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Champlain Towers Should Have Been Condemned And Emergency Evacuated In 2018

Video explains why spalling and cracking on the exterior of critical support columns with rusted steel showing is almost always much worse on the interior. Only a destructive forensic examination of the column by removal of the damage and inspection of the interior would allow an accurate assessment of their support capability. Just shoring the column in the meantime is a major engineering task because 1) they're loaded with enormous weight, and 2) they run the entire height of the building with distributed loading from all the joining to flooring and horizontal support framing all the way to the top.

Engineer founder of this company:

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been working construction engineering since his teens so it's part of his brain formation.

Video here:

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Second video illustrating just how bad things can be below the surface of what seems like a minor problem:

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That's actually a good looking building. Too bad they messed up the detailing.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs
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It looked to me like there was rust staining visible on some of the interior concrete walls of the building, visible post-collapse that was perhaps hidden by drywall or drop-ceilings when the building was intact, but might have been observable if anyone had ripped into that stuff and looked above and behind it.

Reply to
bitrex

Will have to check that out, didn't notice it.

The city of Surfside is now in the process of emergency inspection of their inventory of 40+ year old buildings, and it looks they're going over them in great detail.

Reply to
Fred Bloggs

Check out this photo on the left, the vertical brownish-red streaks there:

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Can't be sure but I think those are grooves where the metal furring channel brackets for the interior drywall sit in. When it collapsed a lot of that shit got ripped out along with the brackets which revealed the grooves underneath, and it looks to me like the rust-like staining is much more apparent towards the top of the building than down in the units in the bottom.

Looks like water has been seeping in thru the roof and running down the strapping channels.

Reply to
bitrex

I'm pretty sure that's not rust. It's some portion of the installation that didn't get completely ripped off. Look at the one stripe on the far left second story from the top that's cocked. Are you suggesting it was installed that way? The one next to it is gapped and not so red. There's no reason to think any of this is abnormal.

One of the rooms has a bunk bed and an office chair, but the desk that probably goes with the chair is gone. It's really sad to think of all the lives lost in this tragedy.

Reply to
Rick C

I found an image closer up:

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Ah, those aren't "channels" they're 2 by 4s. As for "insulation", what insulation? Looks like the 2 by 4s were stuck to the concrete and the drywall was banged on directly to that, I don't see any foam or Pink Panther fiberglass anything sticking out. Well it is Florida...it looked pretty good on the inside but damn this place was built cheap.

Reply to
bitrex

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