Scaffolding Collapse 3

[dik]

From the AP, in China:

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/at-least-40-killed-after-scaffolding-collapse-in-east-china-1.3174451

 

[dik]

Toll now at 74...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-collapse-idUSKBN13K06U

Dik

 

[GregLocock]

maybe they should stick with their tested approach

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[marty007]

maybe they should stick with their tested approach

Wow, just wow...

 

[BigInch]

Bamboo worked just fine for the last 10,000 years. There's a danger with pushing technology into places where it is not well understood.

 

[zeusfaber]

Scaffolders tell me you need to put lots of diagonal poles in if you want the whole thing to be stiff enough. Looks like those guys got the same advice.

A.

 

[itsmoked]

More than likely there was nothing wrong with the scaffolding, it was the fact that the 'management' just doubled the number of workers to 'speed up' the project. Either the scaffolding people were screaming about this to def ears or maybe no scaffold people were present at the time and so they didn't know the overload was in process. I rather suspect the prior.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[waross]

One report claimed that a crane collapsed onto the scaffold bringing it down.

The accident happened on Thursday morning in Fengcheng, in Jiangxi province, during work on a cooling tower for the coal-fired power plant.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-collapse-idUSKBN13K06U

(Thanks to Dik for this link.)
The official China Daily newspaper said the accident happened when a tower crane collapsed, triggering the collapse of the entire construction platform as the night shift was being relieved by the morning shift.
The root cause may have been crane loading and operation rather than scaffold integrity.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[berkshire]

Mentioned in the story was the fact that a shift change was in progress at the time of the collapse, so the wry comment about double the number of workers may in fact be true.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[itsmoked]

No berky, that wasn't a wry comment. I read that in a news report on the day of the incident.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[dik]

From the AP...

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/13-detained-in-china-over-deadly-construction-collapse-1.3176696

"Although authorities did not disclose details about the 13 detentions, the focus of the investigation has turned to the power plant's operator, Jiangxi Ganneng, and a major engineering firm, Hebei Yineng, which has taken on multiple high-profile power plant projects and has a history of workplace fatalities."

Dik

 

[JohnRBaker]

It appears that the Chinese version of 'capitalism' is just as plagued by the profit motive as is the West, just that unlike in the West, when there is an incident like this the people who pay the price are NOT confined to only the casualties at the job site, whereas here in the US the responsible parties are often given large severance checks and quietly forced into early retirement.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[dik]

and the value of human life may be considerbly less...

Dik

 

[dik]

Six more detained

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/six-mor...ng-collapse-that-killed-74-in-china-1.3182798

 

[RolMec]

To blame and to punish is imo just a scapegoat exercise / cya - move mentality which will not bring about safety at work. Imo the individual worker needs to dare to stand up on this because he / she knows how it should be.
Also, if the crane collapse was the root cause, the scaffolding might even have been as per spec. & standards.
I definitely side up with the idea transmitted by the aircraft industry where sufficiently independent and sufficiently "powered" authorities run substantial technical investigations into accidents & provide feedback into the industry .. (well, I guess its not always as one hopes it should be...)
..admit looking "Mayday Air crash investigation" series on youtube sometimes & try to learn my bit...

Roland Heilmann
Lpz FRG

 

[zeusfaber]

It's not just the aviation industry. In the UK (and in many other places too), Marine, Air and Rail accidents are independently investigated by bodies who report publicly on the basis of "not written with litigation in mind".

In my view, a selection of those reports (not just the ones touching on our own industries) ought to be required regular reading for all of us.

Air Accident Investigation Branch

Marine Accident Investigation Branch

Rail Accident Investigation Branch

A.

 

[Ingenuity]

Similarly, The US construction industry safety regulator, via OSHA, has many detailed pastConstruction Incidents Investigation Engineering Reports here:Link that span the past 25+ years.

 

[dik]

Good links...

Dik

 

[JStephen]

I would point out, too, that it's easy to think "Well, that's a third-world construction site where life is cheap", etc. However, one of the notable construction disasters in the US was very similar in overall effects, perhaps not in details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Island_disaster