Saturday, May 25, 2013

Designed Right?

A civil engineer weighs in on construction in Moore, Oklahoma:
BLOCK: Did you look at the damage of the two elementary schools that were destroyed?
MARSHALL: Yes.
BLOCK: And what did you see?
MARSHALL: Well, these schools had been designed for the building code of 90 miles per hour. And we found a number of fatal flaws in the construction, especially with the concrete masonry unit walls otherwise known as CMU. There were many unreinforced walls and they did not have the steel rebar that goes into them or the grout that goes into them to protect them against anything more than a 90-mile-per-hour wind. And that's disheartening in a way because schools obviously are where children are congregated. And here we have just a standard type building with no real area of safety.
Now fortunately, they had interior hallways which did provide some protection but it wasn't a shelter, per se.
BLOCK: Um-hum. And in one of those cases I believe it was an interior wall of a hallway that collapsed and killed a number of children at Plaza Towers.
MARSHALL: That's correct. I mean, unreinforced concrete masonry kills. Children should not die in schools. To me that is - especially when you have a tornado coming - I don't care how strong the tornado is, there are ways that you can have a shelter to withstand that and you can save the children.
I can't comment on the structural stuff.  If you needed to know if the drainage system was designed to get the water away from important stuff, I'm the guy to talk to.  if it is something complex, find a smart person.

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