The findings from consultant engineer Frank Morabito also showed there was “abundant cracking” and crumbling in the underground parking garage of the 12-story building, which suddenly collapsed as residents slept in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Morabito said the waterproofing below the pool deck and entrance drive was failing, “causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.”
“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” he said.
The main issues with the waterproofing, Morabito said, was that it had been “laid on a flat structure,” which had not been sloped to drain. So the water sat on the waterproofing until it evaporated.” This was a “major error” by the original developers, he said.
Morabito also noted that “several sizeable spalls were noted in both the topside of the entrance drive ramp,” as well as the underside of the pool, the entrance drive and planter slabs “which included instances with exposed, deteriorating rebar.”
“Visual observations revealed that many of the previous garage concrete repairs are failing resulting in additional concrete cracking, spalling and leaching of calcium carbonate deposits,” he said, adding that he was “convinced that the previously installed epoxy injection repairs were ineffective in properly repairing the existing cracked and spalled concrete slabs.”
Morabito went on to recommend that concrete slabs, which were “showing distress” by the entrance and pool deck, “be removed and replaced in their entirety.”
“Unfortunately, all of these failed slab areas are under brick pavers, decorative stamped concrete and planters which require completed waterproofing replacement,” he said.
Morabito gave no indication that the building was in imminent danger, but he said that it needed repairs which would be aimed at maintaining the building’s structural integrity.
“Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion,” he said.
Poorly maintained stuff eventually falls down and kills people.
Lol the interview with the property manager was just them saying "the building was in great shape we have no idea how this could happen" over and over when I read it yesterday.
They need to hang
suddenly collapsed
Goes on to write 10 paragraphs on how the building’s structural integrity was slowly decaying into it inevitable collapse.
Always. When the addicks reservoir meters failed during Harvey in Houston it came out they’d been warned by the Corp of engineers years prior. They’re too busy cutting corners to give a shit
(good) Engineers and builders generally put big tolerances on things, especially large things. This has the result of it being more profitable to milk the thing in question past the formal limits until it fails and then pay families compensation after it hopefully fails in a benign way (because again, a good engineer will make the first critical part to break minimally deadly.)
Yea i meant more cutting corners on up keep, I just wasn’t clear my bad.
I remember seeing somewhere a large part of Texas’s electrical infrastructure was only graded to run until the 90s or so but they’re still using it to this day mostly un updated/renewed.
Marx observes this in Capital Vol 1. They make more money every hour breaking the law than they’d ever be charged in fines for being caught.
Hmmm, this Marx guy had some really good insight into how capitalism works. Maybe more people should listen to him
Matty Glesias: "different states have different safety requirements, and that's okay"
i thought you were joking. what the fuck
https://slate.com/business/2013/04/international-factory-safety.html
But building fall down in China, not USA. Me big confused.
Socialism is when building fall down. And when it's a really big building, that's communism.
That sounds like it was built on a shitty foundation (which everyone expected) which caused initial but not fatal cracking, then the high salt water table corroded away the rebar. It's similar to the Elliot Lake Mall collapse here in Canada, and no one was found guilty in that case despite obvious engineering malpractice.
Corroding rebar like that take a long fucking time and they would have literally seen the walls and floor bleeding rust decades before it failed.
I've watched a ton of management/engineering disaster videos on Youtube, and the usual practice is that nobody goes to jail. The only exception is when the owners are nobodies, like the Station nightclub.
Ya, just speaking to the engineering side, there is so much deffrence given to professional opinion in court, even when it's to cover your own ass. Like even if you purposely cut corners, as long as you make up some justification it's automatically reasonable doubt.
I remember going to the algo mall back in 05 and that place shouldve been torn down years before.
How long until the Dumbass Grenfell author writes about this tragedy as good for capitalism?
Dunno but I already saw comment "This is like China!", IIRC earlier today on reddit.
the Chapo’s read Megan McArdel’s article on Grenfell about how all of the lack of regulations was good, and that putting the mandated safety measures in all the buildings would be bad for the economy or some shit.
