13-storey building in Shanghai tips over

13-storey building in Shanghai tips over, 1 dead
27 Jun 2009, 1708 hrs IST, AP



BEIJING: Chinese state media say a 13-storey apartment building under construction in Shanghai has toppled over almost intact, killing one.

The site where a 13-storey building toppled in Shanghai. (Reuters Photo)

Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed the whole building lying on its side.

The official Xinhua News Agency said that a 28-year-old worker, surnamed Xiao, had gone into the building to get his tools and tried to jump out of the window when the building fell. He was from Anhui province in eastern China.

The accident early on Saturday morning occurred in the “Lotus Riverside'' residential community in Minxing district.

The cause of the incident is being investigated, Xinhua said.

GoFlyKiteNow said:

13-storey building in Shanghai tips over, 1 dead
27 Jun 2009, 1708 hrs IST, AP

BEIJING: Chinese state media say a 13-storey apartment building under construction in Shanghai has toppled over almost intact, killing one.

The site where a 13-storey building toppled in Shanghai. (Reuters Photo)

Footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed the whole building lying on its side.

The official Xinhua News Agency said that a 28-year-old worker, surnamed Xiao, had gone into the building to get his tools and tried to jump out of the window when the building fell. He was from Anhui province in eastern China.

The accident early on Saturday morning occurred in the “Lotus Riverside'' residential community in Minxing district.

The cause of the incident is being investigated, Xinhua said.

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Amazing Shanghai ! Given the stringent controls by so many bureaus this can happen.

Would have been worse if collapsed into debris & dust.


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Why no report of buildings disintegrating/collapsing/sinking in India ... Aneh?
Why always bias choice of bad events happening in/concerning China? ... U 'Keling-kia' got axe to grind hah?.:(:oIo:

Looks like it got blown over by the wind, who will dare stay in the other 4 blocks?

Reminds me never to invest in ah tiong stocks or businesses.

dysentry said:

Looks like it got blown over by the wind, who will dare stay in the other 4 blocks?

Reminds me never to invest in ah tiong stocks or businesses.

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yup. never invest in high rise properties in china. shoddy building code compliance, poor foundation, and zero consideration to soil and seismic conditions. shanghai is a disaster waiting to happen.

Judging from the photos at least the building did not tip over into the longkang. The other silver lining is there was enough adjacent space to prevent a domino effect. The buildings weren't too close to each other.

yellow_people said:

The other silver lining is there was enough adjacent space to prevent a domino effect. The buildings weren't too close to each other.

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You are right, their architects & engineers have great foresight anticipating it will happen so there was no domino effect.




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dysentry said:

Looks like it got blown over by the wind, who will dare stay in the other 4 blocks?

Reminds me never to invest in ah tiong stocks or businesses.

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Looks like Jim Chanos, the famous short seller who exposed Enron and made mega bucks by predicting and shorting financials in this recent economic crisis might be right on the money again. He's short on Chinese infrastructure stocks.

angie II said:

You are right, their architects & engineers have great foresight anticipating it will happen so there was no domino effect.

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I was actually putting it mildly to spare the blushes. But since you mentioned it, coming from the country that gave us tainted milk, poisoned toothpaste, exploding batteries, cheap knockoff, etc... this should come as no surprise.

Many pholes in Peesai are now built by PRC con companies.

Incredible not invincible India.

http://www.toxicjunction.com/get.asp?i=V2716

http://cnettv.cnet.com/india-building-collapse/9742-1_53-50007903.html

samurai1110 said:

Why no report of buildings disintegrating/collapsing/sinking in India ... Aneh?
Why always bias choice of bad events happening in/concerning China? ... U 'Keling-kia' got axe to grind hah?.:(:oIo:

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happens in NY USA too. jun 21 2009


http://mashable.com/2009/06/21/google-street-view-collapse/

At the rate in which China is expanding its infra there are bound to be a few bad apples. If you have a failure rate of 1 in 200,000 and if you do build 200K multi storey structures a year then you will see 1 collapse. In some countries where you only build 20K new buildings a year then you may see one collapse every 10 years.

Just like airlines. If you fly enough flights, over time you WILL suffer a crash. It is just a matter of stats.

Look at the Airbus jet that crashed. Probably very well made but given enough hours flown (number of jets sold x hours flown) stats will catch up with them.

Chinese will have to look into why it collapse. Perhaps the soil was not suitable given its water table and that required deeper piles. When the built office towers in Shenton Way, given the marine clay there, many piling contractors went bust becaue the piles would literally disappear into the ground.

longbow said:

happens in NY USA too. jun 21 2009


http://mashable.com/2009/06/21/google-street-view-collapse/

At the rate in which China is expanding its infra there are bound to be a few bad apples. If you have a failure rate of 1 in 200,000 and if you do build 200K multi storey structures a year then you will see 1 collapse. In some countries where you only build 20K new buildings a year then you may see one collapse every 10 years.

Just like airlines. If you fly enough flights, over time you WILL suffer a crash. It is just a matter of stats.

Look at the Airbus jet that crashed. Probably very well made but given enough hours flown (number of jets sold x hours flown) stats will catch up with them.

Chinese will have to look into why it collapse. Perhaps the soil was not suitable given its water table and that required deeper piles. When the built office towers in Shenton Way, given the marine clay there, many piling contractors went bust becaue the piles would literally disappear into the ground.

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According to Agence France-Presse, the Chinese government says, “almost 7,000 schools were destroyed and more than 11,000 pupils and their teachers were killed” when the earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale struck. The “fragility of schools that crumpled into bloody piles has aroused widespread claims that corruption had fatally compromised building strength,” reports Reuters. On 27 May, a government news agency, Xinhua, reported that two fresh aftershocks caused more than 420,000 houses to collapse.

The Financial Times (FT) reports that “the quality of much of China's infrastructure is open to question amid an unparalleled national building boom; corruption is widespread and construction standards often loosely applied”.

You are talking about Richter scale 8.0 earthquake in China so the damage is understandable. San Francisco Loma Prieta was a 7 and it collapse sections of Bay Bridge and highways not to mentioned numerous buildings in San Francisco.

The difference between 8 and 7 is 1 point but the magnitude is 10 folds.

No doubt that a certain percentage of China's new buildings are sub-standard. But that is how building QC starts. They more they build the more experience they have and the stronger the regulation and rules.

I met some people in the cement business and they mentioned that officials were fully aware of corruption and substitution of material. As such for the 3 Gorges Dam they ramped up QC and at the same time over spec concrete requirements 2 to 3 times above what is needed! Welcome to the world of construction in the 3rd world.

Anyway, it is better to move citizens to modern buildings with proper sewerage infrastructure then to have them live in slums, no piped water and open sewers. The earliest flats in Queenstown were of very poor standard and contractors substituted sea sand for river sand in the concrete and so we see lots of spalling and such. If the Chinese were to building apartments that meet EU standards, they would probably cost 3 times the price and that might mean staying in the slums for another generation.

GoFlyKiteNow said:

According to Agence France-Presse, the Chinese government says, “almost 7,000 schools were destroyed and more than 11,000 pupils and their teachers were killed” when the earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale struck. The “fragility of schools that crumpled into bloody piles has aroused widespread claims that corruption had fatally compromised building strength,” reports Reuters. On 27 May, a government news agency, Xinhua, reported that two fresh aftershocks caused more than 420,000 houses to collapse.

The Financial Times (FT) reports that “the quality of much of China's infrastructure is open to question amid an unparalleled national building boom; corruption is widespread and construction standards often loosely applied”.

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