Thursday, June 24, Florida, USA.
At 1:30 a.m., the city went to sleep quietly, but nearby residents were awakened by a loud noise at the Champlain apartment complex in the seaside town of Surfside, north of Miami.
The sound sounded like a thunderclap, or a huge explosion, deafening and shaking the ground.
Half of the apartment building collapsed, almost "flattening it."
The first to collapse was the central part of the building.
Subsequently, a part close to the sea also began to crumbling, and after shaking for a few seconds, it could not hold on and finally fell.
(Collapse order: red→ orange→ green → blue)
Then, a huge cloud of dust engulfed the entire building... No, at this moment, it had become half a building, and a rubble of rubble.
The dust and smoke, mixed with the screams of survivors, cries for help and alarmed sirens, tore through the night...
80 rescue teams arrived at the scene and carried out rescue operations in the ruins.
Two heavy cranes are responsible for removing large chunks of rubble, and drones, search and rescue dogs and rescuers are running, observing, clearing, looking for possible survivors.
But the search and rescue operation faces "incredible difficulties": According to yesterday's mayor of Miami's press conference, a fire is taking place under the rubble.
The flames under the ruins, it is difficult to find the source of the fire.
The spreading smoke made it almost completely inaccessible to rescuers. Search and rescuers tried to isolate the fire in order to continue the search for victims.
The 12-story building, with more than 100 apartment units, was fully staffed at the time of the accident.
However, as of the last press release, only 130 people had been rescued.
There were 5 confirmed deaths.
There are at least 156 more people, whose whereabouts are unknown ...
This tragedy shocked the whole united States...
According to the emergency management director's report, the first wave of people rescued included a child who was likely to have lost his parents in the disaster.
There was also a lady who was rescued with her child in her arms.
...... In order to save her from the rubble, her legs had to be amputated.
A boy who was pressed to the shallow level waved a mobile phone with an on-light with the only unpressed arm that finally caught the attention of rescuers.
He pleaded in a hoarse voice: "Please don't leave me. ”
Rescuers eventually rescued the boy – but the first news he got after he was rescued was his mother, who had been with him... He was not successfully rescued.
In any case, these people who have come out alive are lucky.
According to official reports, the building was a "straight-falling collapse."
"Straight-falling collapse" buildings with small internal survival gaps...
Many of the survivors who had been evacuated nearby, as well as those who had rushed to the scene, gathered at the resettlement site near the scene, waiting for news from the police and praying for their relatives and friends whose whereabouts were unknown.
Everyone knows that those who have not yet been rescued have little hope.
Jenny, who came to find her best friend Juan's family of three, told the media: "I know they're probably dead... After all, time has really passed too long.
Pablo, who lived here for 40 years, said his mother and grandmother, who were 88 years old, lived in a collapsed building and the possibility of their survival faded little by little as the time that was buried passed.
Another told reporters: "After the incident, I have been calling them, but not once. ”
Most of the people who live here are expatriates, and even the six members of the wife and sister of the President of Paraguay.
The Paraguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a statement on the matter, and the President cancelled some of the scheduled activities.
Until now, however, U.S. officials have not given any explanation as to why the building collapsed.
This collapsed apartment was built in 1981.
According to the residents of the building, the apartment building was poorly maintained and fell into disrepair.
In 2015, a resident filed a lawsuit asking the condominium association to deal with compensation for the damage caused by the "water leakage from the cracks in the outer wall" in his room.
Water leakage and mold are often complained of.
But local officials denied the building was "in disrepair" — maybe a little older, but we've been checking for repairs!
According to Miami's rules, every building is re-certified for safety every 40 years.
The local authorities, on the other hand, have just completed a thorough inspection of the building in the past few months without issuing any safety alerts.
According to the building's condominium association lawyers, the inspection report was submitted months ago and shows that the condition of the apartment building is very normal.
The report showed that the building was slightly damaged, with some small cracks, but all of which had been repaired. Only the aging of the concrete needs to be repaired in time, no "life safety hazards" have been found, and there are no problems in the structure.
"There's no reason for the building to fall like this unless someone pulls out a load-bearing column from below, or there's a sinkhole underneath."
So, on the basis of safety inspections, on June 23, the building just began a roof construction.
Then......
Collapse happened.
In addition, when people retrospectively inspected the past, they found some clues.
The building was built on a reclaimed wetland – so since 1990 it has been sinking at a rate of 2 millimeters per year, and it is unclear whether the rate of sinking has accelerated since then.
"Millimeters are small, but every year they stack up to become numbers that can't be ignored. Buildings can be particularly vulnerable if their ground sinks at different rates, resulting in different amounts of settlement. ”
And judging by the results... Half of the building collapsed, and the other half remained intact.
In addition, according to the official release documents, in October 2018, engineers issued a warning:
The concrete beams, columns and walls of the building are cracked and peeled to varying degrees, and the steel reinforcement is aging and exposed. The concrete waterproofing system under the apartment pool has "significant structural damage" that, if not replaced, will cause the concrete to deteriorate exponentially. There have also been a large number of cracks and peeling in the underground parking lot, which must be completely repaired.
According to the on-site video, a professional engineer engaged in concrete repair judged that the concrete peeling may have started from the underground parking lot.
"If there is a concrete peeling off of the load-bearing column, it will lose its effect and become the culprit." As soon as the load-bearing column collapses, it will collapse like a domino and cause the entire building to collapse. ”
But the government insisted the collapse was not related to rusty steel and damaged concrete.
"Any building built on the beachfront and about the same age will have a certain degree of rust and concrete deterioration due to exposure to sea salt."
"It was an unforeseen accident."
It is worth mentioning that just the day before the collapse of this building, a pedestrian bridge in northeast Washington also collapsed suddenly for no reason, resulting in the injury of 5 people.
Similarly, the pedestrian bridge has just completed safety maintenance this year.
The inspection report said: the bridge is not in good condition, but there is no problem with the structure, and it is not necessary to abandon and replace it for the time being.
In less than 24 hours, there were two major accidents in the US infrastructure, which caused the American people to question the infrastructure.
What is even more coincidental is that on the day of the collapse, Biden announced a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan that will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the maintenance of bridges, roads and other infrastructure.
-- Because the problem of aging INFRASTRUCTURE in the United States is really imminent.
There was a time when the U.S. infrastructure system was very developed.
A hundred years ago, the United States already had a wide range of roads, railways, and buildings, and because of its strong infrastructure capacity, the whole country looked thriving at first sight.
The United States is firmly at the forefront of the infrastructure industry, and the world's number one position is beyond the reach of other countries.
But then, with the privatization of land in the United States, the slowdown in the development of the Economy in the United States, the government's efforts to solve the economic crisis by printing money rather than strengthening infrastructure...
Infrastructure is difficult to survive if it relies only on private investors and market incentives – so U.S. infrastructure is gradually abandoned.
Since the 1980s, the United States has spent only 2.5 percent of its GDP on infrastructure each year.
In contrast, China spends 8% of its GDP on infrastructure each year.
The gap between the years has accumulated little by little, and according to the assessment of the most authoritative civil engineering association in the United States:
There are more than 45,000 bridges and more than 40 percent of the roads in the United States that are in "bad" or "average" condition.
Over the years, many U.S. presidents have proposed infrastructure investment plans and explicitly targeted China.
It's just that their fundamental problems are not solved, and these things, just by shouting, will always be difficult to do...