New Jersey Collapse
New Jersey Collapse
(OP)
From the Chicago Tribune:
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- A five-story section of a parking garage under construction collapsed Thursday, injuring at least two people, officials said. At least two others were missing.
Robert Levy, director of emergency management for the city, said officials were sending search cameras to look through the rubble for any dead or injured workers. The garage is being built at the Tropicana Casino and Resort.
"We are planning for the worst. It's one of the worst collapses Atlantic City has ever seen," Levy said.
One end of the building collapsed, leaving five layers of concrete and steel sloping downward at a steep angle.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- A five-story section of a parking garage under construction collapsed Thursday, injuring at least two people, officials said. At least two others were missing.
Robert Levy, director of emergency management for the city, said officials were sending search cameras to look through the rubble for any dead or injured workers. The garage is being built at the Tropicana Casino and Resort.
"We are planning for the worst. It's one of the worst collapses Atlantic City has ever seen," Levy said.
One end of the building collapsed, leaving five layers of concrete and steel sloping downward at a steep angle.






RE: New Jersey Collapse
It's a damn shame that the the people responsible don't have their offices on the first floor until a building is completed.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
RE: New Jersey Collapse
Either way, some hard working people have been injured and possibly killed today. We as engineers must be conscious of this possibility when we are striving to save a few pounds per foot of steel or a few yards of concrete. No one's life is worth saving a few dollars. It is our responsibility to strive to keep preventable failures like this from occuring.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
If precast is designed properly, you would never see this happen. Yes smaller bearing seats are sometimes used but a good precast design engineer will account for tolerances, and all the associated forces to come up with a safe connection design. To say that precast is a poor selection based on building with small bearing seats, then one could also conclude the same thing with steel joist seats on steel beams, or wood trusses on a wall, which relative to their spans have very little bearing.
Precast has been used successfully for many years in buildings that would be more challenging to do out of other materials.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
RE: New Jersey Collapse
http://www.filigreeinc.com/
RE: New Jersey Collapse
RE: New Jersey Collapse
In all probability the temporay falsework supporting the concrete forms being used gave way leading to a pancake progressive failure.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
The slabs in the photos looked rather thin. Unless there are double-tee stems that can't be seen right now, the designers must have relied on some system of post-tensioning to make the 60'+ span that is common in garages.
What can go wrong with post-tensioning? An awful lot. Everything from elastic shortening in green concrete (and slipping off supports) to loss of tension in a lower floor.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
Is there some vehicle out there, or should there be one, that allows us to review the why's and how's of collapses....to learn from other's mistakes?
RE: New Jersey Collapse
Bobbalot
RE: New Jersey Collapse
I also like to remind all that most structures fail at the connections! It is rare that we have other types of failure.
I do not want to jump into conclusion till more facts are available. Those facts will surface when the engineers begin the forensic investigation and work.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
RE: New Jersey Collapse
here most of the failures that make the news are revamping works, or works of foundations. Miscare in the reform or the foundations are the biggest killers here when there's ruin. Some times (revealingly) involves even people that has not even the right to work there, and even people someway related to those that GIVE licenses. Corruption manages to kill... in so many ways.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
From the pictures I have seen, there appeared a mix of precast elements, structural steel and cast in place concrete. I could not tell if the steel was part of the shoring system of the building or not.
Has anyone heard of the final toll? The last article I read noted 3 dead and more missing.
Daniel
RE: New Jersey Collapse
RE: New Jersey Collapse
It would fit in well with the current QS and ISO quality documentations.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
1. The initiating cause of a failure is not always obvious before hand. I'm thinking of the Kansas City walkway collapse of years ago. I'm not sure many of us would have picked up the problem detail right away. And if memory serves me right, the detail was changed by the fabricator, because the hanger was unbuildable as originally detailed.
2. As was noted above, the analysis of a failure usually finds a host of problems, with one final mistake or unlucky event setting the chain reaction into motion. Sometimes we are just plain lucky that the one "last straw" doesn't show up.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
Parking garage collapses in Atlantic City
10/31/2003
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A large parking garage that was under construction in Atlantic City, New Jersey collapsed October 30, killing four people and injuring at least 20. The garage had 10 storeys and 2,400 spaces. It was attached to an 18-storey hotel, the Tropicana Casino and Resort.
Five floors of the part of the garage furthest from the hotel fell at around 10.40 a.m. leaving layers of concrete and steel sloping down precariously.
According to reports in Associated Press and the New York Times, witnesses saw survivors dangling from the concrete 20 or 30 feet in the air, while others were caught in the interior or picked their way down scaffolding and tangles of reinforcing rods. A caulker who was working on the building said: "I heard all those floors go. The whole tower shook, like it was a miniature earthquake."
Neither the contractor, Fabi Construction of New Jersey, nor the engineers, DeSimone Consulting Engineers of New York, were commenting on the cause of the collapse. The garage was apparently being constructed with precast concrete slabs overlaid by fresh concrete to form a 10-inch thick deck held in place with bearings. Experts quoted in the New York Times said that it was possible the bracings were damaged or not properly installed and gave way to the weight of new concrete being poured on the deck.
RE: New Jersey Collapse
http://www.enr.com/news/otherSources/index.asp