Episode 1541
How do we prevent buildings from collapsing?
In this weeks mid week special we talk about how and why buildings have been failing in the US and what we can do to help out the situation.
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Transcript
[00:00:34] Eric Goranson: I wanted to talk today about why buildings collapse. And you know, a few years ago we had the Surfside condominium collapse, uh, on June 24th, 2021, down in, uh, Surfside, Florida. And now we've got the building in Davenport, Iowa, and you start to see some similarities between the buildings and what's going on.
[:[00:01:25] Eric Goranson: Because when we built brick buildings that were. 4, 5, 6, and larger stories tall. Back in the day, they were built at a, you know, brick, their unreinforced masonry buildings. They were not built to today's building codes. And the problem is, is that a hundred year old brick building. Where it's depending on the brick, it's not a facade, but the brick is part of the structure.
[:[00:02:19] Eric Goranson: You know, we have apartment complexes, condominiums, things like that. And this is where the discussion gets pretty tough because sometimes these buildings are gonna get condemned or they're gonna need hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars of work to make sure they're safe. And yes, that falls on a landowner.
[:[00:03:08] Eric Goranson: He has a, uh, contracting company in there and somebody keeps cutting holes in the roof to break in because he's got a security system. And when he went to go repair the roof of somebody breaking into his building to steal tools out of it, the city said, uh, he needed a building permit and then he was gonna have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to earthquake retrofitted just to repair a building that was broken into.
[:[00:03:58] Eric Goranson: You know, if you look at the [00:04:00] news reports that you see, they talk about. The residents are talking about, you know, rotten holes in floors from water and sewer damage. While all of that rot with all of that old wood, you're asking for problems. And many times all it takes is for one floor to fail and it drops on the next floor that fails, and all of a sudden you've got a partial building collapse.
[:[00:05:03] Eric Goranson: Or the people were showing up to get ready to do work and they haven't even. Hadn't even started yet. Who knows? We do not know those answers, and we probably won't for a long time. So there's no way to put blame onto, oh, it was the contractor. Oh, it was this way too early to tell. There's no way to tell that right now.
[:[00:05:40] Eric Goranson: Now, there are always warning signs to buildings like water damage holes, cracks, things like that. Traditionally, without some kind of outside forces, you don't see buildings collapse on their own. Now, if you look, and that's, you know, in the United States, that's pretty common. You don't see that. Now, if you look at that [00:06:00] Surfside Resort or the Surfside condo in Surfside, Florida, that thing had hundreds of telltale signs that there was something going sideways.
[:[00:06:42] Eric Goranson: Let's start with the places where people are living. I think maybe we need to be doing some inspections on those to make sure that they are not collapsing. And if they've got water, if they've got sewer problems, then they can tag them and say, Hey, we need to help. And maybe the city needs to step [00:07:00] up and help some of these places that are more low income to keep 'em low income and invest into these buildings a little more, and help with some grants and things like that to keep these things safe and healthy.
[:[00:07:37] Eric Goranson: So let's start having this discussion in our own cities, in our own counties or states or whatever, whoever's in charge of buildings in your area. Maybe somebody should be paying attention to these old buildings and coming up with an inspection process. Maybe it's a fire department. I don't know. Maybe they're doing a, you've got the fire inspector going around and doing building stuff.
[:[00:08:19] Eric Goranson: So stay tuned. I don't have the exact date yet due to my travel schedule, but uh, I've got some fun stuff we're gonna be doing. So stay tuned for that announcement coming up soon. And we'll be, uh, setting that up here shortly. I'm in the middle of that process now, so don't, don't be surprised to see a few little exciting, fun changes to around the house show that, uh, is gonna be really fun for everybody.
[:[00:09:01] Eric Goranson: Just look for the, around the house playlist. Thanks for tuning in around the house. We'll see you Saturday
