BennyTheBeaver, I think by the time the ring video starts, the tiktok user is already running away from the site.. they say in one interview that it collapsed as they were walking to their pool to take another video. The person who posted the ring video says it was recorded at exactly 1:22am. I thought they were recorded at the exact same time, but that doesn't look possible anymore. That north end of the building also stayed standing and seems to be pulled down by the south end, so they may not have really seen the leaning from there.
Js5180, The wall on the left doesn't seem to be at enough of a tilt to push the desk to the right. Also, the camera is pretty clearly not being pushed by how it starts to slide to the right and then slides to the back of the room (south). I've also had a hard time figuring out why that large box would flip to the right and stay there if the building is leaning to the left. It seems like the first noise is probably column 27 collapsing with how that box jolts and flips.
Part of the building's roof has certainly already collapsed in that surveillance photo before it starts, but I can't make much sense of that really. That's probably why we don't see that clear V you're expecting at the roof line though. You can see it on the mid-floors around those lights that are on once you add in some level parallel lines for reference.
This is the closest before shot I've seen to their surveillance video, and it makes it clear how that roof line should have looked from that angle when it started -
The difference between where those white lines that go up end (at the 8th floor near the x11 rooms, with the two room lights that are on in the surveillance photo around the 8th or 9th floor) and the roof is strange since so much of it seems to be missing. But it still seems possible that they just collapsed a bit early because of the stress the missing column in the garage was putting on them.. the 711 room seems to almost twist internally as it starts to lean to the right, and the penthouse had a lot less columns supporting it. When that video starts column 27 is probably already collapsed. The person who escaped 611 also said that large cracks were starting to form, and this seems to be around when the tiktok video was shot and before the ring video started.
The way that everyone describes the incident it's not really clear how much of the pool deck has collapsed when they look at it, or if that slab failure line in the pic was actually collapsed before the building fell. The force it would have taken to pull the slab cleanly from the fence seems to hint that it didn't detach from that spot until the building fell. Cassondra in 412 was right next to it and didn't think it looked urgent enough to evacuate right away. It's possible that the pool deck collapse was much smaller then. Even from the lobby they should have been able to see over towards the edge of the x11 rooms and the entire x12 stack.. and a missing planter was probably obvious from there. There's a good chance that 111 ran from the building because of the odd state it was in too, with popcorn ceiling raining down, rather than just how the pool deck looked alone. I swear her daughter mentioned the ceiling raining in one of their interviews. It's odd that if the initial cause was punching sheer failure, that this first column that collapsed entirely in the tiktok video wasn't puncture sheered. It seems like that might be more of a symptom that the weight the missing column put on the rest of the pool deck. Could explain too why there's no slab material stuck to the tops of the columns if those were puncture sheered with great force as the building collapsed too. It all just looks so strange it's hard to make sense of.
I think if Mike Bell's reenactment was correct too, we'd see that entire part of the building collapse at about the same rate. Instead just the portion under the failed column in the tiktok video dropping at a much quicker pace and the rest dropping slower. It also seems to be the simplest steps that could have caused this. And sure.. popcorn ceiling doesn't always fall straight down, but it would have to be at about that angle for the table and camera to slide to the right. If you tilt your head as you watch the ring video to keep the popcorn ceiling falling straight down, it all seems to line up. The video is pretty horrifying when you view it as being during the collapse.
