Two tower cranes at the site of the New Orleans hotel collapse are in worse shape than initially thought, forcing responders to reconsider how to dismantle them. An upper section of a hotel under construction in New Orleans partially collapsed on Saturday, Oct. 12, killing three and injuring dozens.
American Concrete Institute says its first-ever initiative to develop a precast standard is not related to an article in Concrete International that sounds the alarm about the potential for brittle failures of non-code-compliant precast, prestressed-concrete double-T parking decks, with flanges reinforced with a high-strength polymer-coated carbon-fiber grid product, called C-Grid.
The engineer of record, FIGG Bridge Engineers, is disputing the claims made in the NTSB's latest update on the ongoing investigation into the fatal bridge collapse that occurred at Florida International University.
Two separate failures of three cantilevered flanges of three precast, prestressed-concrete double-T parking-deck sections—reinforced with a non-code-compliant, high-strength carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer grid—are putting the spotlight on the structural safety of corrosion-resistant FRP grids for transverse reinforcement of double-Ts.