Why they dont immediately remove rubble from a building collapse when one occurs.
In: Engineering
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You know that giant arch in St. Louis? Imagine if you took a giant 10 foot chunk out of the top most section center of that arch. What would happen to the rest of that gigantic structure? It’d fall in on itself. Collapsed buildings are far more complex bits and mess that are all resting against each other and there are possibly people under them. So if they take a random thing out, that could cause even the slightest of collapses underneath possibly killing a person pinned in a pocket. Additionally adjusting the weight anywhere can do the same thing so the bits don’t even have to be intertwined, just resting on top. Engineers are trained essentially to treat the pile like a Jenga game, they find the bits that have the least influence on the debri and try to remove them, they also have equipment that scans far into the mess to try to find bodies and people first so they know if an area is safe to disturb slightly.
Also, after all the search and rescue operations are complete, and the investigations by a number of agencies and even insurance companies, (like all the other commenters have said) you still have to actually remove the debris.
The big side dump trucks only hold 14 cubic yards per trip. So you need to be able to hire enough trucks, and have a place to dump everything. All of this takes money and coordination that often can’t occur until the insurance pays out.
For example, the 9/11 debris wasn’t fully cleared until May 2002, and took 108,000 truckloads-1.8 million tons. Where I live, tipping fees are $169 per ton at the landfill… so just clearing the debris was a multi-billion dollar operation.
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