:
One has to wonder - with so many columns punching through, was it really a column failure at K/L-9.1/10? This would suggest that only three columns were seriously degraded, but the slab everywhere else was.
Click to expand...

Yeah indicates that the soil they sit in was not as unstable as I first thought. This is why I'm leaning away from any sinkhole possibility.
 
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warrenslo said:
The roof anchors were improperly installed on the cantilever portion of the rooftop slab in the portion of the building that did not collapse
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warrenslo said:
They installed nearly all the perimeter anchors on the cantilevered portion of the roof slab - not per the structural drawings.
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Looks as though most of the perimeter anchors were supposed to be mounted on the cantilevered portion....per the structural drawing.
Post_Mounts_cqnw3l.png
 
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Lizard7709 said:
I found this article that was interesting. It gives some insight on why the construction timeline of the sister buildings is what it is. It also talks briefly about the penthouse an explains why it was added and removed.

In South Florida, developers often demand exceptions to rules. Champlain Towers got several

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Interesting angle to be taken by Miami Herald, but I guess I'm not surprised to see that from them... South Florida, developers often demand exceptions to rules... this is a relative statement that's nothing more than a newspaper opining on this tragedy.

They come off sounding like they have something against developers from South Florida. Strange article.
 
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Controlled Demolition is planning to drop the building Sunday if finished with preparation by then in advance of potential storm.

Wow!! Yesterday they were saying it would take weeks, but now it may be tomorrow. It must be in much worse shape that they thought earlier. This is the best of the terrible options, though. Too bad that we may never learn the real cause of the collapse.
 
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It will be interesting how they do it, and how it comes down. Hope there is some good high resolution raw video, with good sample rate and without compression and other artifacts.
 
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For the engineer's report on the Crestview Towers Condo that the city just closed for safety, it's weird that the report is dated as 1/11/21 and yet it is stamped received by the city yesterday, 7/2/21. Looks like they are scrambling to cover their butts. Wonder how many more may get shut down?
 
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You have more confidence in government agencies than I do, I guess... even the FAA was flakey.

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

-Dik
 
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There's a sleazy ugliness there...

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

-Dik
 
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kreemerz said:
Just sharing this theory in animated presentation.

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This is an interesting animation and take on collapse mechanism. Earlier in thread people were suggesting (at least this was my interpretation) that pool slab may have failed along exterior building column line, dropped, and pushed horizontally on column. This animation offers an alternate hypothesis. That most of the deck slab failed successively in punching shear, with the slab remaining intact and still connected to the exterior column line. Then, through catenary action, the slab dead load pulled on that column line causing failure.

Back when this building was built was "integrity reinforcement" (bottom rebar to resist punching shear) required in parking garage slabs?
 
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Not that I'm aware of... For narrow rectangular columns, I always added a couple of 25M (#8) bars bottom in the narrow direction... just my practice back then.

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

-Dik
 
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For the roof loads, I estimate qty. 150 of 3-ton A/C units (in groups of a dozen) plus a couple cell repeaters and electrical panels. That looks like 33,000lbs of add-ons distributed across the roof. Then there's the penthouse. I did not look at the main rooftop unit weight for cooling the common areas. Half the units fell in the collapse.

I think it's obvious the building's height was a developer's and thus engineering issue, the reason for not sloping the decks and possibly having a low parkage floor, and other compromises.
 
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