www.nbcmiami.com
Considering the subject matter, it’s like my professional opinion, man.
There’s opinions, and then there are opinions that are billable
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My first thought on that is that less top steel doesn’t lead to a fast collapse like that. Thinking a little more though is that all concrete is cracked. It actually cracks before the rebar can take load. If they had half the steel needed, then the crack sizes would be larger, which then lets more of this chloride saturated rainwater into the concrete, which then leads to faster deterioration.
Sure doesn't look like much rebar supporting those floors. However, the image does not identify the size of the rebar. I imagine that folks in the market for a condo will ask a few more questions after this.
In that type of construction, those bars are typically about a #5 or #6, and they are only transferring slab bending. The shear is transferred by the concrete, not the rebar. Usually those top mats are about #5 bars at maybe 4”-6” oc and then maybe 5x’ away there is almost no top steel
I would not try guess the size of the rebar from the photos. I'm no designer, and spent my time in construction, although not as vertical or as high. I came down to south Fla, in 1995, after Andrew, to rebuild the Homestead AFB. Most of the word being put out at the time was construction problems centered on Contractors cutting corners, resulting in homeowners losing roofs.
I had a friend in Coral Gables, which bore the brunt of Andrew. He was an ER doc who'd lived all over the SE. In fact, I bought the house I live in from him. I called him just before landfall. He said it was so calm, you could drop a feather and it'd float to the ground in front of you. I told him the first rainbands were just touching shore. He and his wife had just put on a new tile roof. They had remodeled their kitchen and it blew off all their cabinet doors when it hit. Afterwards, I was talking to his wife and she said there were trees coming from the east, smashing into their roof blowing on. I asked to where, wondering if they were piling up behind them. She said "How would I know; on over into the Everglades, I guess"...
If I remember correctly, Andrew was 1992. My wife and I came down to Homestead in June 1995. Some areas still looked like a war zone, some were cleaned up, but there were many areas where only the foundations remained. It was a wild two and a half years. I learned a lot though.
My friend had an older house which he and his wife had moved away from 35 years before, and, as I said put a new roof on it. It held up well, as a lot of the old construction did. A lot of the new didn't. One of his daughters had just gone to work as a rookie policeman. I forget how many hours in a row she worked in the aftermath...
Aye - I had just moved to Tuscaloosa from Orlando in May before Homestead got leveled in August. My dad went down as part of a supply delivery team and brought back pics that looked like an atomic bomb had hit. It was hard to wrap my head around, and we had been through hurricanes before. But nothing like that.
I am working with an engineer that has a copy of the original drawings, He says they are "interesting".
Give us a hint. You can't get away with a teaser like that...
that was a direct quote from him. He did not elaborate. I will ask more next week with our next zoom meeting.Give us a hint. You can't get away with a teaser like that...
