They Danced and Jumped for Homecoming Weekend, Then the Floor Gave Way
Source: CNN:
As crowded group of Clemson University students and local residents danced and jumped around at an apartment clubhouse late Saturday night, Jeremy Tester felt something strange beneath his feet.
"You could hear the floor about to go through, kind of," he said, "but nobody thought it was going to happen. They just kept going."
But suddenly the floor gave way. Dozens of partiers dropped into free fall and landed in a mass of sprawling bodies in the basement.
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This happened yesterday evening..fortunately no deaths reported as of today..Many injuries.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/21/us/clemson-floor-collapse/index.html
marble falls
(57,204 posts)NurseJackie
(42,862 posts)I'm not blaming the victims, but I think that "somebody" was negligent and irresponsible (and I'm not referring to the builder.)
marble falls
(57,204 posts)bear some responsibility. No doubt lawyers will contend its the complex's responsibility to monitor the size of the crowds and to protect young educated adults from their juvenile impulses.
lapfog_1
(29,223 posts)and did they exceed that limit?
Jumping up and down in unison ( no indication that there was this exact activity ) can place huge harmonic loads on the support beams, far in excess of what they are intended to support.
I was part of the team that ran the post analysis on the KC Hyatt disaster (Tea Dance) in 1981. Not only that but I used to go to those dances at the Hyatt and wasn't at that one because my family went on vacation to Colorado in that exact week. The sky bridges were originally designed to support the weight and harmonic vibrations... but the contractor changed the method of hanging the bridges in the atrium ballroom area.
Stuart G
(38,445 posts)Here is a link to some stories about this.
.https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=hts&oq=&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enUS494US495&q=KC+Hyatt+disaster
Fortunately no one was killed in yesterdays floor collapse
lapfog_1
(29,223 posts)a co-worker. We all worked about 3 blocks from the Hyatt and a lot of us went there for a "special lunch" or to attend the Tea Dances.
My firm was engaged to run the simulations of the Sky Bridges as built, not as designed... and found that most NASTRAN simulations showed that the bridges were LUCKY to even support their own weight, much less the weight of dozens to hundreds of people on them.
This was the early years of computer simulation of such engineering.
leftyladyfrommo
(18,870 posts)I didn't have a TV so I didn't hear about it until I got on the bus the next day.
That shook KC to the core.
forgotmylogin
(7,530 posts)In that case, there was also a terrifying video - they fell down three floors and there were 23 deaths and 380 injuries, including the bride who suffered a broken pelvis. It happened due to the building owners expanding a new room onto a roof that wasn't originally designed to support the additional weight of hundreds of people as a floor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versailles_wedding_hall_disaster
(The video is not in the linked Wikipedia article, but is on YouTube - you won't see the video unless you choose to.)
Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)Funy how that works,,,,,,,