Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 12 60

[SFCharlie]

A continuation of our discussion of this failure. Best to read the other threads first to avoid rehashing things already discussed.
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 02
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 03
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 04
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 05
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 06
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 07
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 08
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 09
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 10
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 11

SF Charlie
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[SFCharlie]

Gosh Golly Since the units were defined on the prints, IF they had just poured sheer walls between the units, the building would probably be standing today.

SF Charlie
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[TheGreenLama]

some contractors placed slab pours to the level of the bottom of the upper reinforcing and stopped

I just want to second what Vance is saying. I find it quite unbelievable that this practice may be occurring in Florida. In my opinion, ANY STRUCTURAL SLAB THAT HAS A HORIZONTAL CONSTRUCTION JOINT WITHIN ITS DEPTH IS SUSPECT. I'm not saying this is never done. But if required special care is demanded, and would usually be specifically detailed on the drawings to ensure it's properly done. It should never just be left to the contractor to install these at their whim.

Separately, the broken MC core samples, w/ loose rebar, are likely NOT the result of horizontal CJ's. They are much more likely the result of corroded rebar causing spalling within the concrete.

 

[SFCharlie]

From the surveillance video (which starts after the start of the fall), I seem to see the entire south (poolside) face of the center (units x10 & x11 including the top PH) of the east wing fall intact. What appears to be the skyline of the corridor to the top PH seems to appear (stationary) as the face falls. This requires the floors and roof to tip toward the pool. Since the face of x10 & x11 units remain connected, I don't see the doors getting twisted. We do see twisting in the ring camera video though?

SF Charlie
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[Demented]

Those cores went through previous repair work.

Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge

 

[TheGreenLama]

SFCharlie,

Ring video is picking up micro-level twisting and wracking going on in the structure pre-collapse. This would not be visible in the macro-level surveillance video. At least that's my take.

 

[Demented]

From the surveillance video (which starts after the start of the fall), I seem to see the entire south (poolside) face of the center (units x10 & x11 including the top PH) of the east wing fall intact. What appears to be the skyline of the corridor to the top PH seems to appear (stationary) as the face falls. This requires the floors and roof to tip toward the pool. Since the face of x10 & x11 units remain connected, I don't see the doors getting twisted. We do see twisting in the ring camera video though?

The twisting could have remained internal to the building, or that specific stack. The X11 stack had the most internal alteration of walls, with 10 out of 12 kitchens having the CMU walls removed, and 6 out of 12 having the CMU walls in the laundry removed.

These were on the drawing as not structurally integral, but in a packet of errors, what's to say these walls were not giving some support to the slabs.

The doors would be located between both sets of these walls.

Edit: Another thing to note is, this building had pretty much 100% coverage with hurricane rated glass.
Having just got off a job where we were literally hammering stainless steel on top of glass (and welding it too, oh the joys of 90* max inter-pass temp. FML), a little twist in a building that'll stop a door from opening wont even make that glass wince. The crappy aluminum or stainless frames around the glass have enough crush space that they'd give way about 2-3" before the glass even touches something hard. That glass wouldn't have broken until it was crushed. Layers upon layers of latex paint too. Even at higher quality, that side of the building probably wouldn't have shown us much.

 

[SFCharlie]

TheGreenLama, Demented Thanks for responding!


SF Charlie
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[MaudSTL]

…611 (and the ground floor tenants) were the only ones that got out. Might the upper floors have actually deformed before/more so than the lower floors? Would the twisting (for want of a better word) have gotten worse as you went higher, despite the initial failure being at the base?

Everything is speculation, of course.

But if you go to 34:36 in the 911 calls, there’s a call starting at 1:29:57, seven minutes after the collapse. They’ve edited out the unit number, but it’s likely to be the son of Gloria Machado in 1111. He says his mother told him “there was an explosion in her building” and “She’s trapped in her apartment.”

Given the timing of the call and the verbiage, I think you can make the argument that Ms. Machado survived the collapse, made the call, and then expired before rescue. Ms. Machado thought there had been an explosion in the building. She would have had no idea that the building itself had collapsed. All she could have known is that she was trapped in the rubble of her ruined apartment. What I’m trying to say is that the wracking of her door frame was unlikely to have been the reason she couldn’t get out, especially considering the extent of her injuries.

As for 811, we will never know why they grabbed their IDs and died in each other’s arms. Rather than being stuck in their apartment as a result of wracking, though, perhaps like the Nirs in 111 they believed they were experiencing an earthquake. When you’re in a high rise in an earthquake, you’re supposed to stay away from glass and wait it out, and then, after the shaking stops, put on your shoes, grab your purse, and evacuate. Maybe that’s what the people in 811 were preparing to do, having no way to anticipate a building collapse.

We know from what the Gonzalezes, who miraculously survived after plunging down from 904, said that the building was shaking violently on their level, so it would be natural to think it was an earthquake. The Gonzalezes’ decision to try to escape saved them…they got lucky. Like Ileana Monteagudo had done several minutes earlier in 611, the Gonzalezes in 904 got their apartment door open and ran out into the hallway.

 

[Debirlfan]

>But if you go to 34:36 in the 911 calls, there’s a call starting at 1:29:57, seven minutes after the collapse. They’ve edited out the unit number, but it’s likely to be the son of Gloria Machado in 1111. He says his mother told him “there was an explosion in her building” and “She’s trapped in her apartment.”

There was a guy on the officer's body cam saying that his mother was stuck in her apartment. The impression I had was that she was in the still standing part of the building? He might have been the one who called 911?

 

[Spartan5]

Given the extent of the injuries described I’m amazed that she’d be able to locate and operate her phone in the pitch dark in any amount of time, let alone within minutes of the collapse.

I would have also expected that she would have been described to dispatch as seriously injured and in need of immediate medical attention instead of trapped. And probably would have called 911 first herself.

Which makes me think the call was placed before the whole thing came down but after some shaking and wracking of the building took place.

 

[SFCharlie]

Feds’ video shows ‘astronomical’ corrosion, crowded rebar in Champlain Towers debris

SF Charlie
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[AusG]

I noted poor, powdery concrete in earlier snaps of the rubble pile but I am not a concrete guy. Is it the expert view that this stuff looks wrong? We also don't see that much corrosion of the rebar on general view (foot of that columns in the article being an obvious exception). Is corrosion/expansion/concrete cancer in the overall structure really in evidence here?

 

[MaudSTL]

There was a guy on the officer's body cam saying that his mother was stuck in her apartment. The impression I had was that she was in the still standing part of the building? He might have been the one who called 911?

The guy in the street trying to get the cops to save his mom seemed to be indicating the part still standing. I can’t decipher whether he says the apartment number. Go to 6:37 in this bodycam video and see if you can hear a unit number. He is talking to the cops at 1:36:35, which is 7 minutes after the 911 call about the mom trapped in her apartment and 14 minutes after the building collapsed.

Which makes me think the call was placed before the whole thing came down but after some shaking and wracking of the building took place.

Blue Shirt Fire Admin from 1209 described hearing something falling in the apartment and then described the sound of the building collapse as a jet. It’s questionable whether 1209 even heard the deck collapse. Ileana Monteagudo in 611 described the deck collapse as a supernatural force that woke her up. Because of these statements, I am having a hard time imagining someone in 1111 describing the deck collapse as an explosion. But assuming one person’s supernatural force is another person’s explosion, let’s imagine that Gloria Machado called her son immediately after the 1:15 deck collapse. It doesn’t make sense to me that her son would then wait until 1:29:57, nearly 15 minutes after the deck collapse and 7 minutes after the building collapse, to call 911 to report that his mother’s building had had an explosion and she was trapped in her apartment.

 

[spsalso]

Curiously, the base of the column that was shown as an example of "astronomical" corrosion didn't fail.

It's still standing.

spsalso

 

[Spartan5]

let’s imagine that Gloria Machado called her son immediately after the 1:15 deck collapse. It doesn’t make sense to me that her son would then wait until 1:29:57, nearly 15 minutes after the deck collapse and 7 minutes after the building collapse, to call 911 to report that his mother’s building had had an explosion and she was trapped in her apartment.

Let’s imagine, that she, like my mom who is of the same vintage, takes a few moments to get her bearings at 1:15 in the morning. And instead she called moments before the building collapsed after waking up, wandering about a bit, finding she can’t open the door, Gondi go her phone, and calling. That’s the better part of 5 minutes right there.

Where was here son calling from? If it was anywhere other than the immediate area he would have had to work a bit to get patched into the Miami-Dade County dispatch, no?

Monteagudo, who is in her 50s, woke up from a restless sleep and heard strange noises. She initially believed they came from the open sliding door to the oceanfront balcony.

“I ran and tried to close it but I couldn’t, I imagine because it was unlevel already because of all the movement,” she recounted. “I heard a crack and when I looked, I saw a crack traveling in the wall two fingers thick. Something told me, you need to run.”

What did the building experience between the time Monteagudo was woken up by “strange noises” and the time after cracks started running in the wall, but while she ran about collecting credit cards, ID, various religious tokens, and then ran down several flights of stairs before the collapse happened. I can’t imagine that everything was serene.

Like you said, it’s all speculation. None of it will be resolved with any certainty. And even if it is, it sheds no relevant light on anything. We’ve had some 4,000 posts of that. Maybe it’s fodder for the lawyers. But other than that…

 

[MaudSTL]

This is NIST’s press release: NIST Establishes Expert Team to Investigate the Champlain Towers South Collapse. If you scroll to the bottom, it has the full video that they provided to the media.

Here’s the archived version of the Miami-Herald piece about it.

 

[AutisticBez]

Maud, its possible for someone to have died in the standing portion of the building. Very little has been said for the state of the standing portion. Not sure if anyone went door to door either. Perhaps those who could escape, did so via fire ladders or down the stairs. Is it possible someone died in the standing portion? Then later, they were found crushed in the wreckage after it was demolished?

There was internal damage in portions of the standing portion. Surely there must have been rooms where people may have been stuck by doors that wouldn't open?

 

[Optical98]

Spartan,

"None of it will be resolved with any certainty. And even if it is, it sheds no relevant light on anything. We’ve had some 4,000 posts of that. Maybe it’s fodder for the lawyers. But other than that…"

Both NIST and Lawyers will re-interview all of these survivors/witnesses. It won't be "fodder" because they will ask better, more deliberate questions and have bilingual interviewers. Unlike journalists looking for a sensational soundbite.

Yes, we on here are at an extreme disadvantage trying to reinterpret any of the previous interviews.

 

[Optical98]

AutisticBez

Fire fighters did go completely thru the standing portion of the building that morning.

You can see at the very top, that is one of them with a flashlight.

Also, I was able to tie all of the deaths to the Units of the collapsed portion, I kept a spreadsheet. I started it because I knew the original number of 149 was incorrect. Cava knew the missing was under 100 within 2-3 days and never corrected herself... I wonder if this lie was upheld to help increase the state of emergency or fema funding?

 

[Nukeman948]

You can see at the very top, that is one of them with a flashlight.

There is also a faint glow of flashlights on the stairwell landings.

What I am interested in is that vertical row of red lights. Are those exit signs with batteries at the end of the halls? (I'll start looking)


Found it...

That looks like what I'm seeing.