Atlanta DAR Collapse Reiterates what can Happen to Adjacent Buildings
The building collapse attorneys at Denena Points, PC emphasize that when a building collapses either partially or completely like the DAR house in Atlanta, it’s not just the people inside that structure that are in danger. It’s also people in adjacent buildings and in the “collapse zone” area around the building. A collapse zone is generally as wide as one and one-half times the height of the building.
On Wednesday night in midtown Atlanta, Georgia, the house belonging to the DAR (Daughters of the Revolution) collapsed. Authorities indicated that the weight of the ice and snow piled on the building by the recent crippling winter storm might have been the cause of the structural failure.
The DAR house was an historic structure, built in 1911. It stood proudly on Piedmont Avenue across from Piedmont Park. The owner of the collapsed DAR structure mentioned that he would like to save at least the historic façade. Firefighters stated that the rest of the remaining structure would probably have to be torn down.
Our building collapse attorneys note that no one was inside the DAR building when it collapsed. But the effects of the collapse also damaged the duplex next door and trapped a person there who had to be extracted from the debris. (News 11alive.com, 2/13/14)
High-Profile Example of a Building Collapse Crushing an Adjacent Structure
You might remember that when a four-story building undergoing demolition collapsed in Center City, Philadelphia last summer, it wasn’t the work crew in that building who were harmed by the structure’s sudden fall. It was the group of shoppers and employees inside the one-story Salvation Army store next door who suffered the worst effects of that collapse. 6 were killed and 14 were injured. Of the survivors, one woman lost both her legs.
The deadly toll resulted from the huge mass of debris from a 4-story brick wall suddenly raining through the roof of the one-story thrift shop. When buildings topple or buckle, their mass often falls outward onto other buildings or onto nearby cars and people. The problems with predicting the direction of a fall, or which part will weaken and topple first, present great risks to firefighters responding to building fires or explosions.
Indeed today in Dallas, Texas, firefighters were on a ladder fighting a 4-alarm blaze at the Stone Ranch Apartments when a sudden flare of smoke and flame forced them back down to the ground. The blaze spread quickly, and firefighters were called back out of the building due to the potential danger of structural collapse. The fire, possibly caused by a candle left to burn too long, ultimately consumed two entire apartment buildings and displaced at least 90 residents.
Collapse sequence unpredictability is why good demolition companies will, when the nature of the building permits it, make careful preparations in order to bring large buildings down all at once and within their own footprint. But some buildings, older historic structures and severely weakened structures for instance, often have o be brought down by hand, brick by brick.
This type of demolition is what the 4-story brick structure in Center City required. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead a hasty demolition using heavy equipment and inadequate safety precautions was done. And before the collapse, our building collapse attorneys reiterate that a contractor had done the unthinkable: he had removed key support members for the structure in order to re-sell them, endangering everyone who might come near that building