Quote:
Originally Posted by uaarkson
I'm sick of people posting that Shanghai failure as some indication that China's buildings are prone to just falling over. Workers were illegally digging near the foundation, that's what cause it to fall. It had nothing to do with the design or construction.
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I think you are wrong. That building had toothpick foundations, probably because officials took bribes to let lousy contractors do the building on the cheap.
If you were to dig and unsettle the earth next to the empire state, do you suppose it would fall over? Have you ever seen anything like this anywhere else?
There is a tongue-in-cheek saying in china whenever (too frequently) a major highway bridges collapses: "ah, it collapsed because an illegally overloaded truck drove over it" - because this is what the officials always say is the cause. Of course it wasn't an overloaded truck. If it were an overloaded truck, the tires would have burst long before the bridge would have collapsed, before the truck got anywhere close to the bridge. the bridge collapsed because it was cheaply built by corrupt builders who gave corrupt officials kickbacks.
Same here. Guys digging next to a skyscraper don't make it fall down. Weak, inadequate foundations do. Would you live in a building in that complex? I doubt it. In most other countries, the whole complex would be demo'd.