My heart goes out to the victims and their family members in Surfside, FL. I feel like there’s a simple explanation but I’m not understanding how the demolition of the other side of the condo building didn’t seal a possible survivors’s death with more concrete and rubble falling?
In: Engineering
There were multiple factors involved.
First, you have an unstable side of the building still standing. That posed a huge risk to everyone in the area, including the rescuers.
Second, a hurricane (Elsa) was coming in. This could have toppled the rest of the building easily, killing many more people.
Those in charge made the decision to demolish the rest of the building in a controlled manner. People experienced in building demolition can drop a building in an exact way so that it falls how they want it to. For this job, they needed very experienced people, because the building was damaged. And if you watched it, you saw them bring it down just as planned.
The debris from bringing it down carefully did not go onto the other pile. Some dust did, but no real debris. Bringing it down protected lives that may have been lost if it just fell on its own. I know the people working there are alive, so that’s why they decided to protect them.
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