NOLA Hard Rock Hotel collapse

[pureantigravity]

This will be my one and only reply to you. You are wrong. There will be a full investigation (OHSA, as well as city, county and national jurisdictions) into the causes of this tragedy. Many experts will review every piece of evidence and state their opinions. At that time, we can all review the report (the many, many pages of it) and might have a better understanding on what happened. Until then, your "is the result of a small failure in post-tensioned concrete..." comments have no basis. You didn't read the eng-tips thread. The post tensioned transfer slab DID NOT collapse. Sigh.

Time to pull the pickle jongs. Maybe even let some wind out.
Only insecure engineers are afraid of armchair quarterbacks.
All the real engineers I know, (ah, let me count the 100 or so I know personally from just my alma matter) would love to debate all sorts of weird theories about this.
The only ones going all bleeding hearts
and/or serious-responsible JOE
are the ones in the
TGR PADDED ROOM?!?!

"This will be my one and only reply to you."
By golly jeeeee.
I hope you can keep your word.

[SorryBro]

Who else read through the engineering forum thread? Interesting stuff that is backed by more than has been laid out here, but still speculative at this point. Though there does seem to be some compelling data to support inadequacies in the design, under the assumption that the permit drawings were not altered before being RFC’d. Which is a big assumption to make.

Absolutely. The structural inadequacies pointed out in the thread (over-stressed pan deck spans) are possible, but I can't imagine those long span decks getting through permit, shop drawings, inspections, construction, etc. Possible, but not probable. A building this size usually has at least one round of corrections, and I would think the plans would have been modified at that time to conform to code. At the spans they were referring to, the deflection during the concrete pour would be excessive and noticeable. I really hope they find out where the error was so this doesn't happen again.

[iceman]

I hope you can keep your word.

five bucks says no.

[Micol]

Who else read through the engineering forum thread? Interesting stuff that is backed by more than has been laid out here, but still speculative at this point. Though there does seem to be some compelling data to support inadequacies in the design, under the assumption that the permit drawings were not altered before being RFC’d. Which is a big assumption to make.

i read a lot but had to go back to work for a while...gonna try to read more tonight

[Buke]

When I first saw the footage of the collapse, I turned to my wife and said, "that's my worst nightmare". Knock on wood, I've never had a project that I've worked on have any major problems.

Reading through that thread on the eng-tips forum, it's very hard to imagine that the permit drawings that were publically available were the construction drawings. But, who knows, stranger things have happened. If they were the drawings that were being used for construction then there are some very serious concerns about the design.

Looking through the drone footage, I can think of at least a dozen different possible scenarios that could lead to collapse. Some of them have to do with faulty design and some have to do with construction error. Given how little we know and how many possible causes there are it's crazy to even speculate about the cause.

There will likely be years of litigation. Depending on how that litigation proceeds we may never know what the real cause of the collapse is. Generally speaking construction defect cases are settled between the insurance companies and one of the terms of the settlements is that the findings are kept secret. However, I suspect that because this collapse involved fatalities, there will be a public report.

[Micol]

all plans, docs, some inspection results filed with city here:
https://onestopapp.nola.gov/Document...rmit&ID=462842

[glademaster]

I've spent a little bit of time looking over the plans and permit documents, as well as following the engineering forum thread. I'm looking forward to spending a few hours combing through the plans this weekend. That being said, I know enough about my field to know when I don't know something, and I don't have any plan review or field inspection experience with a structure of this size/complexity.

I may have a little bit to add after I spent half a day looking at the construction docs, but I'm going to leave the musing on this one to the structural engineers and others with large scale construction experience. I'm a plans examiner/inspector in a town of 8,000 with a 35 foot max building height ordinance. In my almost 2 years here, we've only had four new structures in town that are regulated by the IBC instead of the IRC. I'm out of my depth on this one, but fascinated by it and what went wrong.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hard-ro...s-days-before/

[SorryBro]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hard-ro...s-days-before/

Ouch. If that is verified to be the same building, that is not a good look.

[highangle]

Ouch. If that is verified to be the same building, that is not a good look.

"Welp, price of steel just doubled. I guess we have to use half as much...Them Mexicans can get up under there with drywall supports if that deck flashing starts to buckle during the pour."

[ill-advised strategy]

"Welp, price of steel just doubled. I guess we have to use half as much...Them Mexicans can get up under there with drywall supports if that deck flashing starts to buckle during the pour."

“Ski-proven Lishtech wafercore technology!”

[ACH]

We're gonna need AvE to weigh in and tell us what happened like he did in the Seattle crane collapse incident:

An investigation report that was published today appears to confirm his observations.

[LongShortLong]

Welp. They made some boom booms, and dropped 2 cranes on it Sunday. 70 tons each. Not much happened to the hotel, suggesting that whatever structural problems it had, they resolved themselves a week ago.

Not sure the crane demolition went as expected. One of the cranes provided entertainment value by flipping over, and spearing itself into the ground, standing straight up upside-down.