There has been a lot of new information about the partial apartment collapse in Davenport Iowa that
happened almost two weeks ago on May 28th. I will bring you up to date. We now have a video of the
collapse and many photos showing the very poor state of the brick wall that failed. The building
is more than 100 years old. The collapse happened on the back wall facing the parking lot. The back
faces of buildings get the cheap treatment in terms of aesthetic effort and less maintenance
attention. On Sunday May 28 at 4 53 PM the middle section of the six-story wall collapsed. It took
down about 15 Apartments into a mangled pile of rubble. In the street view images we can see the
neglect goes back to 2008 and before. The other three facades were not degraded like this because
they received good protection over the years from their better quality outer layer of face brick.
Here we see a section of the building. Imagine it as a vertical slice through the structure so we
can see inside. At the top is the roof and the bottom is the basement and the ground. All the
external walls are load-bearing. The internal structure is steel frame. The steel frame held
up the floor slabs and the internal walls. After 3 days the city made these documents
available. There are inspections and notices addressed to the owner covering the last 3 years
as well as structural notes. There were notices by the city to the owner to vacate but they are
rather ambiguous in whether they applied to the entire building or only individual Apartments.
I have prepared the best photos into this Mosaic elevation view. The photos are flattened and
placed in their locations on the facade. We will focus on the photos directly related to
the failure. The yellow lines indicate where the wall was torn away from the portions that remain
standing. The 2 circles are places where the bricks first began failing deep inside the wall.
This can be seen in the collapse video. The first point of failure was a panel of plaster or veneer
which fell off the wall 2 minutes and 43 seconds before the collapse. Here is an example of one of
the inspection reports from 3 years earlier. The photos tell the story of neglect and a building
that was screaming out its distress. This long crack would carry water deep inside the wall.
people lived inside was a blatant disregard for safety. The circle is where the failure of this
wall was centered. This damage is also related to the collapse the wall section shared along
this vertical crack. This meant the crack was all the way through to the inside and a crack
which residents reported in their complaints to the owner the primary structure had been
severely compromised the brick opening had gone out of square. You can see the window could not
close any longer. The right hand side of this wall had dropped relative to the left side. The
residents reported sagging floors. As the bricks dropped, the steel floor beams dropped too causing
the floor to slope. The owner reportedly told residents the building had been checked out by an
engineer and declared safe and he dismissed their complaints. I find it incredulous that an engineer
would have declared this safe, particularly as a structure was six stories high. This haphazard
patch job seen here is disturbing. It points to maintenance on the primary structure being
treated as an annoyance. The bare minimum was spent each time a repair was taken on,
instead of doing the job properly in one go. These repairs were at the part where the failure began.
I suspect the core bricks inside the wall at this point would have looked very dodgy. In the week
before the collapse, the repair work started and by the end of the week the building had collapsed.
Why did the supposed immediate repairs take so long. This is an example of Shoring. A brick
contractor who did not get the job quoted for the repair with a price including Shoring. The
city stipulated shoring was required but the owner rejected these costs.
The contractor told the owner he would not do the work without properly supporting the wall above
because he would not put his workers at risk. But the owner rejected these costs. Needle beams
go right through the wall and both ends of the beams are supported by robust supports. Shoring is
typically done under the guidance of an engineer. The owner proceeded with another Builder.
The shoring they put up was just for show. These 2 by 4s would do nothing to support or secure the
substantial load from 5 stories above. This Cowboy approach led to the death of 3 of his tenants.
Here a day or two before the collapse the panel of bulging outer brick veneer skin is seen laying up
against the wall. The video clip of the collapse is almost 9 minutes long. Nothing much happens
in the beginning till the final 3 minutes but when it is sped up and playing back and forth,
we can see something was happening. Pay attention to the closest inclined pole. It starts to buckle,
telling us the bricks were slowly dropping, but slower than the eye can see. From this we
can tell the bricks at the center point of the failure were incrementally pulverizing slowly
settling under the load. As one brick exceeds what it can carry it cracks and turns to powder
then the adjacent bricks take over the additional note till they also fail. This ongoing sequence
continued and accelerated till the whole area grew too large and everything failed
at once. This panel was the first visible and significant breakage almost three minutes before.
Then 56 seconds before the disaster the bricks next to the door fell out.
This shows the excessive loads were relocating to each weakest point. There were about 6
smaller puffs of dust showing more localized fracturing and breaking before total failure.
The video cuts out midway through the collapse. It is not entirely certain why this happens but
the reason given is a power failure. The plaster panel is first to fall. Then the lower bricks fall
and then some smaller chunks with dust.
The outer ends of the steel beams were supported by the bricks. As the wall gave way,
the steel beams dropped taking the floor slabs and everything else with them.
It was fortunate that the 100 plus year old steel columns held and prevented any further spread.
The day after the collapse, the city issued an immediate demolition notice for the whole
building. Residents of the building and from Davenport were outraged that the city could be
so callous as to order the immediate demolition while people and animals could still be in the
building. A day later an elderly resident appeared in a window after hiding under her table and pets
were recovered. After public protest and almost a week of ongoing confusion the rubble was then
searched properly. Not long after the search began, 3 residents who had been missing were
found and confirmed to have died in the collapse. The city showed a disturbing lack of dignity to
the family and residents. Newsmax got their stories very mixed up. "This morning in Moscow
a city of 21 million people there was a pre dawn attack. Drones struck several buildings in Russia"
So, in summary this was a load-bearing brick failure brought on by long-term neglect
and very shoddy repair work. The higher quality of bricks on the public sides of
the building safeguarded those walls against disintegration of the core brick structure.
many and plain to see. Engineers who were paid to look at the structure have a lot to answer for.
This is the current owner who showed a blatant disregard for safety and seemed to think paint
could hold his building up. Already the lawsuits are piling up against him. The engineers and the
City also face serious questions of liability. Old buildings can last a very long time but they
do demand additional care and proper maintenance. Thanks for watching and I will see you next time.