From the Toronto Globe and Mail
From the Toronto Globe and Mail
(OP)
A 14-year-old girl has died after the collapse of a washroom wall at a park in Guelph, Ont.
The Grade 9 student was rushed from the site – a building located at Southend Community Park – about 12:45 p.m. shortly after wall broke away.
The girl was taken to hospital but died.
Her name has not been released.
School officials and city workers on-site could offer no indications as to why the wall gave way.
The Grade 9 student was rushed from the site – a building located at Southend Community Park – about 12:45 p.m. shortly after wall broke away.
The girl was taken to hospital but died.
Her name has not been released.
School officials and city workers on-site could offer no indications as to why the wall gave way.






RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
A wind gust blew up and the wall came down on top of her, killing her. The parents wanted to do something to see if this was a 1 in a billion occurrance or a sign of other potential problems...it seems that park shelters, out in the middle of, well, parks, don't always have any specific building codes, periodic inspections, etc. and were usually built by volunteer labor and not built structurally correct.
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
There was an incident in a small town near Lindsay a few years ago where a masonry wall collapsed and killed a youngster. The work had been abandoned for years and when queried by the town council, the developer stated that it had been inspected by an engineer. Nothing ever came of it and I don't know why.
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Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
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Dik
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
The tragic death left her family grieving, her classmates stunned, and school and city officials working to figure out how the wall could collapse.
"She was a golden girl, inside and out, and she brought joy to everybody who met her," her mother said last night. "She didn't deserve this, but sometimes God takes the best of us."
Crews from the City of Guelph, which owns the rest building, and the Guelph police said Tuesday night it was too early to say what caused the collapse.
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Dik
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RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
It was a cantilever wall, one of those privacy walls at the entry of a public restroom. The rub being that a baby change table was installed on the one side. Which the girl was reporatly sitting on when the wall collapsed. There were no strong winds in Guelph that day. I susspect the wall was not designed for the loading from the change table, and gradually degraded over time.
They have not released any details of the structure, if rebar was built in, or if the wall was designed by a professional engineer.
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
A changing table. Much like the Nebraska wall collapse with the girl just standing by the wall when a gust of wind came up.
fate.
and a lack of good structural engineering required for a building element put up by well meaning folks.
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
Assume, what? - a 20 lb baby plus diaper bag pplus "service loads" as people lean on the table + with a safety factor of 10 being put on the table = still well under what a concrete wall would be expected to carry with a low weight cantilevered load.
Even a drinking fountain would get extra "down pressure" on it as people lean over.
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
RE: From the Toronto Globe and Mail
My concern would be if the wall was unreinforced, and continued to be loaded with kids sitting on the table, over time the wall would crack, and become unstable, until the final tragic collapse.
Looks like a report has been done, the local paper up there has an article here (http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/504258) which describes the city wrapping cantilevered CMU walls with fiberglass and rebuilding some wall with the reinforcement included this time. The report alluded to in the article will be an interesting read when it is made public...
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Dik