*Updated. I am not a structural engineer. I have read the 2018 Morabito Consultants structural engineering report, which was the basis for the New York Times banner headline this morning. The report did not strike me as the smoking gun. Nor did it "Gregg Schlesinger, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contractor and attorney who handles structural failure cases, told NPR that the report doesn't show why the building collapsed..."
The report states,
"...the waterproofing below the Pool Deck & Entrance Drive as well as the planter waterproofing is beyond its useful life and therefore must all be completely removed and replaced. The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas." (emphases added)
Other experts:
"This collapse is a classic column failure. Which means the building itself was supported by a series of pillars. If the pillars fail, everything fails," said Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer and California Seismic Safety Commission chairman.
A "classic"! No doubt, right Kit? Not the concrete structural slab that the columns rest on, the columns themselves, like in a controlled demo. Case solv-ed.
Or was it a general "sinking" feeling:
...a study, published last year...showed the collapsed condo -- unlike other buildings around it -- had been sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters per year between 1993 and 1999. The research was focused on the effects of subsidence, the gradual giving way or collapse of land, on coastal flooding hazards. It did not follow up on the status of the condo, so it is unclear whether the structure continued to sink at the pace described in the study.
But Shimon Wdowinski, a co-author of the study and professor with Florida International University's Institute of Environment, warned that his research did not provide a smoking gun.
...
Asked directly if the sinking -- or subsidence -- could have been a contributing factor to the collapse, Wdowinski said additional information was needed before rendering judgment.
"If everything moves downward at the same level, then not so much," but "if one part of the building moves with respect to the other, that could cause some tension and cracks," he told CNN.
You be the judge.
In an interview on Friday, Kobi Karp, a member of the American Institute of Architects, said that if the "settlement" of the build was "not equal," residents would have recognized the symptoms.
"People in the building would see cracks in their floors, the table would not be flat, things would roll off," Karp said. "You would see cracks in your walls. You look up in the ceiling and you see cracks in the ceiling."
Right? Kobi's right, the fucking thing, both "wings," just pancaked, Shimon's "moves downward at the same level".
The concrete structural slab theory is the most compelling to this expert. The concrete structural slab "support[s] the design load," i.e. of the whole structure, the whole thing. Since Morabito found "major structural damage" to the concrete structural slab it is logical that if the concrete structural slab buckled or caved all at once that the whole think would uniformly pancake. But it didn't. The wing to the video viewer's left remained intact. How would that be? And Morabito confined themselves to the pool deck and driving entrance, they didn't say the entire concrete structural slab had "major structural damage." And,
How do you explain that from a concrete structural slab pov? The collapse occurs as far away from the pool as it can be.
Finally, and most importantly: Any inspector who found that a building was unsafe for human occupancy has to report that out as well as notify the authorities so that residents can be evacuated and the building condemned. The report didn't give any indication that the structure was at risk of collapse.
8:52 a.m.
