OT - Sang-froid

That's the well-known hinge effect on the rake wall, viz the clean break. Rake wall is the wall closing up the gable end. The framing was not tied into the strength of main side wall. Looks like they just tacked it into that crummy single board top plate. The joint is then a hinge that can open open up if the interior is compromised by wind leakage for some reason. Usually it's enough to overlap the structural cladding into the side wall by four feet ( half a panel ) or so. The structure looks like some crummy public housing, meaning the contractor was apathetic since he'll change his DBA as soon as the government sends him a big fat check for nothing. Nobody gives a damn in that kind of neighborhood, so the passerby continuing to walk past is not unusual.

He's clearly a man of great spiritual attainment.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

In the '89 earthquake, the entire brick facing of a 7-story apartment building next to work peeled off and landed on the sidewalk. By some miracle, nobody was hurt. One brick might have killed someone.

The skin seemed to be thin plywood with brick facing. There was one nail every three courses of bricks embedded in the mortar.

One gathers the building inspector made many boat payments out of that one.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Wow -what a mess! The bricklayer did a good job, note how the bricks hung together.

The force acing on structures due to wind is proportional to the product of area times velocity squared. So it doesn't take much to end up with tens of thousands of pounds of push. And if the push is in a direction the fasteners were not designed to resist, you get instant failure. That's why walls get pushed out and roofs get pushed up and away.

Your sidewall got pushed in at the center because it was too much moment acting on that horizontal span. It just plain failed due to overload from the wind. That kind of thing is prevented by reinforcing a span like that with a steel or big thick LVL beam. That's in addition to all the hurricane connectors.

Lots of times the insurance company will total loss a vehicle if it is very old and there is very much body damage. Just less expensive to do that for the insurance company. If you do not care how it looks like you seemed to do, you can come out well.