Maintaining Infrastructure Does Matter

[Overnight]

And I mean this with all respect... but neither of you understand anything here.

Write this down....
....concrete floats.
...

Write this down too...Sinkholes form over time. A relative of mine had a home in Spring Hill Florida that succumbed to a sinkhole. It weighed a lot less than a huge condo building. Limestone, man.

 

[userque]

Wait 'til cons learn what decreased PH levels from carbonic acid in the ocean due to increased anthropogenic CO2 does to limestone.

Such things matter to them as much as trigonometry matters to song birds.

 

[smallfil]

Just read this article. Apparently, the building had structural defects as far back as 2018 which the condo homeowners association just ignored?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/engineering-firm-found-structural-damage-031857075.html

 

[wrbtrader]

Florida’s Oceanfront Cities Are Not Prepared for Sea Level Rise

View attachment 261842

On Thursday, a 12-story beachside condo building just north of Miami Beach collapsed, killing at least four people with almost 160 still missing. It could be a scary sign for the future, particularly as sea level rise undermines the very foundation that South Florida sits on.

Long before the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside crashed, the building started sinking. An April 2020 study found that the area showed signs of land subsidence—sinking brought on by natural occurrences like sinkholes and exacerbated by human activities like extracting fossil fuels and groundwater. The study’s authors told USA Today that back in the 1990s, the building was descending at a rate of 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) per year, though it’s not clear that that necessarily contributed to its horrific collapse.

Officials are just beginning their investigation into what caused the building’s devastating crash. It will take more data to suss out what happened and the role, if any, subsidence played.

“At this point, any hypothesis is not more than a simple speculation,” Henry O. Briceño, a professor at Florida International University who studies water quality and geology, wrote in an email. “We should wait for the engineers to collect and analyze the information.”

But though the specifics of the crash are still under investigation, it’s been clear for decades that sea level rise and subsidence threaten infrastructure—and people—in South Florida. And the time to address those risks is now, particularly with what the next few decades hold for the region. Sea level rise is expected to accelerate. A report released last year found that Miami “faces the largest risk of any major coastal city in the world” because of the sheer amount of expensive real estate and people living in such a fragile place. An estimated $3.5 trillion of real estate is at risk of inundation by the 2070s, according to the report. Those buildings, though, are ill-equipped for rising seas.

“While it is too early to determine the cause, it is definitely not too early to worry about how building and other infrastructure will be impacted as the flooding from sea-level rise worsens, and whether there is a plan to modify and sustain these buildings or whether they should ultimately be abandoned and removed,” Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist at the University of Madison Wisconsin and former associate professor of geology at the University of Florida, wrote in an email.

Buildings in Surfside and Miami Beach are constructed atop reclaimed wetland. Underpinning them is porous limestone, which forms the region’s geological base. As rising seas encroach on the area—whether from storm surge or increasingly common sunny day floods—brackish, corrosive groundwater can get pushed up through the limestone, causing problems for structures.

• “If seawater penetrates a column and reaches the rebar, it will oxidize and the products would increase the volume, creating stresses which in turn could crack the concrete,” said Briceño, noting inspectors probing the Surfside collapse “will have to check if something like that happened.”

Whether or not these factors were a factor, though, they could certainly threaten infrastructure in the future.

“Structures will be subjected to conditions for which they were not designed, like being under seawater permanently,” said Briceño. “Concrete mixes are prepared for what they are supposed to withstand according to design, both, mechanically and chemically.”

Tragically, the Champlain tower was due for a 40-year inspection soon, which could have shown it was at risk of falling in. With such dire threats afoot, officials may have to consider holding such inspections more often. Dutton feared it may even be time to start moving people and infrastructure out of Surfside altogether, a fate that some areas are also already considering due to rising seas.

“One of my concerns is that urban hardscape will become flooded without a plan to remove such infrastructure, and then our coastlines will just become a pile of concrete, metal, and glass rubble,” she said.

• Florida’s Oceanfront Cities Are Not Prepared for Sea Level Rise (msn.com)

View attachment 261846

• https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/condo-collapse-miami-surfside-florida-engineer-warning-1.6081682

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wrbtrader

The question now that I'm sure is being analyzed...are there other Condos that the Engineer firm that has identified to having major structural damage over the past years ???

Further, were there any repairs done by the building owners after they received those reports that identified major structural damage and did they disclose the information to the residences of the building ???

wrbtrader

 

[Cuddles]

The question now that I'm sure is being analyzed...are there other Condos that the Engineer firm that has identified to having major structural damage over the past years ???

Further, were there any repairs done by the building owners after they received those reports that identified major structural damage and did they disclose the information to the residences of the building ???

wrbtrader

As importantly, how much were the campaign donations to Rick Scott and DeSantis?

 

[CaptainObvious]

I wouldn't say that maintaining the structural integrity of a condo building falls under the purview of infrastructure. Bridges collapse, yes. Roads and highways full of holes, yes. Airports out of date, yes. A mass transit system that's a joke, yes. A power grid ready to fail with every change of the wind, yes. But a building of condominiums, that's on the cheap ass and now criminally liable owner(s) of the building.

 

[wrbtrader]

I wouldn't say that maintaining the structural integrity of a condo building falls under the purview of infrastructure. Bridges collapse, yes. Roads and highways full of holes, yes. Airports out of date, yes. A mass transit system that's a joke, yes. A power grid ready to fail with every change of the wind, yes. But a building of condominiums, that's on the cheap ass and now criminally liable owner(s) of the building.

Engineers down in Florida have clearly referred to it as a "structural maintenance" issue.

Yeah, sure...next week they may discover the building was taken down by a car loaded with bombs that was parked in the parking garage of the building. Thus, major structural damage was not the cause of the building collapsing.

Simply, its still under investigation.

wrbtrader

 

[CaptainObvious]

Engineers down in Florida have clearly referred to it as a "structural maintenance" issue.

Yeah, sure...next week they may discover the building was taken down by a car loaded with bombs that was parked in the parking garage of the building. Thus, major structural damage was not the cause of the building collapsing.

Simply, its still under investigation.

wrbtrader

Of course it is the result of a structural maintenance issue, I'm not debating that. What I'm saying is the government(infrastructure plan) isn't responsible for maintaining that structural integrity. That is the responsibility of the building owner(s) to keep it within existing building codes and make whatever upgrades are necessary, wherever and whenever issues arise. They knew there were structural problems and did nothing. Now it may be that the construction going on nearby was a contributing factor in an already compromised building and that would fall on local code and permit personnel who gave their approval to do construction nearby while knowing the condo building had issues. None of that is infrastructure in the truest sense of the word anymore than if someone's home collapses due to structural problems.

 

[Cuddles]

Of course it is the result of a structural maintenance issue, I'm not debating that. What I'm saying is the government(infrastructure plan) isn't responsible for maintaining that structural integrity. That is the responsibility of the building owner(s) to keep it within existing building codes and make whatever upgrades are necessary, wherever and whenever issues arise. They knew there were structural problems and did nothing. Now it may be that the construction going on nearby was a contributing factor in an already compromised building and that would fall on local code and permit personnel who gave their approval to do construction nearby while knowing the condo building had issues. None of that is infrastructure in the truest sense of the word anymore than if someone's home collapses due to structural problems.

eh, oversight bodies that approve soundness of a project/building can be considered part of infrastructure. If the IRS is defunded, they don't prosecute top earning tax cheats, if local inspectors are underfunded, they don't catch private property shortcuts, or worse, take money under the table

 

[vanzandt]

Sorry...

It was very clear that we didn't know anything via the statement "I have no knowledge" and the article was very clear that the engineers are investigating what had happened considering a report in 2018 by an someone (an engineer) that stated there was major structural damage or concerns about the building in 2018...

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Engineer flagged 'concrete deterioration'

A newly released 2018 report showed that an engineer found evidence of major structural damage beneath the pool deck and "concrete deterioration" in the underground parking garage of the condominium tower near Miami Beach, three years before it collapsed Thursday.

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wrbtrader

Again, as I stated above, I have no idea what happened.

Deterioration? Could be. Very easily actually. The early 80's were the peak of many things in S. Florida. When cash is literally being carted out of FL to the north in semi-trailers packed like sardines full of it, I'm gonna say its safe to assume (the money) throwing up condos at a rate that exceeds the capabilities of the local municipality's building inspectors.... let alone paying his four kids college tuition to look the other way.... perhaps might have let some concrete mixes slip through the cracks.

Not so much for any nefarious reasons other than the good ol' American bribe thing... but moreso the concrete plant cut corners, or they just sent out "whatever" to a bitching general contractor that wanted it now.

There are dozens and dozens of architecturally specified concrete mixes... this is not you going down to HD and buying an 80# bag of quickrete and mixing it with water..... there's a gillion things to spec.

So yeah, deterioration due to a shoddy mix on the pilings could EASILY be the culprit.
They'll figure that out in a blink if so.