Half an apartment building collapsed in Miami last night.

There's the bridge on I-40, and a footbridge in DC collapsed into traffic a day or two ago.

Anyone starting to feel "prickly" about US infrastructure?

This one hits close to home (literally), I have some friends who live not that far away.  51 people unaccounted for at last count. 

In reply to Mr_Asa :

That is very scary. I do wonder how old the building is.

I believe the DC bridge was hit by a dump truck, if that takes a little weight off your conscience in terms of cause.

Man, that would suck to wake up to in the middle of the night. Assuming you woke up at all. My heart goes out to everyone caught in this event.

I would point out that the DC bridge got hit by a truck, and the I40 bridge should have been caught by inspectors two years prior when they filmed the crack during a drone inspection. Those aren't infrastructure problems, those are human errors. Bridges are continuously subject to dynamic loads and cracks in structural members aren't unheard of. That's why they require inspection and maintenance. If you ignore your inspections and don't maintain them you can't be surprised when they fail. 

It will be interesting to find out what caused the building to collapse, but I'm betting the signs have been obvious for a while and ignored.

In reply to classicJackets (FS) :

News articles i've seen say it was built in 1980.  

Mr_Asa said:

There's the bridge on I-40, and a footbridge in DC collapsed into traffic a day or two ago.

Anyone starting to feel "prickly" about US infrastructure?

This collapse almost certainly has nothing to do with US infrastructure.  It it probably far more likely to do with corruption and building codes (as in not having to follow them) or weather / water / corrosion.

Normally I would think since it's Florida it would be something to do with filled in swap, but I don't think this area is part of that (someone who lives around there might be able to talk to that).

That looks like a prestressed concrete structure. I wonder if 40 years of hurricanes finally took its toll. 

This is obviously a horrible tragedy and hopefully learnings can be taken from it and appropriate changes to industry practices for commercial/residential infrastructure are made if needed.   If this was a result of poor maintenance/remodel work hopefully the industry will respond like the Engineering Community did to the Kansas City Hyatt collapse. 

In reply to aircooled :

Being Miami and having been built in 1980 it has likely has some connection to corruption and money laundering in an effort to cover cocaine smuggling. 

I'm going with the Concrete being made with beach sand.

It was due for it's 40-year mandatory inspection this year. Other residents have said the building has always had problem with leaks and it was currently having roof work done. I wonder if years of leaks weakened the structure and it just happened to finally collapse. 

A private apartment building has nothing to do with infrastructure spending, though. 

Salt wreaks havoc with concrete oceanfront structures here in Florida--the rebar inside rusts, not only compromising its strength but also causing it to expand and damage the concrete, compounding the failure. On top of that, Miami is the U.S. city  most affected by rising sea levels, so I would imagine the degradation process has probably been accelerated in the support pilings by saltwater intrusion.

So once all the investigating is over, this may actually end up being something that belongs on the infrastructure list as part of the efforts to cope with the effects of climate change.

Margie

In reply to nocones :

I understand your concern but you are making grose assumptions that are just plain wrong.  The infrastructure of the highways have nothing to do with a privately constructed midrise. 
 

Your post reads like a sensationalized news story. Yes it is disturbing but let the experts do there job and don't jump to conclusions that condemn every building and bridge in the eastern hemisphere. 

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I was going to speculate that the recurring King tides in the area may have compromised the integrity of the ground underneath the structure, construction of new/higher sea walls is certainly an infrastructure issue.   There's a video circulating of the collapse. Link to Fox 13 video

In reply to dean1484 :

I understand there is a difference between private and public infrastructure.  I'm honestly not trying to be sensational.  I'll remove it since it come across like that.  

Wtf? I am not on any ledge. Nor am I the one attempting to politicize this. Reality, such as the rising sea levels impacting Miami, isn't political. As for the speculation concerning what caused the failure, that's a huge part of this news story's interest. I am not interfering with any engineers' work, or endangering any of the lives that are hopefully still being saved, by engaging in that speculation.

[edit: I will, however, now bow out of this discussion because it seems to be triggering people. Never knew you all took concrete so personally.]

Margie

Never said you were endangering anyone. I just don't see how we can leap to climate change causing a building to fall down. 
 

Edit:   My autocorrect keeps changing climate to client.  Client change would be really interesting. 

Although they say it's too early to draw conclusions, the building appears to have been sinking since the '90s.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/06/24/building-collapse-miami-structure-had-been-sinking-into-earth/7778631002/

Marjorie Suddard said:

[edit: I will, however, now bow out of this discussion because it seems to be triggering people. Never knew you all took concrete so personally.]

Margie

You ever talk to Hank Hill about propane? I'm tellin' ya...

An awful lot of wild conjecture in this thread....

Marjorie Suddard said:

 

[edit: I will, however, now bow out of this discussion because it seems to be triggering people. Never knew you all took concrete so personally.]Margie

I mean.... y'all are the ones with the concrete patio the size of Rhode Island 

Security footage from an adjacent property shows the collapse in progress.

In reply to Duke :

I saw that this morning. It almost looks like one of those controlled demos without the explosives.

Although I've never been there, it is my impression that there isn't a whole lot of solid ground in Florida to begin with.  Was this thing built somewhere it shouldn't have been in the first place?

The natural gas pipe infrastructure in Saskatoon is about 25 years past it's design life.

A frighteningly large percentage of the bridges across the Mississippi are well past their "best before" date.

Old stuff is going to be falling down pretty regularly in the not too distant future.