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Florida Condo Collapse
Brookwood
Member, Moderator Posts: 13,413 ******
Pretty tragic occurrence with many lives lost. I was a bit surprised (not really) about the number of foreign people living there. Proves to me that if you have enough $$ you can live just about anywhere you want.
Anyway, this morning over coffee with one of my brothers, he mentioned that just a short time before the building went down, the Navy set off a major explosion off the Florida coast. Not sure of any of the facts but it seems plausible that there could be a connection.
Sorry for all of the families losses and hope all find peace and comfort in the Lord.
Comments
159 still missing. I seems doubtful that more will be found alive, but there is always hope. Naturally, all sorts of information about the building and possible defects, have surfaced. Whether or not that information will lead to what caused the collapse will take people a lot smarter than I am to figure out.
I think that Navy test was about 300 miles away from Miami, and days earlier.
So much for building inspectors knowing what's best when constructing, they know virtually nothing about construction and they're almost always politically appointed by a friend of a friend.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
I have watched 2 dozen interviews, with survivors and relatives of victims. Half those residents are from Cuba or Colombia, and the other half are Jewish American.
Only about 11 in the hospital I doubt they will find a single additional survivor. What a horrible tragedy.
Knew a fellow years ago. Worked in an office building in Miami, collapsed, his quick thinking saved his life. He stood under a big doorway header and it supported the falling debris. Cause was later determine to be deteriorating concrete.
Concrete had been made using sea water.
Salt was the culprit.
I cannot believe an entire building can fall with over 150 people that we know of being trapped and probably dead, with as little coverage as we have seen about it. I know they spent more time talking about Al Roker's glasses on the Today show than they did this building collapse the morning it happened.
I would only add, NO OTHER buildings were damaged by the Navys test 200nm off the coast of Jacksonville & Jacksonville is ~350 miles from Miami if you just drove down the Fl coast.
Building inspectors are government officials.
Terrible event and it didn't need to happen. Inspections showed structural problems for years. No matter what the owner's corp is worth and the amount of insurance they have, they are going down. I suspect the government officials are in big trouble also.
Regardless of multitude of experts we see on TV the cause of collapse will probably never be known but it's now CYA time for a lot of people. It's a very terrible ending for the occupants and their families.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Sad but folks will point fingers. Never their fault
This may sound cruel..............but now, it is a recovery effort. All they will find, will be parts and pan-caked parts. Sad and preventable.
The Florida pensenula is a porous limestone. Limestone and water do mix well as a foundation. Basically FCD is right.
Day five. That is going to be some grim work, digging in that mess in the next week and pulling those smashed and mangled remains from that ruin. Ever seen a possum that got run over and was laying out in the heat for a week?
Those rescuers and firemen are going to have nightmares for the rest of their lives.
My best friend who passed away in Feb. got selected on Jury in White Plains for Federal Grand Jury Indictment. Seems the mafia was playing games with the way they mixed concrete and the way they were pile driving. This was over 20 years ago and he was on trial for six months. For years i wondered will this be the overpass that falls on my head on the interstates.
Most of these poor people probably never had a clue what was coming. If this investigation is done properly it will have a severe effect on building and economy in Florida.---------------------------------------Ray
When I told my girlfriend about the collapse, the first thing she said was "In 1981 somebody bribed a building inspector in Miama."
Sad but true
If I recall correctly, when a parking garage collapsed in New Orleans some time back, they knew there were bodies in there, but they waited an entire year before they began excavating it. For "safety reasons" the city gooberment said. "Too unstable" to work on recovery.
No comment.
It took 10 months to get the final body out of the NOLA Hard Rock Care.
Saltwater routinely flooding the basement?
https://nypost.com/2021/06/28/former-maintenance-manager-reacts-to-florida-condo-collapse/
That was in 2019 at the Hard Rock Hotel, which was under construction. The structure clasped in January , but the final body wasn't removed until August. The big issue was that the body was partially visible. Very sad.
Thanks for the corrections to my faulty rememberizer. I should have looked it up first.
Not a correction, just my agreeing with you that leaving those bodies inside the rubble was both heartless and cruel to the families. When it comes to corrections, my posts often contain errors in syntax, as well as poor sentence structure. Although I know that you spot them, you say nothing.
A building can be perfect when built, and meet code exactly. Then add time into the equation. ANY building is going to require maintenance, upkeep and repair to remain stable.
When made to the right formula and cured properly, concrete is very strong- under compression. It is relatively weak under tension- which is why steel reinforcement gets added- it is the opposite- strength of one offsets weakness of the other. HOWEVER- if a crack in the concrete exposes the rebar to water (or salt water) it starts to rust- and fluffs up as it does. Putting concrete under tension. It WILL begin spalling away from the steel.
MOST foundations are not on bedrock- we just finished soils studies for a large bridge- you don't find rock until 600 feet down. Foundations will be friction bearing pilings, borne up by soil.
If there is water freely moving thru soil, it changes ability of soil to support weight.
Bottom line- if you hire a competent engineering firm, LISTEN to what they have told you. Ignoring it does not make it get better.
I just read there are people living in the other tower! The city has not evacuated the building yet............come on man really.
The Left has already started blaming Governor DeSantis.
DeSantis? gee, I heard it was Trump's fault!
Yes people are still living in that other tower. If I lived there, I would have grabbed my most precious belongings and gotten out in 5 minutes. How could you go to sleep in that place?
Just imagine, you bought a condo there 15 years ago on a 15 year note and you just paid it off a month ago. A month ago it was probably worth $250K. Today, put it up on Zillow for sale and good luck. Your place has a market value of Zero.
What a disaster. Somebody got a lot of 'splainin to do.
You are right, FCD, people are still living in that structure? That is insane!
Any lawyer who takes a case like this is a dreamer and will work their tails off for zero dollars, he and all involved will be dead years before anything is settled.......what a waste of his / her time looking for justice in something like this.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
A lot of what FCD and others say rings true. I don't claim to be a expert in building construction but have had some experience in this area. I served on the planning board locally for almost ten years and was the building manager for Herbert Hall the Alumni Building at West Point. Along with a retired BG who use to be the professor of EE at West Point, I was in charge of the Punch List when we moved into new building in 1995. This building I could run with one PC, pumps, motors, valves, hvac, the whole nine yards.
There are things i can't discuss on a public forum about my past duties but I have seen enough evidence on this building collapse to frankly make me nauseous. When the smoke finally clears on this tragedy, there is going to be plenty of blame to pass around.
These residents went to sleep never to see the sun shine again. God have mercy on their souls. What a shameful, horrific, tragedy.----------------------------------Ray
It seems that reading about another sinkhole opening up somewhere in Florida is common. Would make me nervous.
Tomorrow morning they will set dynamite charges and drop the remainder of the South building. Partly because a tropical storm/hurricane is headed that way. Partly because, it is dangerous doing recovery with the risk that the remainder of the building will collapse.
They say they can pancake it and not have the debris land on the current debris pile.