Bricks fall off Building 1

[dik]

From the Toronto Globe and Mail

Two cyclists were taken to hospital Tuesday evening when the wall of a building in the midst of construction collapsed, sending hundreds of bricks raining down onto the street.

The bricks tumbled down 32 storeys from a building that was under construction on Sherbourne Street at Wellesley Street. Police said the wall was unsupported.

 

[hokie66]

Clever, those police.

 

[apsix]

Although you would expect the wall was supported at least when the brickies were at work.

 

[msquared48]

Were any of the bricks hurt?

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[ishvaaag]

In Spain we have had a number of these failures, something that maybe peaked around 1990 or so. The traditional practice from the fifties on was for the structural floors be somewhat recessed from the non-structural façade to pass a brick veneer (we call it plaqueta) in its front. In the early years mason workers were of more serious stance and knew what they were doing, they had a tradition that allowed them even do spiral staircases in masonry. Later the pressures of massive development and abandonment of the field meant degradation of the skills in the trade, and also unbearable imprecision in the limits in plan of the structural floors. Sometimes neglicence went as far as forfeit this as a no problem, with the result of brick sheats several stories high for a thickness of around 115 mm. Some fell. Insurance companies and reaction by professionals and codes is bringing the situation to more correct terms, with a series of measures adressing mechanical fixation of brick walls, someones calling this (as it is) contracultural out of being against tradition. This it is creating other problems by bringing brickwork out of the everything integral to one in which brickwork is looked at somewhat as a series of panels, also creating some risks of failures, that I see improper, but the effects of this misdirection and waste will see seen as well at its time.