As soon as we get a decent wind blowing in Sydney those walls are coming down. Structural Engineers are going to cop it over this one. Same with those aluminium facade panels which kept catching on fire, and the whole debacle with Opal tower. Every historic building in Sydney (over 50 years), is going to have question marks about fire safety. That's a proper collapse that, the seven stories of floor framing is gone, who knows where the fire exit was, looks like the stairs are hanging in the top right of the picture. I'm clueless about how to collapse those walls safely. Might need to get the fire brigade in there and try to water cannon them so they fall inwards.
It'll be interesting to see how they bring them down. I just hope they see sense and take the opportunity to wipe the slate clean. Already I've heard chatter in the media about the need to "save" as much of what's left as possible.
A building commission was set up by the NSW government for residential buildings after Opal tower, and by in large I think it has done a good job. I am expecting to see something similar here with historic buildings. I know it was a roaring fire but the fire started at 4pm local time and the facade was falling onto the street at 5:15pm. The internal floor framing and columns probably collapsed before then. Even if buildings are 100 years old they need to perform better in fire than this one did.
I was just asking the question, "Is there any historical merit in saving the facade?"... I have no idea if there was any heritage value. I helped stabilise a 3 storey building that was just a shell because of the heritage value. If no value or limited value, it's gone...
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So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates
