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Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 14 41

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SFCharlie

SFCharlie

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Apr 27, 2018
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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
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 12
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 13

SF Charlie
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Reverse_Bias said:
NIST & geotech
Click to expand...
Possibly they did not invest a huge lot of horsepower into that area initially because there was no immediate evidence to suspect a problem, however people persist in talking about it, and maybe the issue has come up in land sales along that coast, etc. They may have been asked, in other words, to prove a negative and have had to gear up to attempt the impossible.
 
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AusG said:
Possibly they did not invest a huge lot of horsepower into that area initially because there was no immediate evidence to suspect a problem, however people persist in talking about it, and maybe the issue has come up in land sales along that coast, etc. They may have been asked, in other words, to prove a negative and have had to gear up to attempt the impossible.
Click to expand...

Also looks like they're aiming to find every defect and code violation in this building regardless of whether it had anything to do with the collapse.

They will likely find hundreds of them that played little or no role in their 5000 page report coming in 2027.



 
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Reverse_Bias said:
They will likely find hundreds of them that played little or no role in their 5000 page report coming in 2027.
Click to expand...

Good.
They find hundreds of problems to be solved that lead to code and regulation changes that result in money in the pockets of us little people that make those changes happen and build safer buildings.
The preliminary report will be shorter and come sooner. Then we can get to work on making life better for all of us.







.


I just want to be free to drive my forklift wherever I choose.
 
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Bottom of page 4999: "The turtle-friendly lighting, however, was pretty good".
Nukeman's point is valid of course; if the exact causes of this disaster had not been there to bring it down now, some of the other violations may well have brought it down later with equivalent calamity.
 
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The NIST report will focus on the construction and maintenance of this one building and its many flaws. However it may fall short or not even address all the corruption and bureaucratic issues that plagued this building. But its purpose is not just to explain what happened here, but also to serve as a road map to improve the safety of other buildings, both existing ones and those to be built in the future.

Many years ago, my apprenticeship instructor actually participated in the code making process for our National Electrical Code. We get a new code book with all of their changes every three years whether we want it or not. I am required to take a class on all of those changes each time a new code book comes out to keep my license valid.

The NIST has no power to write new codes or regulations but all the other people that do write those codes will parse every page of that document and debate the merits of the findings and recommendations for many years to come and many rule making cycles.

Every accident that has ever occurred at Nuclear power plants or in the nuclear industry has resulted in changes to the way those plants are operated. The Three Mile Island accident resulted in all plants getting more temperature, flow and pressure sensors and instrumentation upgrades for example. The Fukushima Daiichi accident led us to standardized standby emergency equipment stored in bunkers at each plant that could also be sent to any of the other plants if needed. We even learned a lot from the Russian's foolishness at Chernobyl.

While it costs a large sum of money and effort to make these changes, the end result should be a net savings both in insurance money and lives saved.
I have no issue if a few sea turtles are helped along the way.

The world works best when things are kept in balance. Some people complain about the burden of regulations while ignoring the benefits. This collapse happened, in part, because of that type of shortsightedness. (and corruption and stuff...)

I just want to be free to drive my forklift wherever I choose.
 
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SFCharlie said:
It deserves more that just a star!
Click to expand...

Thanks Charlie.
But I'm not here for the stars or any other fake internet points, and I'm certainly not making any money off of it like some people are.
I'm just tired of all the idiots that just want to sit back and watch the world burn and post negativity every time someone steps up with an extinguisher.

Keeping balance is one part of the solution, but I also find that if I don't keep pedaling I tend to fall over a lot.

I just want to be free to drive my forklift wherever I choose.
 
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> They will likely find hundreds of them that played little or no role in their 5000 page report coming in 2027

That's fine. As well as trying to find what caused this building to collapse, another (perhaps the main) objective of this investigation is to see if there's anything that we should be worried about with other similar buildings, and if there's common code violations in 80s concrete structures then that might have a bearing on that. Particularly if it's e.g. insufficient rebar or poor slab-column connectivity which isn't directly related to the layout of this particular building.
 
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Topical to things that go creak in the night, and may or may not indicate a problem:
There is some audio of the loud creaking that scared a few people as the building swayed in high winds (you have to put up with an ad first I'm sorry). No suggestion the building is at any risk though. details on construction for the interested:
Nicely founded 45m into bedrock
 
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In thinking about the various failings in Champlain South, If we remove all those caused by incompetence, greed, and corruption, what is left?

No, really. We've gone through 14 pages of this, and it looks like if the building had been built properly at the beginning, it would not have failed. Whether or not there was a maintenance failing later is a bit tricky, since it appears much of the needed maintenance was derived from the aforementioned incompetence, greed and corruption during construction.

Leaving out the three horsepersons of the apocalypse I mentioned, can anyone describe possible changes in codes and construction methods that would have minimized the falling-down problem?

I do confess the minimal shear walling comes to mind. Being a California lad, I do say: What?


Champlain South was structurally inspected by a PE. That would be the PE who designed it. On inspection (if it actually happened), the inspecting PE said the designing PE did a great job. And so did everyone else. Signed off as wonderful!

The new proposals we are just reading about want lots of inspections. By PE's. To be paid for by people who do not want bad news.

What could go wrong?

And I'd still like to know what the $14,000 permit fee went to pay for ($46,000 in today's money).



spsalso
 
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There is still the issue of a possible foundation issue and water intrusion from below leading to corrosion of lower column members. But even that's a stretch for bringing the building down on it's own. Would be interesting to know what the results of the drop hammer testing a couple of months ago are. One of the drops left quite the depression in the slab.

More inspection definitely isn't the solution. Competent inspection perhaps, but it's hard to gauge that down here with everything privatized.

Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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There are plenty of good questions NIST can probably answer for us at this point without saying providing any conclusions about the collapse.

For example, it doesn't take 3 months to do basic concrete cylinder tests hopefully they have done dozens if not hundreds by now.

Same with the rebar, if a lot of it was well below spec, NIST should have some data on it.

Another question would be if they were able to recover any CTS CCTV video from the collapse or the days before. Or any other video of the collapse other than what's been made public for that matter.



 
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How's about we do a "failure matrix"?

On the X axis, I propose:

1--that incompetence, greed, and corruption thing I brought up

2--"well, that didn't work" or "seemed like a good idea at the time"--commonly accepted things that were supposed to work, but had problems.
Here I'm think about discovering that plastic vapor barrier ALSO kept wetness INSIDE, or that non-UV resistant plastic pipe​
wasn't a good idea outdoors and exposed.​

3--a mistake--a non-intentional error in execution--my fave being the Hubbell telescope and the metric/inch conversion thing


On the Y axis, I propose:

a--buildings already constructed

b--buildings not yet constructed


It's my impression that NIST might have something productive in the 2b category. Nukeman 948 has suggested (I believe) that NIST, though perhaps commenting on the physical manifestations of 1b, will not come up with anything productive on how to solve that problem. And then on 3b, about all I expect is "try not to make mistakes".

And yet, 1, 2, and 3 will all contribute to future building failures; and all three should be considered.


Going to the a column, it's different--building's already up. It does appear that buildings give hints of failure early, and so inspections are looking like a good idea. My problem is with having the owning entity pay for it, directly to the inspecting entity. That connection should be broken. The payment for the inspecting entity should come from government, which is supposed to be the one looking out for the common good. And, by the way, was PAID to do that already via inspection fees (if a government was paid to do inspections and they didn't do them properly, are they then accountable for the failures?).

I also do wonder about the promise of very long jail terms for any inspecting entity that is "naughty". And doing it. For example, having a second follow-up inspection as a quality-control for the first.

So far, I am hugely unimpressed with the various Florida proposals to Do Something.


spsalso


 
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That no-one has even acknowledged the existence of any better or different video footage is pretty astounding.
 
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Santos81 said:
We’re working on 3d Models to map out as built incorporating all the individual unit changes where applicable to aid in reconstruction. [highlight #FCE94F]Having viewed the full footage from multiple cameras at 87 Park today[/highlight], only makes that more difficult and important.
Click to expand...
Santos81 said:
The Surveillance system at 87 Park captured the entire event from multiple locations at 60fps/4K. It has continuous recording but will not play back at that quality at the Lobby console nor without action event queue markers.
Click to expand...

The crime scene status is likely holding any of that from being released, but at least more video does exist.

Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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It was hidden deep in the bowels of roof first, so easy to miss.

Precision guess work based on information provided by those of questionable knowledge
 
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Found this little gem trying to find this NV5 report.
Attorney client privilege's on geotech data. Ha.
Dewatering and shoring plans/permits/whatnot


dewater_r46e5h.png

Eh, potato resolution strikes again. 3.2MGD over 90 days for ~285.3MG.
King Tide is about 1ft higher than the top of the basement slab.
 
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