Collapse: When Buildings Fall Down

by Phillip Wearne

What happens when the very ground beneath your feet gives way? In Collapse, Phillip Wearne tells the stories behind the worst structural engineering disasters of the last fifty years and the forensic engineers who investigated their causes. Using expert testimonies from scientific investigators, Wearne studies eleven high-profile cases of catastrophic structural collapse, from The Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City and the Hartford Civic Center in Connecticut to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Sometimes if these disasters have a single cause, it is a small flaw that spawns a chain reaction--for instance, the minuscule flaw in the metal of one eyebar of the Point Pleasant Bridge on the Ohio River. Usually, though, and more alarmingly, the causes are human. Mistakes, misunderstandings, incompetence, greed, and corruption: every facet of human failing is represented in these structural collapses.

This makes the investigation of these failures--by agencies like the Failure Analysis Associates, who can have close to two-thousand investigations ongoing at any one time--dirty and dangerous business. Wearne's case study takes us deep inside the ever-growing industry of forensic engineering, revealing a group of professionals dedicated to determining the cause of a collapse at any cost, while learning and applying valuable lessons from each failure.

Provocative and well-written, Collapse is essential for deepening our understanding of--and readiness for--catastrophe.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 10, 1999

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neat Book! Very easy to follow along even if your don't much about engineering. The author goes out of his way to explain in plain English the specific engineering design and construction terms that are introduced throughout the book, and use many easy to understand diagrams to further illustrate how these various structures failed.

When I told a Goodreader friend that I was reading this, she commented that if she read it she would likely be too afraid to ever go inside any building for fear it might collapse. I can see her point of view, but I didn't take that away form this book. For one thing, despite the subtitle of "WHEN BUILDINGS FALL DOWN," more than half of the structures described here aren't buildings at all, in the conventional sense. And of the building that are covered, most of them are not residential or office space structures. So I would like to conclude, that unless you're unlucky enough to live in a certain type of high-rise tower in a British city (covered in Chapter 7), you're probably fine, and are unlikely to die because the builing you're in falls down. (But if that building is located anywhere below a dam, after reading Chapter 10 of this book I'd have to conclude that your town is probably doomed, and I recommend you move as soon as possible).

I find it curious that so few of the "buildings" covered within these pages are residential or office structures, and am not satisfied with the author's brief mention of this in his otherwise short but satisfactory introduction. He merely says that "there are, thankfully, relatively few such failures" that experience what engineers and architechts call "catastrophic structural collapse," that being the criteria for inclusion in this book.

That may be so, but I think another criteria for selecting the examples covered within was the drama and the public impact inherent in each particular episode. At this point I should emphasize that this book was produced in conjunction with a documentary apparently appeared on The Learning Channel...in fact, the book's publisher is actually called TV Books. And in many ways the text often read like a transcript from one of those ubiquitous and usually annoyingly shallow documentaries that are always appearing on PBS, TLC, Discovery, History, and similar channels. But this usually occurs when the author is describing the facts of the collapse/explosion/disaster and the immediate human impact of the tragedy. Once he gets back to describing how the investigations and inquiries proceeded, and especially once he details exactly what is suspected to be the cause for structural failure in each case, the book's connection with the TV show becomes an asset. The narratives describing the investigations read like decent news reporting - not too much detail, but making an effort to present the opposing views of all sides. And the descriptions and depictions of what actually failed in each case are particularly good...in fact, for me they were the best part of the book (which surprised, since I usually dislike and am bored by technical information). The author gets the facts down but makes an effort to illustrate the physical principles involved with simple metaphors and examples, and whenever I was still not completely sure what the text was referring to, the diagrams accompanying the text (and referred to within the text), usually cleared it up. Excellent work by the author in this regard!

One other note to be aware of, for those of you who are connoisseurs of good non-fiction...there are no endnotes or sourcenotes here, which usually would bother me, and might in the future are I read more books in this field. The author does a fine job of mentioning in the text who and what he is quoting or citing as he describes the experts' varying opinions on what happened and what caused each collapse. That said, at times the book reads a little too much FaAA's greatest cases....FaAA being a really interesting company called Failure Analysis Associates, who often called in as consultants during investigations into structural collapses and disasters. This again, for me, is representative of the "documentary syndrome" on PBS and cable TV, in which the producer often rely too heavily on a particularly helpful source (who just happens to be pretty good at telling a story with the TV cameras rolling). Regrettably, too many folks are apt to conclude that an expert appearing on a TV documentary is the best in his field, rather than the most handy, helful, or photogenic (primary example: Shelby Foote in Ken Burns' The Civil War...was he really the best available guy?). FaAA's experts seem to be fine, and the company certainly (and coincedentally) does seem to have expertise in many of the areas covered in the pages within. But as a very critical reader of non-fiction, I would have preferred to see a few more experts...in the end, I can't help but be concerned that FaAA influenced what was and was not included in the documentary (which, by the way, I haven't seen) and perhaps they also influenced what was presented in each case.

In the end the main lesson I took away is that building is an inexact science, and lots can go wrong. But two particulary human failures stand out to me:

- complacency in the building phase. In many of the cases, builders during construction modified specifics in the design, or else they did a shitty job of performing the work. in other cases, the owners or operators simply changed the use of the structure without thinking through the implications that this would have for incorporating safety into the design.

- complacency or resistance in following up on concerns raised by builders, designers, inspectors, or the public. Politically speaking, I don't see this changing much...following up on concerns costs time and money, and so those responsible for getting a job on time and under budget will often blow these concerns off. Regrettably, only public pressure and costly litigation will likely create the conditions in which builders and owners feel compelled to follow up on such concerns.

Bottom line: neat book, and I recommend it to anyone who like interesting non-fiction.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Managed to make the structural engineering parts comprehensible even to me.

[Gina G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, informative book. I would be interested to read more about Forensic Engineering.