Tragedy Highlights Perils of Overloading Buildings

2017-01-06T14:31:50+00:00May 9th, 2013|Categories: Factory Buildings|Tags: , |

By Technical Director, Rollo Reid

Dhaka_Savar_Building_CollapseLatest reports about the Bangladesh building collapse announce that 800 people are now believed to have been killed by this terrible event.

The scale of this tragedy is enormous and my heart goes out to the families and friends of all those who lost their lives.

I feel particular sadness because building safe, strong structures is something I’m passionate about. It seems to me there are two main reasons why this tragedy occurred.

The first is because it appears that extra floors were added on top of the original and industrial companies were allowed to set up factory equipment in a structure that was only ever designed for commercial use, housing office workers and light equipment.

The extra weight of the additional floors, the heavy factory machines and power generators that were positioned on the roof all proved too much for the fabric of the building to bear, resulting in a catastrophic collapse.

The second reason this collapse was so disastrous is, I believe, because buildings in this part of the world tend to be constructed without a strong core framework made of either steel or concrete.

If this […]