Not Your Fault: Engineers Think Surfside Building Had Less Steel Reinforcement

All the climate cultists had to do was wait a bit for actual evidence and facts to come to light regarding the collapse of the Surfside condo building. But, no, they immediately jumped to anthropogenic climate change

Condo Wreckage Hints at First Signs of Possible Construction Flaw

Engineers who have visited or examined photos of the wreckage of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex have been struck by a possible flaw in its construction: Critical places near the base of the building appeared to use less steel reinforcement than called for in the project’s original design drawings.

The observation is the first detail to emerge pointing to a potential problem in the quality of construction of the 13-story condo tower in Surfside, Fla., that collapsed last month, killing at least 24 and leaving up to 121 still unaccounted for.

Reached by phone, Allyn E. Kilsheimer, a forensic engineering expert hired by the town of Surfside to investigate the collapse, said the investigation was still in its early stages. But he confirmed there were signs that the amount of steel used to connect concrete slabs below a parking deck to the building’s vertical columns might be less than what the project’s initial plans specified.

“The bars might not be arranged like the original drawings call for,” Mr. Kilsheimer said in an interview. He said he would need to inspect the rubble more closely to determine whether in fact the slab-to-column connections contained less steel than expected.

Well, you know the Warmists will still link it to ‘climate change’, because that’s what they do. They’re bound to say “oh, well, yeah, it did have less reinforcement that there should have been, but, Bad Weather and sea rise made it happen quicker” or something like that.

Now we wait for more evidence of causation. There’s a lot more information and graphics at the article.

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7 Responses to “Not Your Fault: Engineers Think Surfside Building Had Less Steel Reinforcement”

  1. Hairy says:

    And the condo evacuated next to the condo that collapsed ? Thst you had less steel??

  2. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    Engineers said it seemed unlikely that having less rebar would trigger a collapse in and of itself, even factoring in significant deterioration over many years. An inherent safety factor built into most projects would mean that a slight reduction in steel content would not necessarily lead to disaster.

  3. joetote says:

    It could be they used beach sand in the concrete mix. I once saw a core sample of a building in Miami in which the rebar was completely corroded powder as they had in fact used beach sand

    • Dana says:

      No ready-mix company would ever use beach sand in a mix. Concrete sand is ‘gap graded,’ meaning that certain percentages of the sand must pass through specified sieves. If you do not use properly graded sand, the mix will be way too coarse, or, if the sand is too fine, the water demand for the mix skyrockets, meaning that much more cement will have to be used; cement is the most expensive ingredient in concrete.

      More, if your aggregates are not properly graded, your concrete mix will not be pumpable, and a high rise building is almost always pumped. The only other way to get the concrete on elevated placement sites is through using a crane and bucket, which gets pretty problematic on pours of any size.

  4. Professor hale says:

    Either way, it is way too soon to tell. Such things normally take a year to conclude and often end up with just speculation and best guesses. It is a perfectly reasonable caveat that insufficient steel is not the proximate cause or even a contributor.

  5. Dana says:

    If less steel was used than that for which the approved plans called, there are two legally liable groups: the contractor who put in the steel, and the inspection company which checked it. If any of those people are still alive, it’s go-to-jail time for them.

    In a building 40 years old, there are unlikely to be any of the personally responsible individuals still working at those companies, but if the companies are still in business, huge lawsuits will be filed.

    • Professor Hale says:

      I understand the number of people who will be looking to get wealthy off the lawsuits, but it looks like all the liable people are indeed dead already. The inspectors, the builders, the architects, even the property owners. All dead. Since those are condos, I am unsure how the law treats liability of the individual unit owners versus the common area owners. I am guessing some group of insurance companies takes it in the shorts and some judges tell the insurance companies to pay even more than their contracted liability. That is what they did for Hurricane Sandy and Katrina.

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