I assume that means close enough that the salt-containing ocean spray negatively affected the building? So would a building a few miles inland not have the same deterioration?
That is also fraught, though. There is open salt water about a mile to the west of the building. The barrier island bay, or whatever they call it, is itself about a mile wide. So, “several miles inland” is a very long way from where the building partially is.
A poorly maintained building inland could easily develop serious structural problems, but would probably require considerably less effort to maintain than one on a barrier island beach. But the view and the beach access would not be as good. The people that live in places like this really need to keep them up. Luxury convenience is not cheap.
The New York Times has an article (paywalled, obviously) about how many condo and homeowner associations around the country have deferred maintenance issues and insufficient reserve funds. The article mentions, “Only about 10 states require associations of homeowners to assess how much money they will need for big-ticket repairs in the future, and a vast majority of states do not require condo boards to maintain robust reserves to help pay for those items when they come due.” It describes one condo complex in Minnesota that needs $12 million in repairs, or about $30,000 per unit, and where the average unit sells for only $100,000.
The dude is on vacation posting from a hotel room, this is not his normal presentation set up. I suppose he could wait two weeks until he gets home and do it all then, but he’s trying to comment on a current event in more or less real time.
If you don’t like it don’t watch it.
First, if you have anything you think he should be addressing or showing you’re welcome to let him know.
Second, the video I most recently linked actually talked about that very thing - he showed how the portion of the basement/parking area related to the pool deck and building above. If you found his presentation so irritating you didn’t watch the video fine, but you’re criticizing him for something he’s actually done.
And by all means, if you have better video or sources for anything please do post them here, I’d love to have more information and what caused this, just like everyone else.
How can I tell that I don’t like it if I don’t watch it. I’m not going to watch anything more from him, that I’ll agree.
eta: he talked about 20 sq feet of the pool deck collapsing - not the area you can see in the photo.
Fair enough.
I agree, the presentation isn’t very good but I was willing to overlook that to get that information and commentary. If you want polished presentation stick to the mainstream news reporters who do it for a living.
I don’t know about the elevators, specifically, but the shaft is still intact.
This was not an ordinary maintenance reserve issue. If the report is correct it was a construction or design flaw that was far and above expected costs. Frankly I think the city may be on the hook for all of it.
what it comes down to are construction certifications. In my city I had to produce plans for my garage project. Before I could pour the footer I had to have it inspected to insure it was up to code.
I would expect the same process of inspection and certification for this building.
I don’t know what your issue is but he links videos and pictures to the layout of the building. These show a large amount of concrete debris in the garage entrance along with water pouring in from what is certainly the sprinkler system,
If you to watch his presentation you would know WHY he focused on the areas he focused on. The video from ground level shows changes near the building BEFORE the section by the pool collapses and that corresponds with the garage entrance.
His presentation was far more informative and ahead of anything on the news. In fact, I’m watching CBS right now and they’re showing the same late-to-the-game visuals with a quick soundbite that was completely off-point. .
If you’re not going to watch the information presented then you have nothing to base your opinion on regarding the topic. It’s very disheartening to see complaints about the production values of someone who took the time to put the video together.
We don’t know what the codes were 40 years ago. I’m sure somebody does, but not me personally, that’s for sure.
Codes change over time, with more knowledge.
It may be that South Champlain was up to code at the time it was built.
It may be that it wasn’t, but something was overlooked.
I’m sure we’ll find out eventually, just not at this point in time.
There’s a lot of “um” and “er” and distractions. The presentation wasn’t polished and pretty, it was a guy in a hotel room analyzing some information without a set and rehearsed script. Some people want a slick presentation. Some are OK with less than fancy packaging.
You do have to be patient and put up with some rough delivery to get to the meat of the video I linked to. That doesn’t bother me. It does bother some people, obviously.
I also like looking at the raw footage without a voice-over by a professional presenter and/or graphics and text. Other people want all those extras. It’s fine. I’m happy we live in a time when you can opt for how you best absorb information. I’d prefer folks in general to dig deeper but I understand that we all have only so much time and not everyone is as interested in the details here as I am.
We would have to know the criteria of the process to answer that. But generally certification is done at completion or issues have to be fixed to complete it.
In this case an inspection would hopefully uncover the problem in time to evacuate the tenants…
Regarding human remains, a report on NPR earlier this week stated that all of the removed debris was being transported to a warehouse for more detailed inspection, both by people searching for remains, and people investigating the collapse. They made it sound like they’re not expecting to find many intact bodies.
The engineer who created the report should carry insurance as well.
Disasters like this are normally cumulative, with more than one entity on the hook. There was potential design flaw; potential failure by the 2018 inspection; potential failure by the municipality recert process; potential failure by the condo owners to fix it.
I think a lot of different insurance companies are going to be paying out, not just the municipality’s insurance.
CBS’s presentation today was a few seconds of stupid complete with a soundbite from someone who clearly hadn’t reviewed what was presented to him.
Cudos for getting paid large sums of money to read a teleprompter.
I’ve spent the last 30 years immersing myself in history lectures by people who donated their time to give them. In all that time I’ve never heard someone in the audience complain about how polished they were.
Geeze. I watched the whole thing. I understand engineering. I had no trouble understanding. He took an awfully long time to mention the columns, which admittedly was useful. He spend 21 minutes giving information that could have been presented in five, ten max.
Disheartening? Give me a break. Is this made by someone you know? If someone puts their stuff out there, they can get criticism.
I thought it was poorly put together, and technically simple. And aside from his jumbled presentation, he never addressed the fact it was a large volume of water flowing, which seemed too much to be from a sprinkler. Maybe it was from the pool? Or a pool supply line. And you know, if he had access to the blueprints, he could mention “this is a four inch diameter pipe” or some such to make a case. But he just talked about “heavy” planters, like it was important, with no evidence to indicate whether they might have been “too heavy” and were a contributor.
Bascially, other than the explanation of the columns, he knew nothing useful to add context for the water video. Frankly, I’m not convinced even that that was a pile of debris in the video. Could have been water, could have been a trick of the light.
And mentioniong his kids? We all got kids. What does that add?
I’d have let it go with my one comment, I don’t really care. I’m not going to waste my time with his videos anymore, so it was useful for that.
This was my gripe as well. The content was worthwhile, but it was just 3 times longer than it needed to be. That’s a feature of many self-produced youtube videos. It’s also a feature of many posts on the SDMB. You can lose a lot of potential audience if you don’t present information both clearly and concisely.
That’s because it wasn’t a large volume of water. You can see it in the picture he presented and he showed where it corresponded to a sprinkler line. The size of the line or the flow rate doesn’t really mean anything beyond the fact that something had severed at that point.
What you should have garnered from the information he showed was that a video was made showing a shift in the ground in the area that corresponds to the photograph from the street into the lower garage depicting a broken water pipe and concrete chunks on the floor. What the video from the other side DIDN’T show was the collapse by the pool. So if the people videoing the event repeatedly zoomed on the farthest part of the pool area instead of a giant gaping hole in front of them that suggests the damage started near the building that collapsed first and not by the pool.
Combine this with the account of the woman who phoned her husband. She heard building noises first and then said the pool area collapsed. Then the building fell.
What CBS reported was maybe a 5 second image of the garage from the street with a drive-by soundbite from an expert without any context. Based on your comments they could have condensed all this information into a few minutes and presented it in a shiny studio complete with News Caster Barbie. They have everything you want and yet couldn’t deliver the information this guy gave us.
As for the planters, they were of a size that would have been considered heavy by an standard and they were aligned along the area showing failure beneath them. Put another way, they were the heaviest objects on the structure that was documented to be in need of repair.
My thing is, it seems entirely understandable to me that a video that is trying to hurry and get the information out, from a guy who is on vacation and thus away from his normal production equipment, would not be tightly scripted or edited. It doesn’t make much sense to me to criticize his entire channel for this type of video, let alone online content in general.
To me, your initial comment about the video seemed about as overwrought as what Magiver said. It was like the guy had run over your dog or something. 
Personally, I just think we’re all crankier than usual. I blame pandemic fatigue, being so close yet so far. I know I’ve been a lot crankier, at least.
I’ll go with that. My office is getting reorganized and we lost some good people in the process.
Also, I was thinking the video from the other side of the building had the pool in view but it doesn’t
Welcome to something like 90% of YouTube videos which are put out by people who may or may not be knowledgeable about a niche area but none of which are professional talking heads. And it shows.
He’s trying to talk to lay people, not other engineers.
Because I guess I have no life I have actually watched all his videos on this subject and in a prior one he discussed issues with waterproofing, the planters, and leaks in the planters resulting in water on the support columns of the building. But, as the guy said early in this latest video, he was discussing just the brief video clip and what that clip showed about the building just minutes before it collapsed. As rambling as it was, it was focused in the sense that the subject he was discussing was limited in scope.
Unquestionably, something was broken and leaking in the building. His argument for where exactly that was taking place made sense. I didn’t have to be an engineer to understand it. Mission accomplished.
But like I said - if someone knows a better source on line that is analyzing this disaster by all means let us know.
And the heat. It’s been too damn hot lately.