More trumpiam BS from DeSantis.“Let’s just pretend nothing is wrong. Buildings falling down is a liberal hoax. Nothing to see here, my loyal voters who live in high rise condos.”
First off, it’s not a secret hack. It’s common sense. As for the 100’s of people who have a better understanding of the situation that is something you can apply logic to. If it’s safe enough to go through the building looking for pets then it’s safe enough to bring pet owners along. There is nothing 2 extra people are going to do that’s bringing the building down.
And that’s what we’re talking about, two pet owners. That’s all. It’s not the Boston Marathon and they would not be given free reign.
Maybe it’s the farm kid in me showing itself, but I submit that it’s utter lunacy to risk human lives to save a cat, and that whoever had authority over the site (I presume the fire chief) should have absolutely refused to allow any site access whatsoever to anyone who wasn’t absolutely necessary for the demolition and recovery efforts. Fucks sake people, get some perspective here.
Yeah, gotta say, as someone who loves their dog almost as much as his kids, I would totally understand not being let into that building and I personally don’t think I should be. I would have ruled the same way as that judge. Sorry, no go.
Whose perspective?
Humans risk their lives all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Should they be allowed to risk bringing the building down on other peoples’ heads? Of course not. Should an untrained volunteer be allowed to go in along with a trained volunteer? They’d both be allowed to risk their lives for an afternoon’s amusement – including at amusements at which one person’s screwup can kill another player.
And I note that disaster planners for such things as hurricanes have had to learn to make provisions for non-humans also: because so many people refuse to evacuate without them. There are quite a few people who will risk their lives for a non-human animal.
I think more highly of animals than I do 99.99% of my fellow humans, but even I agree it would have been a bullshit move to allow people into the building to search for pets.
Yeah, if you can go in after Princess Purrsalot, why can’t I go in and get the afghan my great-grandmother crocheted as she sailed across the Atlantic to America? Or my PC which has all of my business records on it?
Slippery slopes are a real thing, sometimes.
I really don’t have a clear picture of how easy or difficult it would be to get access to an apartment to rescue an animal, but I can see some difficulties that I haven’t heard mentioned.
The big one is air quality. I haven’t heard this mentioned, but it has to STINK in there. There’s a ton of organic material in there, rotting away in the summer heat. There were multiple fires throughout the building. Plastics and things like synthetic carpets give off noxious fumes when burned.
Since it’s Florida, I’m almost assuming the common areas of the building were air-conditioned, and of course that’s not going to be working - so not only is it going to be hot, the air will be stagnant because there’s no circulation.
I know these women love their pets and I feel for them, but I wonder if they’re capable of climbing, in 90+ degree heat, multiple flights of stairs in absolutely fetid, barely breathable air without being overcome. And the stairwell would be dark and if it’s not completely clear that might be difficult even with a flashlight.
I once helped recover items from a single family home after a fire, and the fumes were so noxious I couldn’t stay inside for more than 5 minutes at a time, even with a mask. And the mask didn’t do much. I wouldn’t be surprised if the firemen that cleared the building needed oxygen tanks.
Because they’re not alive; and capable of feeling fear, pain, and abandonment.
I don’t think that slope’s slippery at all.
Certainly if an apartment in question is inaccessible for the person who wants to get there, even if it’s accessible for a trained firefighter, then it’s not accessible in practice for the particular purpose of getting somebody there who might actually be able to rescue the cat. Everything I’m saying is based on the apartment(s, I think there were two or three) being among the accessible ones; and by that I include reasonably accessible by the cats’ /dog’s particular humans. I’ve said multiple times that if the apartment’s judged inaccessible then refusing to let anyone try to get there is correct.
The thing is partly that the sense I’m getting from the articles I’ve seen isn’t that they’re saying ‘that particular apartment isn’t safe for anybody to go into / to get to’ or ‘that particular apartment’s only accessible by somebody trained to climb multiple flights of bad footing while wearing full scuba gear.’ The sense I’m getting – and it’s possible that’s an inaccurate sense – is that what they’re saying is ‘we looked and there’s no cat in there.’
But I have had a whole lot of experience in finding cats. And I have more than once looked under beds and not seen a cat who was, in fact, hidden by that bed. (One was inside the bed – not under the covers on top, but had torn fabric loose and gotten inside the box spring from underneath. One was on a tiny ledge between the bed and the wall, and on a second look under the bed I saw a bit of paw just visible; since then I know to look behind beds that look like they’re tight against the wall.)
The thing is, the aim is to save human lives. This isn’t (or wasn’t) “I refuse to be evacuated from the path of this hurricane without my dog,” it’s more like “I know there is a hurricane coming, but I insist that provisions be made to allow me to return home from the place of safety I am already in so that I can rescue my dog, whom I last saw barking at me from the door I left open. No the dog isn’t tied up, it’s free to roam. I don’t care if the interstate has been switched around so that all lanes are now exiting the city. Get a police officer to escort me with the lights flashing and sirens on if you must—no doubt some kind individual will volunteer if you won’t just order someone to do it—but I insist on being allowed to return home for my dog at the hazard, however slight, of not only myself, but of other people.”
“Perspective” is the wrong word. “logic” is the word I’m trying to explain. IF they let people into the building specifically to do an in-depth search of pets what does that tell you about the situation? It’s one of 2 possibilities.
- The person in charge doesn’t care if a group of people risk their lives for something people in other countries find nutritionally satisfying.
- The building was safe enough for people to go room to room and check for something people in other countries find nutritionally satisfying.
Yes, I’m being flippant but I’m trying to drive home the fact that they either lied about the danger or they willingly and with great disregard risked the lives of those doing the search.
Just because someone in authority says something and claims it’s from a “professional” it doesn’t make it true or beyond question. There is not a single profession that this statement cannot be applied to.
No, it’s not like that at all. The cat wasn’t free to roam, there was no solid lane of traffic heading in the other direction, and rescue workers were already hunting through the building looking for cats.
This is more like “the hurricane’s all over, we’re actively patrolling the area looking for animals to rescue, and we won’t let you come unlock your dog’s chain even though he won’t let anybody else near him and we know he’s going to drown when we open the floodgate tomorrow to take the pressure off the dam.”
You’re assuming the stairs are usable. Some of those apartments are only accessible by the balconies, which would require a ladder or cherry picker.
Seems to me that there’s three general reasons a building can collapse:
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Poor initial design/construction
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Weak regulation
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Poor maintenance.
The US isn’t immune from any of those, any more than any other country.
And with regard to # 2:
You’re assuming fireman aren’t trained in assisting people up stairs and dealing with sticking doors. Also, the balconies are a straw-man. they were dealt with separately with heat vision drones.
90 degree heat is easily offset with cold packs and personal fans.
These people have had their friends, family, and neighbors taken from them in a horrific way. Their pets are all that is left and they were alive when they fled. They’re tortured with guilt over leaving them.
Had they included the pet owners it’s more likely that a terrified animal would respond to their caretaker better than a stranger. It would have cut down on the resources expended on the effort.
There was no downside to this.
what are you proposing regarding state regulation over city/county regulation? Are state engineers somehow smarter?
this was a failure of the building owners to maintain their property. I don’t know how you regulate common sense. They were told they had a problem that would accelerate quickly if they didn’t fix it. You can reduce the 40 year review to 20 or 10 and they might have caught it. But if something needs to be fixed between those intervals and is ignored then the results are the same.
This might be a design flaw. If the deck was physically tied to the building and it’s collapse dragged the building supports off center then that would need to be addressed in all buildings. A completely different issue.
Throwing more engineers at it will not fix stupid. it just adds layers of paperwork.
When this first happened, a lot of people were saying “buildings don’t just fall down!”. And as more and more information comes to light that statement becomes more and more accurate. This building didn’t just fall down. There were problems and warning signs going back possibly to the construction. Which, to me, means there were numerous points where this tragedy could have been avoided that were either missed, not understood, or blatantly ignored. While you can’t fight stupid; you can put procedures in place to try and catch it before it’s an emergency. The idea that “Throwing more engineers at it will not fix stupid” is not completely true. It might not be able to fix stupid (or incompetent or negligent) but it can catch it and mitigate it.
You have a point. the initial patio/garage roof was supposed to be sloped. I have no clue how that’s done but it should have been inspected prior to the pour.
More commonly, firemen assist people DOWN stairs, not up. And their method of dealing with a sticking door often involve an ax.
The balconies, yes, but what about the apartments behind this balconies that could not be accessed any other way?
So we should risk additional tragedy?
As I said, it’s not JUST the pet owners risking their lives, they put at risk anyone with them, and anyone who might be under the next rubble pile if the rest of the building came down.
Once again, you’re taking a contrarian position. Fine, you do you.
Yep, and reports are that many balked at the price tag and refused to believe things were that bad, so the board spent three precious years trying to convince the hold-outs that the problem(s) was real and trying to find a way to get funding/loans for the price tag.
Meanwhile, I have to wonder what prior boards were doing all that time before - were they ignoring/deferring repairs? The current board, by asking for an inspection and report in 2018, were actually acting before they were required to do so, in advance of the 40 year review. I’m not convinced the current board are the bad guys here.
Which is how a lot of disasters happen - there’s a chain of events and problems that combine into disaster with a small, triggering event. If something had intervened along the way all would have been fine, but that’s not how it played out.
Though at least in the case of smaller municipalities, state regulators could be perceived as being backed by greater enforcement muscle. But yeah, in the end the inspections and certifications have to happen locally and the inspectors are (or should be) state-certified anyway.
Note how by contrast over on the southwest side of the deck, where it just went straight down, as you observed it just came unstuck from the vertical members which stayed upright, leaving naked rebar sticking out.