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Building falls over in India

This Guy

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This Guy
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Mar 24, 2006
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This actually happened a bit over a week ago it seems.

After a bit of google searches I found a lot of links for buildings collapsing, many of which had excuses (explosions, weather, airplanes). But this one actually fell over, without any apparent urging. I could understand if there was blasting in the area, or something. But it appears that this building just up and fell over.

Folks were evacuated, and no injuries were sustained I believe.

In what has to be among the best understatements going -

`As of now, we have found that the structural engineering of the building was not up to the mark,'' officials taking part in the investigation said.

Short article here -

http://www.hindu.com/2007/05/11/stories/2007051116431700.htm

Video at Break.com

http://www.break.com/index/building-in-india-falls-over.html

It would appear that "hoardings" are what we in the US would call billboards.

I stumbled across a couple links that had engineers talking about this, and specifically mentioned the need for Structural Engineers to be consulted before putting billboards on top of buildings. But I can't seem to retrace my steps, and find the links now.

Anyway, just found this interesting, and thought others might also.
 
It didn't look like the structure was sagging, but was sinking or crushing (very low, under ground level) on one side.

This (may) be why buildings weren't built beyond a half dozen stories or so high in the pre-steel/pre-cement days. Brick or adobe or whatever can't stand all that much of its own weight.
 
Beerina said:
It didn't look like the structure was sagging, but was sinking or crushing (very low, under ground level) on one side.

This (may) be why buildings weren't built beyond a half dozen stories or so high in the pre-steel/pre-cement days. Brick or adobe or whatever can't stand all that much of its own weight.
Click to expand...

Strange thing is that it was just built in the early 1980s, so it's only a bit over 20 years old.

Of course, when I was in my 20's, I fell over a lot. But it was mostly after a fun time on the town ;)
 
I saw this building under construction in India (Jaipur) last year and couldn't help but be impressed with the use of bamboo for scaffolding.

Hopefully this one won't fall over. :)


133884659b329dcef6.jpg
 
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It appeared to be made of mud-brick. Or perhaps more accurately, dried mud. After a few years drying out, a good shake or two from being located near a busy road overpass, and presto...

Building quality standards are lower than you might expect, in India. Really. E.g. The residence I stayed in while instructing there last year was less than 12 months old. And yet it had assorted areas of patches in the concrete, and some chips and pieces falling off the corners of the roof, etc. Also, it appears that set-squares and plumb-bobs are rare commodities in the Indian building industry.
 
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Zep said:
It appeared to be made of mud-brick. Or perhaps more accurately, dried mud. After a few years drying out, a good shake or two from being located near a busy road overpass, and presto...

Building quality standards are lower than you might expect, in India. Really. E.g. The residence I stayed in while instructing there last year was less than 12 months old. And yet it had assorted areas of patches in the concrete, and some chips and pieces falling off the corners of the roof, etc. Also, it appears that set-squares and plumb-bobs are rare commodities in the Indian building industry.
Click to expand...

I suspected that. While searching on Google for an article on the building, I saw quite a few links to building collapses and such, and it appeared that a higher percent of them were in India. But I didn't actually investigate it enough to draw a valid conclusion.
 
Structural Failure

The signage/billboard wouldn`t have added much weight , but may have contributed wind loading to the structure.

It looked like the failure occured through the the foundations. The tilting of the structure would cause the building weight to be unevenly distributed to just the outer columns which failed.

Cause would be insufficient foundation design, or additional storeys were added to the original structure contributing to overload of the foundations.
 
Zep said:
Building quality standards are lower than you might expect, in India. Really.
Click to expand...

17 years ago there were protests in India by college students, objecting to set-asides for lower castes. The government was going to set-aside a certain percentage of government jobs. I was puzzled by this, so I asked some Indian colleagues (I was in Europe at the time.) Shouldn't college students, youngsters with heads "full of mush", be in favor of it?

Well, it turns out that people all want government jobs because of the corruption.. "For example, if you get to be the building approval guy in a given area, you can make 10% as the standard bribery fee to approve construction."

And now you also know why heavy handed socialism drags economies down, because the massive numbers of laws are costly to dodge, either legally or illegally.
 
Beerina said:
It didn't look like the structure was sagging, but was sinking or crushing (very low, under ground level) on one side.

This (may) be why buildings weren't built beyond a half dozen stories or so high in the pre-steel/pre-cement days. Brick or adobe or whatever can't stand all that much of its own weight.
Click to expand...

Well also that many stairs was a pain to climb.

And there certainly where buildings taller than that in those times as well. See say cathedrals or such.
 
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