When building a building, especially one in areas prone to bad weather, you want to make sure your building crew is qualified.
Case in point from the Dallas, TX The Dallas Morning News:
Engineer finds examples of 'horrific' construction in tornado wreckage
An engineer who inspected damage across North Texas after Saturday’s deadly tornadoes says he saw “rampant irresponsibleness” in the way many homes and buildings were constructed.
“We saw a tremendous number of improper attachment of the walls to the foundations, which just made walls fall either in or out,” said Timothy Marshall, a forensic engineer and meteorologist who volunteered as part of a damage survey team created by the Fort Worth office of the National Weather Service.
The construction Marshall flagged as faulty included that of a Glenn Heights elementary school that suffered extensive damage.
“We saw problems at [Donald T.] Shields Elementary school that were horrific in my view as an engineer,” Marshall said. “Walls not attached properly, and they’re just falling down like a house of cards.”
The winds that hit the school building were in the 85 MPH range - not the full tornado. The building should have survived unharmed. Here in Maple Falls, we frequently get windstorms gusting up to 60-70 MPH.
This will hurt people whose houses were damaged by the storm when it comes to insurance claims - if the home was of recent construction and was not to code, the claims could be denied. The article names the construction company (the school was built in 2008) and needless to say, the company has not returned any phone calls. I wonder how much of their framing crew was picked up outside the local Home Depot every morning...
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