October 24th Structural Failures Found in Newspaper Archives - An Engineer's Aspect

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

October 24th Structural Failures Found in Newspaper Archives


Logansport Daily Reporter, Monday Afternoon, October 24, 1910.

Ten Hurt in Building Collapse.



Louisville, Ky., Oct. 24.--Ten persons were injured fatally when the building on Main street, between Third and Fourth, occupied by the Ahrens & Ott Manufacturing company as an office and salesroom, partially collapsed.


THE OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER, Thursday Evening, October 25, 1945, Page 8B.

B[r]idge Caves in; Cuts Off Water

MORGAN, Oct. 25--Several hundred residents of South Morgan today were without culinary water. The supply was cut off during Wednesday night when a steel bridge across the Weber river, between North and South Morgan, collapsed. A part of the water system was suspended underneath the bridge.

Just what caused the bridge to collapse was not determined. It had been in regular use, but no vehicle was on it when it caved in, it was reported. The bridge is a part of the state road system.


The Leavenworth Times, Leavenworth, Kansas, Friday, October 25, 1963.


THE WALL CAME TUMBLING DOWN -- This house at Providence, R. I., was being torn down Thursday afternoon when it suddenly collapsed against the adjoining residence. No one was reported hurt. (AP Wirephoto)


The TIMES-REPORTER, Dover-New Philadelphia, Ohio, Wednesday, October 25, 1972, Page A-5.

Road collapses

MARTINS FERRY, Ohio (AP) -- A portion of Ohio Route 7 collapsed north of here Tuesday night, closing one lane.

The collapse one-half mile north of Martins Ferry created a traffic jam and two trucks collided in the resulting area of merging traffic.

One driver was injured and one truck rolled down an embankment off the highway.


Bucks County Courier Times, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, October 25, 1977, Page A16.


Tunnel collapses in gold mine

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (UPI) -- A tunnel collapsed in a gold mine 20 miles south of Johannesburg Monday, killing one miner and injuring nine more, officials said.

The cave-in occurred deep inside Western areas Gold Mine at Ranstein and at first it was feared scores of miners had been trapped under the rubble.


Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana, Tuesday, October 25, 1988, Page 16.


Building Collapses

One person was killed and 11 were injured in the collapse of the six-story building

NEW YORK (AP) -- A firefighter digging through the rubble of a six-story building found the last survivor when she grabbed his hand more than eight hours after the structure collapsed, killing the owner and injuring 10 others.

"I'm Robin! Get me out!" shouted Robin Fischer to rescuers at the office building in the Manhattan's Garment District.

Everybody who was inside the 60-year-old building when it collapsed Monday, including a pregnant woman who survived from the top floor, was accounted for by late Monday, authorities said.

"It was like riding a monster, and the only thing you could do was to hang on," said Wilhelm Waight, a 32-year-old delivery man who survived a fall from the fifth floor with only minor injuries. "I covered my face with my arms."

He said he hit a van in a parking lot, then freed himself from the rubble.

The collapse two blocks south of the Empire State Building crippled transit service just before evening rush hour, affecting hundreds of thousands of commuters. Subways to New Jersey and the west side of Manhattan and trains to Long Island were halted more than an hour.

Rescuers were worried vibrations from the trains would cause more of the building to collapse, hampering rescue efforts.

Authorities did not know for certain what caused the building's west wall and interior to cave in, but Fire Department spokesman Efrain Parrilla said a trench had been dug along a wall.

Buildings Commissioner Charles M. Smith said construction work had been going on at the building, but that no permits had been issued. "It appears they undermined the wall of this building and it collapsed," he said.

Shelly Smith, 26, who is five months pregnant, works for a jeweler on the building's top floor. When it collapsed, she slid down with the debris and emerged with cuts and bruises.

"It just collapsed," she said. "I hung onto the floor, I guess. The building fell into the parking lot. I crawled out."

"It made a sound like a swoosh," said Jeff Burgos, who watched from his store across the street. I watched the top floors crumble. As they fell, men were actually coming out of the side of the walls, climbing down the debris. It looked like they didn't have a choice."

Fischer, who works for a handbag manufacturer on the sixth floor, was found buried in packaging and cardboard boxes, which probably cushioned her from the falling rubble, said Homer Bishop, chief of operations for the Fire Department.

Firefighter Joe Hodges began digging in the area when he saw some boxes move. About 20 minutes later, Fischer was pulled out. She was crying, said Bishop, "and so was I."

The Indiana Gazette, Thursday, October 25, 2001, Page 12.

Scaffolding collapse kills five

By ALEX LYDA
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK--Stopping only to listen for survivors' screams, firefighters cut through the twisted planks and poles left when a building facade and adjoining scaffold collapsed, leaving five construction workers dead.

Eleven others were injured in the collapse at the 20-story Manhattan office building Wednesday, city officials said.

Rescue workers armed with flashlights worked late into the night to clear debris from the 20-foot pile of rubble.

The loose bricks, broken wooden planks and bent metal poles were pulled from the pile and spread along neighboring streets within hours.

Crews had to be called from the World Trade Center disaster site, about 2 miles south, said Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, who spoke at the scene with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on Wednesday.

As some 250 rescue workers hunted for victims, they stopped periodically to listen for tapping signals from survivors.

But they eventually removed all the trapped victims.

"All of the victims have been removed, and all of the debris that was trapping the victims has also been removed," fire department spokesman Robert Calise said early today.

The construction crew was replacing bricks and working on windows when the facade tumbled into the courtyard of the building, authorities said. The scaffold was believed to stand 12 to 15 stories high. It wasn't clear where the workers were when it fell.

"We were working just as usual and suddenly the foreman started to say 'You have to hurry up to get rid of all the demolition material,'" worker Gary Hernandez said. "But there was a lot of demolition material on every floor and the weight suddenly gave in."

The cause of the collapse was still being investigated.

The 11 injured were taken to hospitals, police said. Their conditions were not immediately known.

One of the injured workers walked out of the building on his own before he was taken for treatment.

A teary Mary DeJesus was at the scene when her injured husband, Juan DeJesus, was led out of the building. She hugged him before he left.

"He didn't know what happened," she said.

"Everything happened so fast. I'm just glad that he's safe."

Howard Rubenstein, a spokesman for S.L. Green Leasing LLC, the leasing and managing agent of the building, said the scaffolding was erected by Nesa Waterproofing to repair and restore the building's facade. A message left on an answering machine at Nesa Waterproofing was not immediately returned.