My apologies if someone has posted a previous thread on this subject.
Good God, how sad. Being from Texas, this reminds me of the Texas A&M tragedy a few years ago.
http://www.dallasnews.com/latestnews/stories/062903dnnatporch.20138.html
I saw this at another paper today. Makes me think of all the parties I’ve been to where I did start wondering whether a deck or balcony was up to the task.
The story I saw said there are 12 dead, mostly from lower stories that had it come down on their heads.
Non-membership link above.
Goodness, that’s awful.
Tragic.
Look at those flimsy wooden support beams on those balconies!
50 people dancing on that balcony? Its fairly obvious it wouldn’t hold that. Tragic.
Thank you…it didn’t occur to me that I was linking to a site which required registration.
Sadness beyond words…
Very sad. I have to agree with samarm, though. If the article is correct and there were 50 people on the porch, some of them dancing, along with kegs of beer stored there, it really isn’t a stretch to imagine something like this happening. It doesn’t look like it’s much bigger than my balcony - I can’t imagine how packed it was.
This happened to the former chair of my department. Brand new house, had a party, deck collapsed. It happened some years before I knew him but heard about it later. I think there were some pretty serious injuries, enough so that I never had the guts to ask him more about about it.
Same thing happened in my city in May, only nobody was killed.
Eileen Lupton (one of the victims) was the sister of a girl in my graduating class.
A little bit personal, there, Nimbokwezer. I’m sorry to hear that.
I’ve read a few stories over the years of similar incidents occuring. What a tragedy.
Nimbokwezer, I’m sorry to read about Eileen.
Not really.
I lived in Chicago 15 years, I’m very famillar with that sort of porch. They’re really intended to just be something to allow access to the rear doors of apartments. They have an advantage over metal because they don’t get as slick in winter or in rain. There are pretty strict rules on number of supports, height limits, etc. They’ve been using simillar designs since the 19th Century. Normally they’re very reliable.
However, they are NOT intended to support 50 people + beer kegs! It’s an over-grown fire escape, not a dance hall.
This is not the first porch collapse, just the largest I’ve heard of. In most cases the problem is too many people in too small a space, exceeding the load bearing capacity of the structure.
Of course, the building inspectors have already descended on the site. But it may be that the porch was sound and the problem was just too many people in one spot.
When you get a bunch of drunk young people partying on the deck, they’re not thinking about how many people it can hold. Luckily, there is no evidence of criminal misconduct, i.e., corner-cutting in the building of the decks or anything like that. It’s a very sad situation.
It seems this happens every summer in Chicago. Outside of personal policing of these sorts of things, I don’t know what the answer would be.
Initial feedback from inspectors is:
No record of a building permit on file, but deck was new and built to specs.
No criminal negligence.
Too many people in one spot, exceeding load capacity.
I was just going to post this. And it’s always in Lincoln Park. Something about drunken recent college grads seems to invite this situation.
It definitely is not a rare occurrence. It’s just a matter of people disregarding safety so that they can have a good time.
This happened at a Future Shop (think Best Buy) house party a couple years ago in Oakville, Ontario. A friend of my brother’s, who is now also a good friend of mine, was in traction for 6 months, was told he’d walk with a cane for the rest of his life, and he was only 35. He’s been in physiotherapy since it happened, and no longer needs his cane, but he still has a noticeable limp. My buddy is also now terribly afraid of any and all balcony-type structures.
It makes you think.
Obits of those who died (hope the link works).
I’ve seen people not just overloading those things but even jumping up and down on them. It’s a credit to the design and the inspectors that more people don’t die on them.
I have been dead drunk and I’ve done a lot of dumb things when I was but I like to think I’ve never been so out of it to not be able to to look around and say, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” when faced with a bunch of people on a Chicago “overgrown fire escape,” to use Broomstick’s highly accurate description. As you can see from the photos, those things are packed with ten people on them. Fifty is insanely irresponsible. I feel bad for anybody who was mashed into a corner as some jerks forced their way on to, I’m guessing, see just how many people could fit.
The story in the Chicago Sun-Times has an overview of balcony collapses in the Chicago area over the past few years. Wrigleyville, Lincoln Park and Lakeview lead the list.