Four years on from Grenfell

[Zetetic]

And the main subject of discussion is now the conflict between two classes of owner-occupier.

[Joe Oakes]

And I still feel that it was inappropriate to let Elton John do the charity single.

[Barry Admin]

Haven't seen the discussion referenced in the OP, but they've not really down fuck all about the cladding, have they? I saw a story recently that said there's a metric shit-ton of that stuff still out there. Absolutely disgusting.

[Zetetic]

I just meant that the main discussion now seems to be about leaseholders vs. freeholders and who should pay.

As opposed the wider issues about corruption and discrimination.

[Sebastian Cobb]

buzby predicted this.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Yet did nothing.

[touchingcloth]

Haven't seen the discussion referenced in the OP, but they've not really down fuck all about the cladding, have they? I saw a story recently that said there's a metric shit-ton of that stuff still out there. Absolutely disgusting.

When I left the UK roughly two years after Grenfell, all of the tower blocks in Salford still had the cladding removed from their bottommost floors. I bet they're still in that state.

[sevendaughters]

When I left the UK roughly two years after Grenfell, all of the tower blocks in Salford still had the cladding removed from their bottommost floors. I bet they're still in that state.

some of the newer ones in Salford have been trying to bill the flat owners 100k apiece

[touchingcloth]

some of the newer ones in Salford have been trying to bill the flat owners 100k apiece

That's an absolute steal.

[Mortimer]

I just meant that the main discussion now seems to be about leaseholders vs. freeholders and who should pay.

Sort of, but more accurately, whose insurers. Massive claims flying around right now between suppliers, contractors and architects, each claiming the liability lies with the others whilst the urgent remedial work remains on hold.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It's the private sector working in harmony to screw over human life.

[Sherringford Hovis]

This year, the Fire Brigades Union have also had to fight London Fire Brigade management plans to introduce unsafe systems of working within high rise incidents since Grenfell. If some white helmet told me to advance beyond the bridgehead on the xxth floor two levels below the fire without my breathing apparatus switched on, I wouldn't even waste my breath calling them a cunt, I'd just go home.

A cynic might suggest that LFB top brass knew all along that they'd never have a chance of implementing this lunatic move, but pretended that they wanted it in order to shift FBU focus well away from grassroots organising on COVID-related shortfalls by management. Nationally, many Ambulance Services are hanging by a thread even with ambo drivers and trauma care specialists seconded from various fire services into actual ambulance shifts. From an establishment of 12 firefighters, two of our five drivers have been off doing exclusively ambulance things, which has often meant that there's insufficient crew to keep either of our firefighting appliances available, and of the 35-50 shouts our on-call station gets a month, around 50% are Category 1 emergencies (CPR & defibrillation jobs) that we show up to in the clown car. Honk! Honk!

[Buelligan]

It's the private sector working in harmony to screw over human life.

It's everywhere, it's blatant but no one seems ready yet to do anything particularly radical about it.  Monkeys and typewriters though, actual bad things happen, will happen, whilst we tolerate this fiddling and Rome immolates.  Hopefully some cunt will make their bonus in the interim, silver linings.

[Pijlstaart]

I just don't think we're focused on the actual logistics. You take off the tiles, great, 5 minute job, but now where are you going to put them? Can't be done. What's that Jeremy Corbyn glove puppet, you'll put them on the billionaires' houses? That doesn't seem very nice, maybe they were right about you. Are there any tile racks around, can't see any, any purpose-built tile-shelving, don't think so. You wouldn't leave them in a pile, that's common.

[touchingcloth]

The story of the collapsed building in Miami has some depressingly similar elements to Grenfell:

2018 structural survey found waterproofing issues, failure to deal with which would lead concrete deterioration to expand exponentially

Letter sent by Building Association in April 2021 warned of worsening structural damage

Strong parallels to the residents' blog which warned presciently of fire risks in the building. Cassandra's miscarriage of social justice.

[buzby]

The story of the collapsed building in Miami has some depressingly similar elements to Grenfell:

2018 structural survey found waterproofing issues, failure to deal with which would lead concrete deterioration to expand exponentially

Letter sent by Building Association in April 2021 warned of worsening structural damage

Strong parallels to the residents' blog which warned presciently of fire risks in the building. Cassandra's miscarriage of social justice.

Florida has a compulsory 40-year inspection for buildings which was introduced after the collapse of a state-owned building in the 70s I think. This apartment block was just coming up for it's 40 year inspection, so it would suggest that time limit needs to be reduced.

On a structural engineer's forum I lurk on a bridge engineer was saying that bridges have to undergo compulsory annual structural inspections to prove they are safe. Buildings, on the other hand, get inspected once they are built by the local government building inspector, and that's usually it (Florida is unusual in that it actually requires some form of future inspection), despite the fact that an apartment building collapse can cause just as many deaths as a bridge collapsing. It's no different here - once a multistorey building is completed, there are no further structural inspections, only inspections for fire and electrical safety.

This particular incident seems to have been caused by the pool/patio/guest parking concrete deck collasping into the underground car park. This then left the ground floor level of the concrete columns without any lateral support (the deck was acting in compression between the columns to keep them apart) and the columns then buckled, casing a 'pancake' collapse in two stages.

One of the main issues is that the deck was not built with a slope, so water would collect on it. The previous inspection had shown that the water had penetrated the original waterproof layer and started causing corrosion in the steel reinforcement of the deck and columns (not helped by the fact it's right on the beach, so it's a saline environment), causing the surrounding concrete to crack and spall off. Attempts had been made to repair the cracks with epoxy injection from the car park side , but nothing had been done to remedy the underlying cause of water retention and the leaking waterproof layer above. Photos of the site post-collapse also show that the steel reinforecment on the deck and floor sections was probably laid too close to the surface, as during the collapse it basically 'zippered' out of the surface layer of the concrete.

The Building Association in this instance is usually the homeowner's association (it was a private block, so the owners of the units are responsible for paying for the building's maintenance). Work had actually started, but from the project plans that people have found online very little of the work was going to be structural, instead mostly being cosmetic and addressing water leaks round the balcony doors and windows during heavy rain. Engineers on that forum have commented that they get contracted to do structural surveys for these owners associations, but they usually get ignored as a) they don't know much about stuructural engineering, and b) rectification will be expensive and the owners don't want to pay for it, so in Florida at least it gets kicked down the road until the 40-year inspection is on the horizon.

There is a photo of a column in the underground car park from one of the sister blocks (there are three in the same development, two that were built in 1981 and a later one built in 1994) where the core reinforcement is visible (and red rusty) due to about about 25% of the concrete having spalled off from one corner of the column, and visible cracks elsewhere on the column. I'm not sure why the building hasn't yet been evacuated.

[Mr Banlon]

The story of the collapsed building in Miami has some depressingly similar elements to Grenfell:

2018 structural survey found waterproofing issues, failure to deal with which would lead concrete deterioration to expand exponentially

Letter sent by Building Association in April 2021 warned of worsening structural damage

Strong parallels to the residents' blog which warned presciently of fire risks in the building. Cassandra's miscarriage of social justice.

Miami has a long history of fucking awful construction quality because of low building-code standards. I saw this last year and I was surprised at some of the shoddy shit that got signed-off on : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXzmsDYNKvo

[Wonderful Butternut]

Ah yes, but proper building controls and regulations are filthy bureaucratic red tape and Communism that just puts the cost of housing up.

The market will solve it as shoddy builders just won't be employed because of their reputation. They'll only ruin a few people's lives before they gain such a shit reputation that no one will employ them. Well until they start a new business under a different name...

[All Surrogate]

Thanks for the information, buzby.

It's no different here - once a multistorey building is completed, there are no further structural inspections, only inspections for fire and electrical safety.

This strikes me as pretty concerning.

[steve98]

How the hell could you sleep if you were in the other 1981 building? I suppose they've all been evacuated... for now.

[idunnosomename]

Miami Beach is basically building on a strip of marshland in front of a lagoon. any structural failure should've been taken seriously as soon as it was found.

I think the only comparable residential collapse is Margalla Towers, Islamabad, 2005, but that was during an earthquake. Still should have been resistant. 78 dead.

eyeopening really that this happened in the US

[buzby]

How the hell could you sleep if you were in the other 1981 building? I suppose they've all been evacuated... for now.

The pictures of the cracked column are actually from the 1994-built block (Champlain Towers East):



All three blocks have issues with seawater entering the underground car park level due to them being below the tide line. They are all equipped with drainage pumps, but one of the former maintenance engineers has stated that the problem was that bad that the pumps had to be regularly replaced.

The two 1981 blocks had the design changed just prior to construction starting to add a 13th floor penthouse suite onto them. The developer was a Canadian lawyer who had fled to Florida to escape tax evasion charges back home.