Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Structural engineer needed
THE failure of the gable wall at the
Pentecostal Church in Ndlangubo refers.
While such a tragedy with the loss of life of 13 people is indeed a tragedy, it should hardly come as a surprise. Your picture shows the remains of the building, and one can immediately see why such a wall would be vulnerable to such a collapse. The total span of the hall is more than 30m and the height of the wall was therefore at least 9m.
Without having seen the building up close, but based on the photographic evidence, I can virtually guarantee that the wall was merely constructed from a 230mm wide double-skin brick construction. If we are lucky, there was brick-force every fourth layer of bricks, but even this is not evident from the photo.
While such a 230mm brick wall is sufficient for the outer skin of a residence, it is totally inadequate for such a large wall. Furthermore, there are no concrete columns visible supporting the wall every 6m, neither is there any evidence of even brick piers constructed into the wall. Without inside return walls, there was nothing to stabilise this wall.
However, all of these precautions would have been included had the church owners taken the trouble to appoint a structural engineer to oversee the construction of the church.
They would then have been informed by the structural engineer that the church has not been built in compliance with the National Building Regulations, and was therefore always in danger of collapse and tragedy from a storm wind. Yes, we know that a storm wind blew the wall over, but a correctly designed structure in South Africa is built to withstand a wind of approximately 140km/h (depending on its exact location).
While again regretting the terrible loss of life, it is my view that both the owners and the local authority, who should have demanded a professional engineer’s certificate for the structure, must be held criminally responsible.
Furthermore, there are many, many public structures out there which have never been checked by a structural engineer, and are simply surviving because no wind near that envisaged by the National Building Regulations has ever happened to blow in their vicinity.
This situation occurs through ignorance by owners of large buildings, but builders are equally to blame. How many times do we not hear about a builder assuring the owner that he does not need engineer’s plans to go ahead, as he feels competent to erect a structure without input from a professional engineer? He assures an ignorant owner that he has done many such structures.
Just to add some perspective: death by falling walls is one of the foremost causes of death for children in England. So this sort of tragedy is not so rare. I therefore urge you: go on the engineers’ website Engineering Council of South Africa and find a structural engineer who can check your structure, before it is too late.