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1 dead in TV tower collapse 2

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That's going to be interesting to learn what happened. It could have been a lot worse.

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The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which depends on a feature that isn't included in this version of Windows.
 
One quote from the news sources:

[blue]"Crews were working on the tower when it fell, KTTS reported. The workers were about 105 feet up at the time of the collapse. One of the workers became trapped under the tower and was killed while three others were injured."[/blue]

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Looks like this was a guyed tower, possibly a ROHN design and fabrication in looking at some of the connections and member types.

These TV towers are frequently used to install Telecom equipment on too... sometimes having to replace or reinforce members or whole 20 foot sections occasionally.

Be interesting to find out what happened and if any changes to the tower loading pattern were ever engineered under the TIA guidelines.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
A miracle any of them survived. I lived a mile or so from the tower collapse in Shoreview Minnesota in 1971. I can't imagine being on a collapsing structure. What a horrible way to go.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
 
A couple of years ago, I saw a show on the history channel Modern Marvels - Engineering Disasters where something similar had happened. Crews were adding a new dish or antennae to an existing cell tower. When hoisting the new equipment a bolt broke and the equipment took out one of the tensioned guy lines below. When that guy failed, the whole tower came down.

I suspect something similar may have happened here.
 
Doesn't take much with this type of tower to cause a failure... little to no redundancy in order to save material and go higher for less $$$.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
JoshPlum- I believe they were erecting that tower, and dropped a tower section- it was a very tall TV antenna, if I remember right- but it's on Youtube.
 
I don't now about that Josh, as some of the cable looked rusted, unless that was cable for erecting and not the guy cables... which raises another possibility...

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
The newscaster stated in the video attached to my first link that workers were providing structural strengthening to the tower when it collapsed.


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There you go...

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
Mike, do you know any engineers who want to work as journos? I doubt it.
 
Hokie: funny though how we all got the highest SAT aptitude scores in radio-TV careers though, isn't it...

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
Not sure what you mean about the SAT scores. Mine were in mathematics and verbal. They may have changed for you young folks.
 
JoshPlum said:
A couple of years ago, I saw a show on the history channel Modern Marvels - Engineering Disasters where something similar had happened. Crews were adding a new dish or antennae to an existing cell tower. When hoisting the new equipment a bolt broke and the equipment took out one of the tensioned guy lines below. When that guy failed, the whole tower came down.
Click to expand...


That was the Missouri City, TX tower collapse in 1982. The guys rigging the antenna changed the way the rigging bolts were installed without consulting anyone. This significantly increased the stress on them which lead to the failure.

 
Hokie...

There was a test we took in HS for aptitude and I thought it was linked to the SAT, but maybe was another test.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
Mike, I took the ASVAB -- something about armed services aptitude. Maybe that's what you're thinking of?

----
The name is a long story -- just call me Lo.
 
No. This was something we took as either juniors or seniors in high school.

I think it was called the Washington Pre-College Test, but I do not remember the anachronism.


Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)


 
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