Posted on 06/16/2015 7:50:02 AM PDT by BenLurkin
An apartment balcony near the University of California’s Berkeley campus collapsed early Tuesday, killing five of the 13 people who fell from the fourth-floor structure, the city’s police said.
All five who died in the collapse at the Library Gardens Apartments were Irish citizens and were “for the most part students,” Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan said in a radio interview in his country Tuesday.
At least seven others were taken to hospitals with serious injuries after the balcony gave way at about 12:40 a.m., Berkeley police Officer Byron White told CNN.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Been there, done that?
“Most modern construction is of shoddy quality.”
And three guesses why.
The question remains: why?
Yes, they still have an excellent physics department, but all those students were either in their labs or out smoking cigarettes behind the building while their experiments run, not seeing how many people they could pack on a tiny balcony.
That’s what it kind of looked like from the pictures but the wood looked rotted or weathered and the break would be the upside down from what you show. This pic looks like something pushed up on the other end.... Possible it’s sagging because of heavy load but joists on the other side of it don’t show any stress I can see.
They don’t make wood like they used to.
The young believe that they are invincible. What a shame.
Joists appear to be rotted. Uncovered balcony more likely to develop leaks. Shoddy construction? Synthetic stucco? Too many people on the balcony. Looks like a 3 to 4 person balcony at most.
Looks like EIFS siding too... the building owner shoud be made to perform a moisture instusion test all around the building... wood framed structures that were sided with this type of siding are notorious for wood rot and mold due to moisture intrusion. The fault mainly lies with the building industry for promoting faulty exterior finishes. They may not be faulty in the design phase on paper but the engineering of building products rarely plan for poor installation technique and longevity of design. Liability goes to the building owner, the builder and the building product designer.
And parants, please tell you kids to not congregate on decks and balconies, and show them the consequinces of doing so... the internet is repleat with stories of collapsed structures due to overloadng... something “young-skulls-full-of-mush” never consider.
I’m not so sure it’s really more than economic. Yes, money has always been in limited supply, but developers have gotten very, very good at selling shoddily-constructed apartments as “luxury.” They do it all the time here in NYC - build as quickly and cheaply as possible, throw in some high-end kitchen and bathroom fixtures (or at least fixtures that *look* high-end), add some low-cost and low-maintenace building amenities (think “yoga room”), and *POOF* you have yourself a “luxury apartment complex.”
Not sure why the physics department at Cal would be called out by some here when I would be looking towards the Civil Engineering-Structural Division consultants retained by the developer who were required by the local city building department to prepare the design based upon the UBC or IBC codes.
In their defense the code will only give ratings for a residential occupancy load for that size dwelling but most likely will not take into consideration a party size load. Also these two patio decks shown in the photo seem to be add-ons as I don’t see any other decks protruding from the face of the building, and if that is the case than the deck load in cantilever condition would have been limited by wall plate fasteners, IMHO...
I was thinking about that too. More like a cantilevered beam problem, with some building codes thrown in.
The owner probably had a change order to add those two decks and the contractor may have just added a 2x8 across the outer wall plate with a couple of 3-1/2 inch lag bolts on each end after his framing inspection was complete instead of running through the building department again for approval. A close up of the tear away will tell you pretty much everything you need from rotted wood to the above. But I’m sure both sides will hire experts. But it is a pretty simple failure scenario to re-create. Take the pre-accident condition then apply the known loads and presto change-O you’ll have the answer for the failure and a boat load of cash for the victims.
Short term investment for high density living. When the city eventually sees a shift in trends and the landlord wants to build something else, the teardown is quicker/cheaper.
Luxury apartment complex = well to do neighbors.
The students killed were studying at Irish universities. They were in the US for summer jobs on a J1 visa.
The party was a 21st birthday. The police had received a call earlier in the evening about loud noise coming from the apartment, but never got around to going there.
The balcony was 5 x 10, and the code is 60 pounds a square foot, so it should have held up 3000 pounds.
About 13 or 14 people were on the balcony when it collapsed. They were very probably not just sitting quietly, either. They could have collectively weighed very close to 3000 pounds.
When a porch with about 25 people in Chicago dancing on it collapsed( Duh)
every single home owner of a multi unit home with a porch ended up spending 10’s of thousands to retrofit their building to code. In our case we ended up doing it twice, because after we redid the porch, they changed the code again.
I am SO glad I got rid of that building last year.
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