“If you have one column subjected to spalling, the no. 1 suspect here, it could fail. That one beam could bring down the whole building like a domino effect.”
I don’t know much about construction engineering, but I think that more redundancy than that should be required. A large building that can be brought down by just one failing beam should never have been built.
I'm with you!
“In these buildings that are asymmetrical like this one, there is a possibility that if you have one part of the building that collapses, the building does some turning and twisting,” Ehsani said. “In this case, it is possible that a failure any place in this building could cause distortion to the frame of the building and could cause a collapse in any of the areas, not just adjacent [to the failure].”
I don’t know much about construction engineering, but I think that more redundancy than that should be required. A large building that can be brought down by just one failing beam should never have been built.
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That misses the entire point.
There wasn't just a single beam that had corrosion/structural problems. There was cracked/exposed/corroded concrete and rebar in numerous places throughout the building.
In fact, the report done by the engineer in 2018, he mentions he saw about 1/2 of the units as a sample. He clearly didn't see 100% of the building. And, neither did the pool contractor who was there to replace the pool equipment 2 days prior to the collapse. He saw yet other areas of the building and took some photos seen above.
It's highly likely, if an engineer had done a 100% inspection in the days/weeks leading to the disaster, they would have had pages of photos and red flagged support structures located throughout the building.
In particular, in the lower levels in and around the pool deck area which is exactly where the video shows this collapse started.
Even a bit of common sense says it most likely was a single beam that finally gave way, but half a dozen or more that were in bad shape as well, gave way a split second later since they couldn't hold the additional load. So, just like that engineer said...a domino effect.