Foot bridge collapses at Florida university, several killed

[ka jowct]

I hope that the Hudson Yards development on the west side of Manhattan is being built with a healthy respect for wind. Wind along 11th Ave. is for some reason noticeably worse than it is along the East side near the East River.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Acer wrote:
I'm reminded of that The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse in 1981. The contractor requested a change that seemed innocuous, the engineer said "whatevs" without running the numbers, and 114 people died in a blink.

It was a bit more complex than that.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

davemchine wrote:
That is just awful. A lot of finger pointing but it sounds like they don't really know what happened yet.

Exactly. Give the engineers time to conduct a proper failure analysis.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Kraniac wrote:
this is seriously crazy and sad..and makes you look back at 'His' moment where he stood in front of a group of reporters and showed them how he was gonna reduce the pile of codes and formalities to 2/3 of the stack of paper.. to make it 'easier' to execute infrastructure projects. There is a reason for all of this rigorous inspection and triple checking..this is it.

No politics, please.

[OWC Jamie]

mikebw wrote:
[quote=billb]
Jeebus, they don't even know why it collapsed yet.

Gravity. LOL
We must resist gravity.

[Acer]

N-OS X-tasy! wrote:
[quote=Acer]
I'm reminded of that The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse in 1981. The contractor requested a change that seemed innocuous, the engineer said "whatevs" without running the numbers, and 114 people died in a blink.

It was a bit more complex than that.
Yes, there is a lot more that could be said than my abrupt summary. Here's an official report: Investigation of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Walkways Collapse. (NBS BSS 143)

[mikebw]

lost in space wrote:
[quote=mikebw]
[quote=Acer]
I'm reminded of that The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse in 1981. The contractor requested a change that seemed innocuous, the engineer said "whatevs" without running the numbers, and 114 people died in a blink. My office pool bet says something similar happened here. We'll see.

I read about that in an engineering book years ago. Tragic.
Was that the one where the change put a concentrated load on an upright, which then took all the weight instead of it being distributed across several uprights? Or something like that?

Also, I'm astounded to think that the bridge essentially couldn't support its own weight, considering how little pedestrians using it could have weighed in comparison to the structure itself.
Better explanations out there, but basically the load from two walkways was supposed to be carried through the same continuous piece of metal secured to the ceiling, but they built it such that the lower walkway was instead secured to the frame of the upper walkway which was not designed to carry that weight.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

mikebw wrote:
[quote=lost in space]
[quote=mikebw]
[quote=Acer]
I'm reminded of that The Hyatt Regency Skywalk Collapse in 1981. The contractor requested a change that seemed innocuous, the engineer said "whatevs" without running the numbers, and 114 people died in a blink. My office pool bet says something similar happened here. We'll see.

I read about that in an engineering book years ago. Tragic.
Was that the one where the change put a concentrated load on an upright, which then took all the weight instead of it being distributed across several uprights? Or something like that?

Also, I'm astounded to think that the bridge essentially couldn't support its own weight, considering how little pedestrians using it could have weighed in comparison to the structure itself.
Better explanations out there, but basically the load from two walkways was supposed to be carried through the same continuous piece of metal secured to the ceiling, but they built it such that the lower walkway was instead secured to the frame of the upper walkway which was not designed to carry that weight.
That's the gist of it.