Damn.
Holy shit. There’ll be some architects, structural engineers and/or contractors in some deep doo-doo over this one. How can that many layers of checks and balances go so horribly wrong? What a tragedy for the victims’ families.
How terrible.
I gather from the news reports (which are, of course, preliminary) that there weren’t a lot of people in the terminal, which may hold down the casualty numbers. I shudder to think of this happening when the place was full of travelers.
My condolences to all affected.
Holy Sh*t, I was in that terminal just last year, on my way to the UK!
:eek:
Not meaning to make light of a terrible situation but the Channel 4 news is calling it a ‘crash’.
A crash is when a vehicular object hits something. This is not a crash?
No, CNN is reporting it as a roof collapse that occurred as the terminal was being evacuated. It seems that there were loud cracking noises and dust falling before the whole thing went.
There’s also a mention that the opening of the terminal had been delayed by construction problems.
Structural failure. Either the steel was shoddy or the building was under-engineered. Either way, heads are gonna roll.
I feel sorry for the six people who died and their families, but all in all this could have been much, much worse.
A very tragic event.
Are there problems with French engineering? I seem to recall that a gangway collapse in the shipyard killed about 15 people just before the launch of the Queen Mary 2.
Well, there was some engineering problem, but I don’t know that I’d hang it on the whole of French engineering. We’ve had a few things fall apart in the U.S.
As long as we’ve been buidling stuff, a certain amount of it has been falling down unexpectedly.
Don’t beat up on the French - every country has had its share of structural failures, some spectacular. And the French have built some very impressive and stable structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, than have held up beautifully over time.
That said, it was an unconventional design. Any time you push the envelope you’re running a risk of missing a factor or three. I heard it was based on modern tunnel technology - but the forces acting on a tunnel underground vs. the forces acting on an above-ground building are very different. This may or may not be a factor
I was in CDG about 5 days ago.
My flight out was in a terminal 2, but it wasn’t this one. For starters, it wasn’t NEW at all.
I THINK they sort of have 2 aerogardes there and each one has its own set of terminals.
Yes, they did have something collapse when building the QM2, and like 15 people died.
All the parts of that airport I was in were old and shitty.
ignoring the deaths for a minute. . .what a friggin hassle this is going to be for people going to France. It’s enough of a hassle as it is.
When we exited the plane going into France, there was nowhere for people to go between the end of the moving sidewalk and customs. There was almost a pig pile at the end, which was averted when people began shouting “avance” and “move up” as we stacked into each other’s backs. It was a little scary.
Later news stories have four dead, so hopefully the “counting” in the title is counting BACKWARDS