Why Did The October Point Apartment Collapse

The Ronan Point apartment collapse occurred on May 16, 1968 in London. The woman living in flat 90 on the eighteenth floor of the complex lit a match to begin brewing a cup of tea, which caused an explosion that blew-out the exterior wall in her flat. This initial explosion led to a progressive partial collapse of the southeast side of the building, wherein the structure collapsed from top down due to the debris from preceding floors. The collapse tragically killed four people, and injured seventeen. The building model of Ronan Point was the Larsen-Nielsen system which used precast concrete panels, and no structural frame. This model depended mostly on friction for support, and had backup load paths to redistribute force if there were to
This match resulted in a minor gas explosion, because of a leak that had previously occurred. As a result of this explosion the walls of the occupants’ apartment blew-out (Griffiths et al. 1968). These events set in motion the partial progressive collapse of the southeast corner of the building that killed four people, and injured seventeen more. Many factors were responsible for the Ronan Point incident, including poor design, substandard workmanship, and out of date building codes (Nature 1968). Due to the collapse, and subsequent investigation building codes and regulations were updated in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. Specifically, these new codes focused on the importance of structural integrity, and fail-safe mechanisms to avoid any similar disasters in the future (Pearson and Delatte
Little thought was put into disaster scenario planning; there were no alternative load paths in the event of a collapse in any area. In like manner, the building codes regarding wind safety did not take into account the height of the building. The complex was built to withstand gusts of wind that would reach sixty- three m.p.h., however wind of 100 m.p.h. Could be expected at least once a year. While this was in line with the building codes at the time of construction, said codes had not been kept up to date, and were not modern enough to consider new building heights (Nature 1968). Further, this inadequate wind protection was far from the only problem; when the building was deconstructed, inspectors found poor building practices throughout the structure. The joints meant to secure the building were weak and poorly joined. One of the investigators, Sam Webb, was shocked at the poor craftsmanship of the site; he was astounded to see that virtually no joints were correctly fastened. In some instances, less than half of the necessary amount of dry-pack mortar had been used to secure crucial load-bearing joints between floors and walls (Wearne 2000). As well, there were fixing straps left unattached, and unwound levelling nuts that caused considerable loads to be transmitted through bolts. In several cases, panels were placed directly on top of bolts, instead of the necessary