Um, no.
According to this report they did go in and look under beds.
Levine Cava told reporters that Miami-Dade rescue teams had already gone through parts of the building that were still accessible, “searching in closets and under beds” to find missing pets.
On the one hand, looks like they did give it a really good try (though this seems to contradict the other reports about people putting food on balconies and not being allowed to enter apartments.) On the other, it really doesn’t seem as if they thought somebody walking through might bring the building down.
– it occurs to me that maybe the specific cat was in an apartment they’d classed as not accessible. That could remove the apparent contradiction.
That would explain using a worker in a cherry picker to put food on the balcony. Suggests that condo was not accessible.
I honestly don’t know the answer to your questions, other than the mayor said that where possible they had had the first responders clearing the building look under beds, in closets, etc. I understand what you say about skittish cats, but there’s a limit to the risk searching for a cat. After all, they’ve also limited their search for people based on risk, too, there are some parts of the pile they just didn’t go before the demolition. There was the woman heard calling from the rubble shorting after the collapse they tried to find and still haven’t - her voice hasn’t been heard in over a week. It’s not they they aren’t trying, it’s that there are limits to what people can do and what’s possible.
That’s why they were setting live animal traps on the building balconies. After a week without food even a timid cat might be inclined to investigate one and be caught.
There’s been stuff - not just interior furnishings and possessions but chunks of wall and floor, too - falling off the building since day one. After a couple of days the remaining building had shifted between 6 and 12 inches - meaning, I take it from the descriptions, that separate parts were trying to actually become separate and go their own ways. What was left standing was in no way stable.
I watched some of the charge setting on a live feed. The demolition crews were using cherry pickers and not actually entering the building. They may have done so in some portions, but the bulk of the work was done without setting foot inside. Even so, they stopped the rubble search while it was done just in case the building decided to fall early.
I think they had gone in where they could, and otherwise searched where and how they could, but if the cat had holed up somewhere humans couldn’t get to then the lady wouldn’t be able to get there, either.
It’s sad, the whole thing is sad…
The night the collapse occurred some people had to be removed from the building by ladder or cherry picker because there was no way for them to get to a stairway, so even from the start of all this some units were already pretty inaccessible and it probably only got worse as the days went by.
Another thought on cats and other pets. People might also consider this counterfactual.
Suppose they allow an owner into the building ahead of the collapse to look for their pet. Suppose they aim to keep rigorous track of anyone coming and going into the building, because it sure would be a shame to have someone go in, fall down the stairs, and end up in a “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” situation. Because while I’m sure you can disclaim a lot of things, I question whether or not you can–or even should be able to–disclaim the risk of death from having a building brought down onto you in a planned, albeit rushed, demolition.
Anyway, the point isn’t to continue along the “What if someone gets hurt?” or “What if someone slams a door and the whole building collapses?” line of thinking, rather to suggest the “What if, for whatever reason, the hour arrives where all people entering for any reason, including to rescue pets, arrives, and someone hasn’t come out yet?” line of thinking may be worth considering.
I mean, maybe, in spite of rigorous efforts to control access into and out of the building, one of the would-be pet rescuers slipped out without being noticed–perhaps through some emergency exit that wasn’t being watched and they thought nothing of it themselves–or whoever was keeping track forgot to mark them off the list of people they saw come out after they went in. Maybe they are so desperate to find their cat that they have lost track of time or they are so committed to finding their cat that they just don’t care if the building comes down on them while they’re looking (after all, they already went into a building at risk of imminent of collapse, with demolition charges being or about to be laid to bring it down). Maybe they think “If I just check one more neighbor’s apartment, I’ll find they wandered in there while they were fleeing…” and they just can’t bring themselves to leave.
Point is, how do you respond if you allow people to go in, even with a disclaimer, but there is no record of them coming out? Do you really think potentially bringing the building down on them could be excused by a disclaimer?
The point of this exercise is not to invite everyone to come up with ways in which they might develop a foolproof system of tracking people who enter the building, because (1) there is no such thing as a foolproof system, and (2) when it comes to the mundane details of how to run a jurisdiction, lawmakers and executive decisionmakers acting according to law don’t generally have to prove that there was “no other way” to accomplish the desired legitimate goal, or even “no better way.” That’s not how judicial review works in most cases. If it were about freedom of religion, discrimination against some protected class (which pet owners are not), some violation of a fundamental right, etc., then it might be different.
One of the reasons for dropping it was the fact that it had shifted laterally by several inches. When that happens, will the doors to the units even open? And if a resident looking for a pet wrestles a door open, what is the likelihood that doing that might be the infamous straw?
It immediately shifted when the other part collapsed and jammed doors per one of the survivors.
It would have taken a cat owner to find their own cat. If they don’t want to be found they are good at hiding in places you wouldn’t think they fit. I’ve found various cats underneath a refrigerator, a dresser, inside a chair etc… And that’s when they’re playing hide and seek. They barely have 2 brain cells to rub together but hiding is their forte. When I pick my cat up from a cat-sitter he’s all butt-hurt that I left him for a week and it takes me awhile to find him. He treats the impending car ride like it’s the green mile.
It sounds like they made an earnest attempt to find the animals. It would have been nice if they allowed the owners to accompany them. the most likely place after an extended time would have been the bathroom where they could get water.
the picture of the column with parking space number 72 on it still bothers me. I would like a structural engineer to weigh in. there doesn’t seem to be any load spreading on it at all. the rebar hanging off the column doesn’t look like would withstand the shearing force of an angry butterfly.
This is somewhat relevent…
My Wife and I live in a remote rural mountain ‘subdivision’. 1-10 acre lots, only about 1/3 of them improved. They have covenants, I guess.
The board did things like rent a dumpster for a clean up day where people would walk the ditches and pick up any trash they found. And a picnic. They supplied hot dogs and stuff, but strictly BYOB. It was a pot luck really.
My Wife was nominated to the board sort of as a joke by a friend, and was elected. I think she went to two meetings, discovered the board had zero insurance so my wife resigned.
Taking in a non-professional would have opened them up to all sorts of liability issues if something happened, which isn’t that unlikely with a desperate owner willing to step under a barely-standing gap that a professional would know to avoid.
And not only could the emergency services probably not really get an indemnity clause saying “screw you, you wanted to come in, we’ll let you die,” they would also have their consciences to live with if they didn’t try to rescue them.
I love my cats more than I love a lot of people, but there are limits to what you can expect other people to go through for the sake of your pet.
I agree. My heart goes out to that woman, she must be so overwhelmed with grief and anger right now. I hope she has family or friends she can turn to.
The New York Times has an article (paywall warning) about that. The article says the construction drawings show there should be four pieces of rebar extending through those columns, but the photos show only two in one direction and three in the other.
I understand and agree with your point but she would be escorted by the same people who did the search in the first place. It’s not like they would be letting in a crazy cat woman to wander freely. And it’s her building. She knows the layout better than anyone.
She knows the layout pre-collapse. She might not know the layout once the building has started to crumble, with some spots dangerous and some stairways gone.
thanks for the link. Very interesting observation from one of the people who escaped. from your link:
Gabriel Nir, who lived in Apartment 111, on the first floor of the portion of the building that collapsed, said he came home before 1 a.m. and noticed water pooling at the base of the entry ramp, although that was not uncommon. He did not see any rubble at that point, he said in an interview.
When he and his mother entered their apartment, they heard banging noises that sounded as if they were coming from above.
“We thought people were doing construction,” Mr. Nir said. They initially shrugged it off, but it continued for several minutes, growing more intense.
Mr. Nir said his mother went to the lobby to complain about the noise. He was in the kitchen making food when he heard loud rumbling and saw a cloud of dust coming from the area of the pool deck. He and his sister hurried to the lobby to join their mother and encouraged a security guard to call 911.
And again, I’m not an engineer. I always over-build stuff and that costs money as the project grows in size.
But I look at how stuff is built industrially. I can’t go into a parking garage without noting how they transfer loads. the same for bridges, barns or anything you can see the “skeleton” of the structure. visually it’s not rocket science.
I would expect concrete or steel “collars” on the support columns to transfer the load. Rebar doesn’t fill that function. it just stiffens up the concrete. In this case it doesn’t help transfer the load. And as you can see, the slabs fell largely intact. if you think of the columns as wood skewers holding up a cake they may have the compression strength to physically hold up the cake but unless the load is spread out they just punch through and the cake falls.
And one of the qualities of cement is that it doesn’t like to stick to itself. If you add new concrete to existing concrete it needs binders to get it to attach. So if they poured the columns first and added the pool deck to them and they crack at the mating point then there is nothing holding them up but a little rebar. Water gets in and eats all the support away.
That’s all non-engineer swag on my part but it is clear they failed at the attaching points to the columns that are visible. It explains why the pool deck dropped but not the buildings.
And it’s not like someone who was that determined to find her cat would ever move away from the firefighters if she thought she saw the cat…
I agree. that’s why she would need a professional escort.
I wonder how long this will last? A couple years from now will buyers have rationalized this as a isolated event? Something that’s unlikely to happen again?
I’m hoping authorities will improve building inspections. 40 years is a long time to wait before recertification of a multistory multi-family dwelling.
Condos in tourist areas are highly prized. My first cousin and her husband inherited a Condo that’s on a very, very popular lake in Hot Springs AR. There’s a National Park in downtown Hot Springs. The Condo must be worth close to $750k and would sell quickly if they ever listed it. MSN
So you think not only should the pet owners have been permitted to go in and risk their lives and put those scheduled to do the demolition into a potential moral quandary, you think professionals should have been expected assume additional risks to go in along with them?