Berkeley city officials have shut down access to public records regarding the construction of the apartment complex, which was completed in January 2007. Normally, they would be viewable upon request, but zoning office staff cited a pending police investigation and a request by the Berkeley city manager that the records not be made immediately available. — LA Times
The fifth-floor balcony collapsed early morning Tuesday, in the midst of a birthday celebration for one of the victims. At the time of collapse, there were reportedly thirteen people on the balcony; the seven who survived the fall now face life-threatening injuries. Of the six dead, five were Irish citizens, living or working in the Bay Area for the summer.
Library Gardens apartments, where the collapse occurred, was completed eight years ago, and typically houses students and faculty of nearby University of California, Berkeley. As victims were identified and families notified, the collapse quickly became international news, and a police investigation into the building's safety is pending. Historically, the Bay Area has been a popular destination for Irish students to spend a summer abroad – it's unclear what effect this tragic event will have on future exchanges.
Update: Dry rot could be factor in Berkeley balcony collapse, engineers say (via LA Times)
44 Comments
terrible. looks like all beams failed in a clean "line" right at the same spot...maybe it was rotting due a leak in the decking at that point where it meets doors?
Not far from where I live
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/06/16/berkeley-orders-balcony-removal-after-tragedy-kills-6/
I heard a structural engineer on the radio this morning discussing this. He said a typical balcony is engineered for 40 lb/sf, then estimated that balcony at 5'x7' for 35sf... for a maximum LL of 1400 lbs.
Those 13 kids would need to be 107 on average not to overload if those numbers are correct. Plus, not jump up and down over and over.
Future headline to read "House of Pain Kills 13"
thats fucked up and sad news.....citizen, what you heard is a very bad explanation and interpretation of the code. those are occupant loads. engineers have safety factors and more importantly the shear value requirements of the connections are considerably much higher as per code. assume those weights cantileevering,etc.... as the article notes its presumed dry rot, which means poor waterproofing. all the professionals and contractors will get dragged into a lawsuit that will drag on for years funded by their insurance companies. there is a good chance its just ownership negligence by means of value engineering everything. don't want to pay the professionals enough to pay attention and don't want to pay the contractors enough to do good work, and don't want to spend the money to do things right........
ownership negligence by means of value engineering
A 5 story wood frame multi-family building ...
you would never find that type of structure in Ireland or Europe. at that height and use its masonry or steel.
That near-hinge condition suggested in the photo is horrifying... almost like the occupants were spilled out like emptying a glass of water.
sad story....agree with miles....that building that got torched a few months back in LA was like a 10 story wood framed multifamily project...hats off to the arsonist that saved others from this fate. crackerbox stax.
this cheap shit makes up the vast majority of new US buildings. Just built a 5 story wood framed hotel across the street from me.
NB Da Vinci apts in LA that was torched was 7 stories. That fits a California Building Code-compliant 5-story type III construction on 2-story type I construction.
I'd hope that as a community of designers, we'd understand that wood construction isn't inherently bad. It just needs to be designed, engineered, and constructed properly, like any other material.
Are we really looking at this and blaming the wood!? The wood never did anything bad. The architect might have. The contractor might have. The developer might have told the architect and/or the contractor to do something bad. The type of structural material used in construction did not cause the balcony to collapse. It contributed because it was susceptible to decay, but the detailing should really be what we are scrutinizing.
Look at the pictures and you can see what looks like a concrete topping slab poured over a waterproofing membrane (Grace Bituthene) over wood decking, all held up by cantilevered wood joists. The flashing at the edge of the balcony is at the level of the concrete, not the level of the waterproofing. The parties responsible created a little bathtub for water with no where for the water to go. It leaked into the structure and rotted the wood.
Wood detailed correctly is a perfectly good building material. Wood detailed poorly is a recipe for disaster. The same could be said for any type of structural material; steel, concrete, etc. Learn how to detail correctly so you don't kill people.
^ With the assumption being that wood is a suitable material for mid-rise high-occupancy construction?
There's a lot of thought and effort being put into making it so, Miles. And considering the inherent sustainable value of wood vs. concrete or steel, I am all for it, provided it is at least as safe.
Building codes all over the country have identified it as safe. Is this failure going to provoke a rework of the code to exclude wood? I doubt it. If suddenly wood buildings start falling down all over the country, perhaps it would get looked at.
This tragedy should provoke a discussion and careful analysis by everyone practicing architecture of how to properly detail wood construction.
From the Summary of Changes to the New York City Building Code (2008)
3. Buildings of Group I-1 (assisted living), and Groups R-1 and R-2 of wood frame construction (Type V) are prohibited throughout the city. Under the IBC, these occupancies are permitted in buildings of Type V construction up to and including 4 stories.
4. Wood frame construction (Type V) is prohibited within the fire district (all of the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx, and portions of Queens and Staten Island). Under the IBC, Type V construction is permitted for all occupancies in any location.
I'm uncertain what you are trying to say there. NYC is not the world, and the world is not NYC.
Anywhere other than NYC? I think you are finding the exception, and assuming it should be rule.
Let me know when the IBC starts adopting these code provisions to follow NYC's lead.
Even then, I'll still maintain that this balcony would have been fine if it had been detailed and constructed to keep water out properly.
This sort of tragedy is nothing new. Overloaded balcony collpses happened at least twice while i lived in Chicago. Perhaps a warning sign needs to be put on these balconies to let people who would otherwise never think about issues such as" too many fucking people on the balcony may lead to a structural failure, collapse and death."
vado, I believe we will find that the initial structural design of the balcony was sufficient for the 13 people, and even if it wasn't, expecting people to think of things like that when they are simply going about their lives is not realistic. That's why we HAVE building codes. People can't be relied upon to always think about safety, nor should they be.
vado, good point. anything will collapse at some given load. A residential balcony cannot reasonably be designed to support unlimited loads. Likely there was a design flaw, but still, there should be some signage for max occupancy as in commercial buildings...There are warnings on HotPockets that say "contents may be hot" for god sake! but not on a balcony 60' in the air.
Update via LA Times: Dry rot could be factor in Berkeley balcony collapse, engineers say
and from SFGate: Berkeley balcony was decorative, ex-member of review panel says
It may have been "decorative," but it was also intended for occupancy, as indicated by the friggin' french doors!
Perhaps a warning sign needs to be put on these balconies
Yeah, a warning label will solve the problem.
Anyone have any definitive numbers on how big the balcony was? I've seen numbers ranging from 30 sq ft up to 50 sq ft.
By those numbers 13 people on the balcony could each weigh an average of 138 pounds or 230 pounds and still be ok according to the often quoted 60 PSF live load design requirement under the code at the time the project was built.
30SF, and it was built to a live load of 60psi - CBC 1998 according to what I read in the Oakland Tribune and BBC.com - I walked over there and the joist stumps appear dark brown and black. The Mayor of Berkeley was there holding a press conference.
a structural engineer once told me they over-engineer the shit out of decks and balconies, regardless of the code prescriptive loads required because the worst case scenario is 100 people dancing on a deck at party, happens all the time. The problem is the structure becomes subject to dynamic loads which are way more unpredictable than static loads. 53 people all coming down on a deck on a down beat dancing = collapse. Problem with those cracker box apartments is the fact that tenants never use the balconies, short of putting a few plants and a lawn chair out there, engineers probably figured as such and didn't plan for a bunch of people dancing on a 35sf deck. Fucked up for the design team. I'm sure the developer is no saint either...they never are, cheap ass mother fuckers, probably got a smoking deal on some Chinese lumber that fell out of a truck.
If the CDs are solid, and if the contractor built it according to the CDs, who's gonna be to blame?
How about instead of looking to place blame we instead glean what we can to prepare for the future?
Inadequate code + inadequate design = inadequate construction.
It's clear that the waterproof membrane (hot roll) on top of the deck failed at a joint parallel to the face of the building. Years of water leaking into the deck structure caused the joists to rot.
What amazes me is how the sheet waterproofing was strong enough to hold the railing and have it rotate down and end up inverted on the balcony rail below yet inadequate to waterproof anything.
Wait, Miles, is this the first time you've actually looked into what happened? What was all the talk about the inadequacy of wood construction based on?
^ Experience, building codes and a history of failures including this one. What you call inadequacy is relative to use. Understanding the properties of a material - all of the properties - is crucial to safety and performance.
I love wood - it is the ultimate sustainable resource (or would be if we used it properly). Some of the most amazing buildings have been built out of wood, and burned down. Tōdai-Ji, for one.
what i hope we could learn is who to really blame. a cheap owner is always to blame even if a few professionals bent a bit and the contractor did a favor or two, the responsibility like parents with children lies with the owner.
These kinds of catastrophes are often the result of a compounding of errors. In this case you could cite insufficient building codes, cheap owners, and bad design.
Is it bad construction if it was built according to plan? It is if the builder knows it will fail.
What a nightmare. This is why overbuilding is a virtue.
They will sort it out in court over the next decade or so with everyone running from liability. In the end the lawyers will win.
I'll wager that some codes change because of this. In a stupid way, of course.
At my past structural engineering job we worked on a lot of these types of buildings, and as chigurh said, always used ridiculous factors of safety for decks / balconies, always at 60psf. Assuming this balcony was designed correctly (a big assumption, I know), those joists must have been rotted to shit for it to fail after only 8 years.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Blueprints-show-Berkeley-balcony-was-designed-for-6336566.php
Some photos of the construction documents posted here: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/06/19/no-smoking-gun-in-berkeley-balcony-design/
For those wondering, this is not the way to waterproof a deck. Always allow the waterproof membrane to drain into a drain, or off the edge at the level of the waterproofing. The metal flashing in the detail does not allow the water at the waterproofing membrane to drain off the membrane. I'd love to see the railing connection in detail 18 as well as detail 6 for the flashing. I would point to the railing connection as the possible source of water into the assembly leading to the rot and decay of the wood joists.
Also, poorly coordinated details. Two different membranes are called out. One detail shows "double wood floor" ... the other shows a single layer of "wood floor." Two different notes for the topping slab ... and probably many other things.
The photo indicates cantilevered joists, the drawing doesn't.
Yeah, there's nothing to indicate that those in fact are the drawings for that building.
Miles, it wouldn't be the only thing not coordinated correctly in the details. I would suspect the structural drawings ... the ones that actually depict the structure ... would tell a different story.
citizen, except for the City of Berkeley officials that released the plans and the journalists who took and published the images. I doubt the city and the journalists are going to just find any old set of plans and then find any old detail as long as it was for a balcony.
Update: Dry rot to blame for Berkeley balcony collapse; existing building codes called into question
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