Jun 272009
From Reuters:
Nearly completed high-rise collapses in Shanghai
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A 13-storey residential building under construction in Shanghai collapsed on Saturday, killing one worker and highlighting the dangers of shoddy building in fast-urbanising China.
On the one hand… how badly do you have to build a structure so that it just topples over?
But on the other hand, how many other large buildings have you ever seen that fell over like this and weren’t instantly converted into a shapeless pile of rubble? Not too often, though sometimes… (also here and here)
5 Responses to “Here’s something you don’t see every day…”
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“On the one hand… how badly do you have to build a structure so that it just topples over?”
And to think I hear so often that China is turning out so many more and so much better engineers than the US.
I have no doubt that they *are.* Not hard to do when you crank out engineers by the bagrillions, while the US turns out an ever-decreasing number.
Not sure I’d necessarily lay blame for this at the feet of China’s engineers. I’ve seen more than my share of perfectly good engineers being given jobs that either ignore their skills (“why, what a wonderfully talented aerospace design engineer you are! Here’s an accounting job. Have fun.”), or make them do their job with insufficient time, funds, resources. Even seen engineers made to do things that they later found were probably illegal (who knew that co-mingling of funds in government contracting was a crime?).
You tell an engineer to design an apartment and he tells you that the pilings need to be made from XYZ steel and need to be sunk 20 meters into the ground, and you go ahead and make them out of pig iron and sink them six feet into the ground, it’s not really the engineers fault if the damn thing falls over.
I’d say the building was plenty strong, most would come apart under that stress. There as certainly a problem with the engineering associated with the ground. I’d guess that the ground subsided somehow. Not unreasonable given it looks like they’re building on some loose soil.
Gotta go with Doug on this one.
Just look at how well the building is holding together, everyother collapsed building (NOT demo’d down) breaks up either on the way down or as it hits the ground.
If you look at the right side of the picture I wonder if that’s a street or canal in the front of the building on the opposite side. If it’s a canal, I can certainly see water seepage undermining the far side of the fallen building.