Florida building collapse: Emergency response after incident in Surfside near Miami

originally posted by: RoninMD
So McAFEE dies and a kill switch is triggered. Information is on the blockchain. Hard Drives are located in a condo in Miami. Hmmmmmm.

FFS, not everything is a conspiracy, especially one this farfetched, it's almost assuredly something as mundane as poor construction and/or maintenance.

Reminder:

Live via Miami 6 news:
www.nbcmiami.com...

a reply to: Realtruth

Quite honestly, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see this incident result in a number of buildings being red-tagged over similar issues which have been conveniently "overlooked" ($$$$) in the past decade or so owing to payoffs and other corruption.

I'd even go so far as to wager the roof was being repaired under threat of closure in a somewhat desperate effort to mitigate further water ingress and corrosion. That is...when the truth comes out.

Just the simple lack of further information from local officials suggests to me there is more to this story than is currently being released, and there is probably some lawyering-up and legal gymnastics going on in the background. Notice how officials haven't come out and said there is no reason for this incident? That, in itself, is a pretty loud message that something was likely transpiring before this event.

Just imagine if City officials had been warning this establishment about Code violations/safety issues, but not taking official action to red-tag the structure, before the collapse! There will be a whole lot of questions if that ever comes out!!!

ETA - And most of those questions will begin with..."WHY?"

A few weeks ago I was reading something about coated rebar being banned in some areas. The reason given was that coated rebar could corrode internally, weakening the concrete structure.

www.tuf-bar.com...#

a reply to: JIMC5499

There are a couple different schools of thought on that subject in the civil and structural engineering worlds. One of them is as you point out, internal corrosion. The other is, there are some new processes which actually intentionally corrode the reinforcing steel before it is embedded. This intentional corrosion is a different corrosion process than regular environmentally driven corrosion and therefore resistant to it. It's kind of like using one kind of rust to fight another kind of rust. It has a name too, something like "brown steel", or "brown iron", or something like that. I believe it's some kind of an electrolysis process.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: Realtruth

Yep, we had a project in Colorado (no salt air) where we had to repair a 8 story, 29,500 car pre-cast parking garage because of corrosion from snow melt chemicals like mag chloride and calcium chloride. Completely ate up the anchor gussets between the double "T"s. Contractor had to jackhammer out every single one of them by hand (and there must have been at least 10,000 of them, at very least), replace them with PVC coated gussets and epoxy the running surface back together. It was an UGLY job! Took about 24 months to complete.

Quicker cheaper and easier to just knock down and rebuild?

I heard a report that this building had been noticeably sinking before the collapse. If true, then why the hell wasn't anything done, even if just to condemn the building as unsafe?

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: JIMC5499

There are a couple different schools of thought on that subject in the civil and structural engineering worlds. One of them is as you point out, internal corrosion. The other is, there are some new processes which actually intentionally corrode the reinforcing steel before it is embedded. This intentional corrosion is a different corrosion process than regular environmentally driven corrosion and therefore resistant to it. It's kind of like using one kind of rust to fight another kind of rust. It has a name too, something like "brown steel", or "brown iron", or something like that. I believe it's some kind of an electrolysis process.

You would be correct there are few processes currently one is an electro-galvanization process where the bars are dipped in an electro-plating process. The other is a hot-dip where they just cover it.

There is a lot of debate though, especially in bridges and similar structure use because of the galvanic reaction from the coating, and dissimilar metals, and the concrete.

galvanizeit.org...

The pre-rusting process I'm not really familiar with.

originally posted by: LanceCorvette

Quicker cheaper and easier to just knock down and rebuild?

No one wants to hear that when the units are over a million a piece most likely, so people get paid off. Money does strange things to people.

heard just a a couple of mentions last night about the new construction of another complex next door, and that new cracks had been appearing since

yea i know it's yahoo but for right now it's all i can find on it right now.

Another Champlain Towers resident said she luckily wasn’t at home last night, but described the complex as “famous for being very well maintained,” and “one of the most solid buildings in Surfside.”
“The person that built the Champlains, his family owns penthouses in the building,” the resident, who declined to be identified, told The Daily Beast. “They made it really strong.”
If anything, the resident said the construction of an apartment building just to the south of the Champlain seemed, to her, problematic and “maybe a little bit too loose” with building practices. “They drilled very close to [our] building,” she said. “Probably disturbed the structure. I’m sure everyone will blame everyone else.”

Another resident, Barry Cohen, told the Associated Press that he raised concerns years ago about nearby construction possibly causing pavers on the pool deck to crack.
‘Something Off’: Miami Collapse Complex Had Issues

will look for some more later gotta run right now.

originally posted by: AndyFromMichigan
I heard a report that this building had been noticeably sinking before the collapse. If true, then why the hell wasn't anything done, even if just to condemn the building as unsafe?

I have heard that it is not just this building that was subsiding but the whole area of that part of Surfside. Pretty much all the highrises and more buildings are sinking 2mm per year. How do you fix that without eliminating the problem by removing all the buildings?

Don't build tall buildings on sand.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

We called it "aging". 1992 I worked for a pre-cast concrete company. We used to bend up our rebar frames and let them sit outside for a while before putting them in the mold and pouring. Something about the rust helping the concrete to adhere increasing the strength.

These days, with a lot of steel coming from China, I have to question the composition of the steel. Where I work now I had to design a load tester for the capacitors that we get from China because about 1 out of 30 would fail when we were testing units. Now they fail in the load test, saving us from having to disassemble the unit to replace them, with the chance of another failure being possible.

Here's what I don't understand...

How can the "Unaccounted for" toll keep going up fully two days after the event???

Seems to me this is a pretty easy number to derive. Take the total number of residents in the building and subtract those found alive + those found deceased = Unaccounted for, right?

That's how we do it in aviation...Souls onboard - survivors - deceased = Unaccounted for. They have this total in minutes after an incident, and the unaccounted for total steadily decreases from the very first minute as people are found.

Okay sure, there could be some guests, but not 50% of the total unaccounted for! The unaccounted for total started at 50, then later on Thursday went up to 100...and now it's at 159. How can this be? The numbers should be in going the other direciton!

What gives? Somebody playing around with the numbers?

originally posted by: Realtruth

originally posted by: LanceCorvette

Quicker cheaper and easier to just knock down and rebuild?

No one wants to hear that when the units are over a million a piece most likely, so people get paid off. Money does strange things to people.

He was talking, in the case I replied to, about repairing a slab parking garage, not condos.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

In aviation you usually have a manifest for commercial flights. You usually have a pretty good head count. Here you don't know who was and wasn't home, any guests, visitors like repairmen, visiting nurses, care givers.......

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
Take the total number of residents in the building and subtract those found alive + those found deceased = Unaccounted for, right?

There's apparently a lot of vacation/seasonal use apartments there and they are uncertain how many were occupied.

originally posted by: LanceCorvette

originally posted by: Realtruth

originally posted by: LanceCorvette

Quicker cheaper and easier to just knock down and rebuild?

No one wants to hear that when the units are over a million a piece most likely, so people get paid off. Money does strange things to people.

He was talking, in the case I replied to, about repairing a slab parking garage, not condos.

Yea I understood, however I was referring to inspectors, and building departments that are corrupt. Lots of payoffs, to look the other-way. It used to only happen in extremely corrupt 3rd world countries, however it may be happening more and more in the USA.

Greed, and power seems to negate empathy.

I hope this wasn't posted before, but I found a video from inside the condo, where debris rains from the ceiling: Link to NY Post article

originally posted by: Realtruth

Yea I understood, however I was referring to inspectors, and building departments that are corrupt. Lots of payoffs, to look the other-way. It used to only happen in extremely corrupt 3rd world countries, however it may be happening more and more in the USA.

It is an art form in New York City and Chicago.

a reply to: JIMC5499

Yeah, I guess you're right.

Still though, it seems like they ought to have a better idea than what they've had on this one, even if it was erroring on the high side initially. Adjusting unaccounted for upward continually just looks bad. But hey, what do I know?