Civil Commotion

The public writ large has no idea whatever what civil engineers do for a living, which might explain why so many crazy ideas have been broadcast during the coverage of the Florida condo collapse. The two most insidious:

1. Safety Factors are not cumulative. Suppose that one part of an assembly is rated to carry 100,000-pounds, and has a safety factor of 3.0, meaning that it will fail at a load of 300,000-pounds. A different part of the same assembly is rated to carry 100,000-pounds, and has a safety factor of 2.0.

   That does NOT mean that the assembly has a cumulative safety factor of 6.0. No. The safety factor for the assembly is 2.0. This should be obvious, but I’ve lost track of the times some contractor on a construction site has told me his jury-rigged “fix” is fine because of all the other safety factors.

2. Estimated “life” assumes maintenance. A structure that has an estimated “life” of 30-years, for instance, is not going to make it to 30-years without routine maintenance along the way — and I’m not talking about a coat of paint every few years. I’m talking about roofing, retrofitting to accommodate evolving drainage patterns, major mechanical such as HVAC. Generally, estimated life means that the structure will continue to be useful for its original purpose for X many years, e.g., a retail storefront or a grade school; after that, it may need a retrofit in order to serve some other purpose.

The past week has made me acutely aware of how many misconceptions are widespread about these sorts of things, and I’ll be spending more time in the future trying to clear them up.

What do you know? A structural engineer had documented widespread defects 3-years before the condo collapse that has left on the order of 150-people unaccounted for.

Three years before the deadly collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex near Miami, a consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the 13-story building.

I don’t have the slightest difficulty believing this, because during my years in Florida I was sometimes among the engineers issuing those warnings — and being ignored. That — and the willingness of many engineers to turn a blind eye — had much to do with my decision to leave engineering.

Expect more stories just exactly like this one as the’80s building boom matures.

Probably everybody has by now watched the video of that Florida condo collapse near Miami.

For civil engineers, watching such videos is always painful and accompanied by the thought, “Thank God that wasn’t one of my projects.”

The first report that I heard of the disaster was accompanied by speculation by some newscaster that the cause was some sort of soil/foundation failure. Since my specialty is soil mechanics and I spent most of my engineering career working on foundation designs, including 7-years in central Florida, I watched with especially keen interest.

There might be some sort of shallow excavation on one side of the building; the available video doesn’t make that clear. What can be said with certainty is that we’d be hearing a lot about the excavation if it were there and the foundations had been undermined, so that can probably be ruled out.

Franklin Graham provides a good example of why it’s so difficult to have a serious, educated conversation in this country.

Critical Race Theory is a very dangerous socialist, communist idea that has now made it mainstream in our schools by school boards who are supporting this leftist socialist ideology. Parents must rise up against the school boards and let their voices be heard. I would encourage Christians in these communities to be involved and run for school boards. How important it is for Christian men and women to take over the school boards so they can influence for the good.

But, of course, Critical Race Theory hasn’t anything to do with socialism or communism; those words are thrown in as gratuitous slurs meant to foreclose further discussion of Critical Race Theory.

FWIW, I don’t find a whole lot of the work going by that name very convincing; often, it seems to be no more than an effort to clothe anti-white malice with a patina of academic respectability. Even so, racism per se is a matter worthy of discussion, and attempting to bury the subject with inflammatory misdirection toward irrelevant economic language deserves contempt.

What do you know? The latest iteration of Southern Baptist pretentiousness and moral squalor has captured the attention of Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker.

Russell Moore is either a politically disillusioned troublemaker or a prophet in a time of darkness. In a 4,000-word letter charging the Southern Baptist Convention with racism and sexual abuse, he has single-handedly brought the evangelical Christian world to its knees.

[ … ]

Moore’s words carry weight not least because he’s one of the most-respected evangelicals in the United States. His greatest sin seems to be that he often thinks, speaks and acts as a Christian. Among other things, he was a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, which borders on blasphemy among the Trump faithful.

Since I’ve said for years that Russell Moore is one of the very few genuinely-decent men [No women allowed!] in the upper reaches of the Boss Hogg-ish SBC, I’m not particularly surprised to find him on the Outs with the club leadership; since the so-called Conservative Resurgence it has degenerated into little better than a cult of self-abasement superintended by amoral predators.