With the shopping Mall, calling it an Engineering failure is untrue, the fact is that there were leakage issues from the start and instead of fixing the roof waterproofing they stupidly and I would say neglectfully left it to leak for 30 years until the rusted structure could not support the car park any more. The building owners should be held responsible for the loss of life. Not an Engineering Fail, the Architects should have been partially blamed for the waterproofing only and forced to claim of insurance to get the building fixed 30 years earlier, but to allow the water to leak for 30 years that is just madness.
Not only ignore the leak but presumably permit salt to be distributed on the icy roof. I agree in Not calling it an engineering failure as the short term outcome was entirely predictable. Talk about pouring salt on a wound!
And the building inspectors should also be questioned. Why didn't they flag it? The thing was leaking before it even opened! How did they not think that was important?!
This show has a lot of hard lessons paid in people’s lives and broken hearts 💔. We had an architecture disaster here in New Orleans. 3 men lost their lives, including one who had been reporting problems with construction site. Our community still mourns. 😢
This is why 'failsafe' engineering is important. 'Failsafe' doesn't mean it is safe from failure. Nothing ever is. Failsafe means it's designed to fail in a safe way. EVERY retaining wall will fail, sooner or later. EVERY sensor will give false readings, eventually. You're putting massive amounts of water on top of a mountain. That's not where it would naturally go. Plan for it to get out of there in ways you don't want it to.
@@darkracer1252that's already a part of the design. What he's talking about is planning the design to control what happens when the inevitable failure does occur. That's one of the reasons overflow spillways are created. It's inevitable that an overflow will occur so instead of letting it just overflow and destroy the dam you create a reinforced section designed to handle overflow waters preventing a breach. The whole idea is about looking at failure modes and figuring out how to prevent or control the failure in a way that minimizes damage, especially to the surrounding areas.
I lived there ! on the day it collapsed I was on my way back to Elliot Lake where I lived and heard about it on the radio . I went directly to the mall anticipating to at the very least, donate blood or go get coffee. The place WAS DESERTED . There were NO rescuers working around the clock, nothing. Two women, I learned later were still inside and alive apparently. The local geniuses had decided that the scene was "too dangerous" to work, any rescue equipment was several hours away at best, so they just left the place overnight. Remember, this was a logging and mining town. FULL of experienced people. There was plenty of privately owned equipment and the people to operate it and even if somewhat unconventionally, they were willing and able to attempt rescuing the two women still alive at that time. THEY WERE PREVENTED FROM TRYING. I knew these people and had heard many stories of what they had done over the years. I am sure that they could have saved these women. It was more than 24 hours before any attempt was made by which time it was way too late. The collapse was a disaster for sure, the death of the two women was borderline criminal by not allowing locals to attempt a rescue.
Wow, that is, at best, incompetence, at worst, cowardice. I hope the supervising first responders were all cashiered and prevented from working the same job elsewhere. However, as an old print journalist who has covered many disasters, from apartment building fires, to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, to 9/11, I know that's not likely.
@@thomasbell7033 when I turned up a few hours after the initial collapse I thought I heard the news wrong. THERE WAS NO ONE THERE. I shopped in that mall all the time as did most Elliot Lake residents. It was surreal. Had I not seen it with my eyes, I too would doubt my recounting of the events.
I lived here since 2015. The new mall now is the EXACT same. My girl was the mall cleaning lady. She used to spend half a shift emptying large garbage pails full of water from the NEW ROOF? Doors put on reverse. Malfunctioning automatic doors that slam shut on you if you're not fast enough. And maintenance workers who smoke crack and are never there. Next collapse coming soon. Just like the welcoming center had a roof collapse in 2018.
If the mall was leaking water before it even opened, then the city is partly responsible because it should have been red tagged on final inspection. Good enough IS NOT good enough
Exactly. Instead they pretended like it was no big deal for thirty years. I don't understand that. And seriously, would that not eventually have turned into a mold problem as well? But hey, just ignore it for three decades. It has been doing this for 29 years, so I think we are in the clear!!!😅
I live in Elliot Lake, the city was terrified to close the mall because it was a chief reason people were moving here. When it collapsed it was nearly impossible to sell a house here until 2017. They didn't mention that we lost our civic center to another roof collapse in 2019. The city is terrified to condemn buildings here
@@Essence1904 Would have no need of closure tho, there are ways to refurbish such buildings. The roof could have been fixed while the mall is still in operation. The problem should have been addressed from start so as to prevent future headache.
England’ worst apartment/building fire killed 70 in 2017 24 stories. It happened because of the same reason. Flammable plastic behind exterior cladding. Made worse because of horrible ventilation and they refused to evacuate with the shelter in place policy because they claimed the individual apartments were insulated from each other and the fire couldn’t spread. Thing went up like a dead Christmas tree in July. Wrapping around the entire exterior and burned for 70 hours. There’s video of people live streaming, choking on toxic smoke from the burning plastic exterior. Screaming to the people on the ground floors for help that never comes. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in a documentary.
I remember driving my Jeep TJ up onto the roof parking lot at the Algo Mall back in Dec. of 2005. It was a cold night with slushy snow on the lot and I remember backing it up to a spot across from the entrance door ...just as I stepped out onto the roof parking, a pickup truck had come up the slope leading to the parking and crossed the lot in front of me heading for a closer spot near the door of the building ..as he was he passed by I felt the parking lot shake under my feet ..I remember thinking "oh my gawd"! It was a very unsettling feeling so much so that I jumped back in the Jeep and quickly drove down to the ground level parking. Years later I heard about what happened to it and it really bothered me that I never mentioned it to anyone ..would they have listened to me? There must have been others who experienced similar shaking as I did, I don't think the driver of the pickup would have noticed it unless he stepped out of his vehicle like I did just when someone drove across the lot ..maybe they considered it normal occurrence. I wasn't from Elliot Lake, it was my first visit. I did return to the mall on occasions when I was up for shopping but I never would park on that roof ever again! I do remember the buckets and mops and the cordoned off areas near the bottom of the escalator ...wish I had said something ..but to who?? ..in retrospect the ones running the mall would have buried it.
Bless your heart, Doug, but please don’t take on this responsibility. They may have documented it, but more than likely not take action. I believe it’s a true testament, though listening to your gut feeling. I believe God whispers in our ears, it’s up to us to listen. I pray that you place the cross as it’s not your burden to bear. May the good Lord shine his face upon you and give you his precious peace🙏🏻❤️🇨🇦
The building was leaking before it opened. They should never allowed cars on the roof until the leaking was fixed or never allowed cars on the roof ever. Leaking leaks to rust. Just leads to weakening metal. Why was this ignored for the last 30 years? They knew it was leaking the whole time. This was 100% prevetable.
I love these oh so descriptive analogies! How powerful they are in helping the average viewer understand something they could barely imagine otherwise. And who among us doesn't immediately relate to "2000 Olympic swimming pools" of water being dumped "over the side?"
I’m with you , and this problem is persistent through out the entire globe , but I have to say most politicians don’t know shit about engineering, there are countless of building safety regulators that there hole job is to prevent this from happening. And lack of integrity and lack of transaction transparency is the main culprit 🤦🏽♂️
Australia might have learned from its building fire. The UK is a whole other thing. There are 1000s who still live in flats in dangerous buildings they can't sell and can't afford to fix, even though our similar tragedy was actually fatal. 💚
As soon as they mentioned the cladding on that building, I immediately knew what happened - and for exactly the same reason (cheap, combustible cladding substituted for more expensive resistant cladding after approval). However, at least in that building, the fire stayed on the outside rather than penetrating in, and the fire department's strategy was to evacuate the building, rather than tell everyone to stay put, so avoiding tragedy. I wouldn't be surprised if there have been cladding-related fires elsewhere in the world - I didn't know about the Australia one until watching this video.
In 1871, Chicago was a city made out of wood. Starting on October 8th and ending on the 10th, 8.5 square kilometers of the city burnt to the ground, killing 300 people and leaving 100,000 people homeless. That really brought fire safety to the US but not completely. We still have homes made out of wood with fossil fuel roofs, out west, where there are forest fires. I'm talking about tar shingles.
@mittfh council houses and flats are just as bad. We were moved into a 3 bedroom maisonette on the ground floor of a block of flats. It was on two levels. One of the bedrooms started to get mold, so a council worker came out and ripped a huge chunk of wallpaper down, which revealed a crack in the wall, and extensive mold. The crack was the full thickness of the wall, and you could see it outside. Surprise surprise...the council didn't do anything about it.
@@FreedomTalkMedia London had a similar experience a couple of hundred years earlier (2nd - 6th September 1666), destroying 13200 houses, 87 parish churches, The Royal Exchange, Guildhall and St. Paul's Cathedral. The official death toll was only 6, but only the wealthier residents would have counted - many people would have been effectively cremated so leaving no identifiable remains, while the 87 destroyed parish churches would have held the records for their parishioners. Aside from the wooden buildings, thatched roofs, and paper, many riverside properties had stores of black powder. Firefighting efforts were hampered by resistance to the King's orders to demolish houses to act as firebreaks (both due to suspicions of a power grab and claims by the local government that as many buildings were rented, they needed to contact the owners first) and send extra troops into the City to help, as well as the narrow, congested streets (even more congested with people trying to flee). Also, in a sign that some things never change, there was a lot of suspicion that the fire had been started deliberately by immigrants, who people alleged were also setting off additional fires to further the spread.
Why don't you see more 30 year old cars on the roads in Canada? Road salt -> corrosion. Rooftop parking lot full of cars dripping salt water. I suspect that many parking ramps in snow country would show similar damage ........ if they managed to survive that long.
Parking garages/ramps in our climate tend to get resurfaced/inspected/etc. But they also have to be extremely robust in holding up all that weight to begin with - much more than a shopping center with rooftop parking would. After all, there's only one layer of cars on that roof that needs to be supported, unlike with a parking ramp which can have multiple floors of vehicles on it. There's also the fact that the average weight of vehicles have increased over the decades, even as car manufacturers have shifted to lighter weight materials. And the average size of vehicles have also increased pretty drastically with SUVs even taking over what used to be sedan models in recent years. But that has to do with the fact that SUVs occupy a regulatory loophole that still hasn't been addressed in the US (and probably in Canada as well).
It's great to get more context on The Algo Mall collapse, living in Southwestern Ontario, it's so easy to forget about some of these northern communities.
A lot of the building were only ment to have a lifespan of about 25years wich is why ceos think when it lasts longer that it’s better and doesn’t need attention even if there is evidence to prove it
I live in Sudbury Ontario, not far from Elliot Lake. The mall there was almost identical to the mall here in downtown Sudbury. The mall in Sudbury was just as bad. There were countless inspections and millions spent to fix the Sudbury mall. Everyone seen the rust, and parts of the roof were sagging due to asphalt being laid each time pot holes in the roof garage formed. It was a disaster just waiting to happen. If it wasn't the Elliot Lake mall collapse, the Sudbury mall would have collapsed long ago. To this day, May 2024, I refuse to go in the disaster of a mall just waiting to happen. But why was it allowed to happen? Elliot Lake and Sudbury have identical climates. You didn't need to be an engineer to notice the buildings were in disarray, you can see the leaks and the sags and the rust. I have an anecdote that would explain exactly what caused the Elliot Lake mall collapse. I use to live in an apartment on the Kingsway in Sudbury. It was a 3 story walk up, I lived on the 3rd floor. The landlord at the time was an old lady who owned the building for a long time, and it was her husband that did any repairs. There were small leaks on the roof, and the building needed a lot of repair. The couple was old and the repairs needed were too great for an old man, and too costly, so they sold building to a number company in Toronto. Repairs were never done, the people that ran the building were basically slum lords and no money was put into the building. One summer, in June and July, there were many storms with heavy rain. The roof would leak, bucks would be put in the hallways and people complained, but nothing was done. All we were told is they were looking for a contractor to fix the roof. The city was called, they ordered the manager to make repairs to the roof, and we were all told, the roof was going to be repaired. That never happened. Storms kept coming, and the roof leaked more and more. Once again, the city (by-law officer) came and ordered repairs, but none were done. What the tenants didn't know, the old guy that use to do the repairs, didn't know what he was doing. When leaks would start, he would go up on the roof and poor a bunch of tar to patch things up. Over time, on hot days, that tar would melt and flow into the storm drains on the flat top roof. The drains were plugged up and water had nowhere to go and just accumulated. That summer was really hot, and there were many heavy rains. Over four feet of water pooled on the roof and one afternoon, the roof exceeded its max weight capacity and started to collapses. Water poured in the hallways outside my apartment like Niagara Falls. The fire department came, shut down the electricity, evacuated everyone and condemned the apartment until the ordered repairs were met. The building manager cut out some of the old pipes that were clogged, and did some patch work on the roof, and some people were allowed to move back with the promise repairs would be done. Proper repairs were never done. They defaulted on payments to the contractor that did some repairs, same with the electricity bills that mounted to over $50,000. The place stunk, people complained to the city, nothing was done. After, like a year, the city finally got tired of people complaining and condemned the building. I lost all my belongings, because the city failed to force the new landlords to compliance and allowed the building to degrade to the point it was a major hazard. It was clear the owners of the building never had any intentions to fix the building and it was clear the city had no intentions to do anything about it. The Elliot Lake mall, and the Sudbury mall were allowed to become disasters because both cities turned a blind eye and accepted the "Ya, were are fixing it, we are hiring contractors bla bla bla" BS. In my case, the city didn't do anything until it was costing them 10s of thousands. City inspectors need to do their jobs and the city needs to enforce the penalties, and put people in jail for not doing their job. It wasn't snow and salt that caused the Elliot Lake Collapse, it is useless city council members and workers that didn't do their jobs to prevent it from happening in the first place.
*Remember when buildings were made from non flammable materials?* ... Ah, those were the times! Cladding a building in polyethylene is beyond stupid. PE is basically a fancy variant of candle wax. And when exposed to enough heat, it will of course ignite. Plastic in building cladding has claimed so many lives already, just the IDEA of wrapping a building in highly flammable material is preposterous. However, this is exactly what is required in many Western countries these days, you know, mostly because of the -Holy Climate Church and a decreasing scientific literacy- ... ignorance of crowd-pleasing politicians.
The video states that the plastic core covering was NOT compliant with building regulations. It was supposed to be non-combustible mineral fibre core. The politicians had ensured that the scientific literacy was there, those that were required to implement it failed.
politicians in "two" party states are always extremely donor pelasing. Which is why, you generally don't have much in terms of inspections. They been cut. "Two", because it's actually one, just pretending to be a left and a right wing party. It's even mentioned, it wasn't approved.
There was a similar incident in London. Grenfell Towers. The cause was the same, flammable cladding. Not so lucky that time- 72 dead. We just never learn.
There was a flurry of similar fires that culminated in Grenfell. The Torch Tower fire in Dubai in 2015, for example. UK fire safety rules were weak, and enforcement of the weak rules was also terrible. On the bright side the local government saved about 50,000 pounds by not using the non-combustible core...
Wrapping a residential skyscraper in combustible cladding is stupid, mindless and ignorant too. This is not hidden knowledge, it's a basic government failure that allowed this kind of construction, it's not acceptable.
@@richardmccann4815 ~ Our governments are incorporated. Governments and corporations run on credit and the creditors run the world. "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender." All governments and corporations are a debt slave to their lenders. Governments are enforcing the Glibelist (the powers that be) to take over the world. They can conjure all the money they need to own and control the world.
I toured that plant as an entering student and I asked how do you sense when it is full. They said a float with a microswitch. I said that is too likely to fail! They said it was inspected daily. And it overtopped.
Both my grandparents were in the mall food court when it collapsed. It set in motion health problems for my grandpa which ended up causing him to die much sooner. Not to mention the mental strain and toll it took on both of them for years. The lawyers accomplished nothing...no one was compensated. The town has never been the same.
I just came across this channel and have watched 2 episodes so far and I absolutely enjoy the videos you have.... Extremely informative and alot of wow factors... Keep up the amazing videos Banijay Science!!!
The recent Oroville Dam Spillway collapse disaster - exactly the same scenario. Construction companies lying their butts off. _Yeah! We built on top of bedrock. No no, we weren't lazy and put it on soil! Bedrock, yes, we put it on bedrock._ How many other dams are unsafe due to paid-off or lazy inspectors, and psychopathic construction company brass? Oregon's Trojan Nuclear power plant cooling towers were found to be built unsafe, not to code. Ready to collapse in a very minor quake. They were imploded before a disaster could happen. But how many engineering ticking time bombs remain?
Since Elliot Lake has lost it's mall it has also lost it's Civic Center a few years later due to an overload of the roof with an Air Conditioning Unit and excessive snow loads. And now it is about to lose it's hockey rink due to old glued wood beams no longer up to the snow loads. In Ontario Canada we have a very good building code, yet in Elliot Lake things seem to fail? It is common for homes needing roof trusses to be repaired at the wood joints as the old trusses were designed to barely handle the snow loads, who would think it would snow in Northern Ontario. But this was a mining town with the mining companies building and owning everything, when the mines closed the homes were sold for pennies on the dollar, we get what we paid for in Elliot Lake.
Uranium deposits in the air might mess up materials differently. My buddy use to go see his aunt there . & He had a Giger reader I think it called, reads radiation, Elliott lake has a odd reading going from .8-2.3
in their defence, Elliot Lake was designed as a temporary town to house workers while mining and not expected to be there as long as it was. It was a town with an expected short shelf life
I remember when the provincial Special Response Team or something like that, the elite rescuers, were afraid to go in to rescue two women that people could hear screaming. The former miners, some of them specialized in mine rescue were prevented from going in. That special "provincial" team should have been disbanded after this and the members should have been made into parking attendants, an obviously useful profession for them. This was a sad tragedy which I'm sure came down to money. RIP to the two women who died because of decisions made by morons. My opinion.
I used live in a suburb on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia where the community of Tuggerah use a 2 level shopping centre with roof top parking. Parts of the shopping centre at the eastern end have been plagued by a leaking roof whenever rain falls. We have moved from that area and note that the age of the centre would be approaching 30 years. I wonder who inspects the mall?
The city should have building inspectors. Granted, they did say that one of the problems was the particular type of slabs they used, but the abundant leaking would indicate a problem with the water proofing on the roof. At best, they just need to redo the roof. At worst... yeah. Honestly, I'm surprised there's still buildings with that design around. Parking lots beneath the building have tended to fare a lot better and have less maintenance issues long-term. Not having road grit, oil, and heavy vehicles on a roof really does expand the life of a roof, weirdly enough.
@@michaelreid2329 Yeah, the lack of road salt in particular would have a pretty big impact. There's a reason everyone in the Northern US/Canada just accepts rust on the undercarriage of our vehicles as normal. There's just no avoiding it with all the road salt in the winters.
Designers and architects come up with weird designs and unusual materials without a single thought about the safety of the people who use these structures, the builders and operators also share some of the responsibility.
Allot of structures are built with safety in mind but years back they dident know as much as they do now, as said failed waterproofing was a factor…. They dident know that it was not adequate
Take a look at the structural failures of canal systems in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. They too thought that they were using the best designs for their time. Long story short, they failed and flooded various parts of the New Orleans area. Other failures of Katrina were various, widespread, and severe. Katrina could be documented in a miniseries. 😢😢😢
i swear some Architect's designs, only have one objective...... to test the breaking point of engineers and there ability to tolerate the ridiculous joints/butts/ect without any consistency or any kinda standardised system, they are such Irrational angles ect, in my field of engineering we are expected to 1 make it strong but efficient, 2 practical but not an eye sore. why cant they try make buildings look nice but also follow the long standing methods then build of that.. example, a school for the seventh day Adventists i put together (swear the arch had some phobia of straight lines and industry stands) 4 buildings, 2 of them double story and throughout all the buildings, how many "say" structural right angles or straight edges would one expect to find (countless) yep not one some of the normal door frames were 90 plus the stair cases "the steps" 90. worst is the slight curve he put on every aspect, not even the foundation pillars followed a consistent layout, but the slight cure on every wall was by far the most torturous task, again no consistency same wall yet changes curve angle 5 times over 100m, 3 degree, 2 degree, 2 degree, 3, 4, 5 degree. hole job made worse by fact original contractor quite half way though the job an took all final plan documentation with them, never to b seen again, leaving me with multi stages of outdated plans, plus a kinda clued on bloke that we tracked down that worked on site originally who had vital knowledge needed to actually complete project
I call bullcrap about the rescue efforts as they would not permit the men (who were miners by trade) to go in and get the then alive trapped inside. The building was never built to permit parking on top.
@43:32 the pipe was isolated and repaired, wait so that section of pipe was repaired but not the rest of the underground of known pipe that suffers the same defect?
Yep, and the repared pipe will now most likely be the strongest link in the chain, so just a matter of time before the same thing happens again on a different section of pipe.
I noticed that too. There was no mention of the rest of the system being inspected, or for that matter, buried pipelines in other parts of the country that were made at the same time.
Seeing the intro of this show reminds me of another tv series i use to watch long ago called Destoryed in Seconds. its pretty interesting to hear and see them compare side by side of the intro.
My local town has a pump storage resevoir. It sets on bluffs above Lake Michigan & is operated by Michigan's 2 largest energy providers. It is an 800 acre resevoir. Built in the late 1960's, so far no problems.
I just find it so comical when people blame other people for being greedy. Everyone is greedy, everyone always looks to save a buck, for a discount. It's just human nature. If it weren't we wouldn't need regulations.
@@mofayer and therein lies the problem... the politicians that write the regulations are paid-off by lobbying, corporate greed, backhanders and a cushty board position once people have died and few bucks were saved
@@mofayer How else can bad behavior be regulated by society without first addressing it? Also just fyi making an argument from a place of 'it's nature' is fallacious.
Its the classic swiss cheese model. its not very often that all the holes line up. Then, in hindsight, there are a whole gaggle of places where it could have been stopped. Most of the time no one person doing the wrong thing (e.g. being greedy, hurrying, being carless, etc) seems that big of a deal, but line them all up and brand new mall+32 years=disaster scene.
So they replaced the one section of split pipe how much of that pipeline was made with that same welding technique and how much of that pipeline was replaced after this disaster? Just the one section? I wouldn't feel safe with just one section being replaced. And people wonder why there was the massive pipeline protests and the water protectors. This this exact scenario is why people don't want pipelines running through their aquifers
That shopping mall looked depressing to begin with. I can’t imagine that it was the one “major attraction” to that town. Combine this with plastic tarps, stains on the ceiling, and buckets everywhere - it’s hard to imagine why anyone would have wanted to set foot inside. Plus, there must have been tons of mold!
The lessons of Melbourne didn't actually make their way properly around the world, as exemplified by the UK's Grenfell tower block disaster. What we do [should] learn is that we continue to repeat our generalised mistakes ...
We need Pipelines as long as we use oil and gas, but: 1. How old is the pipeline? (conveniently there is no date on the Internet) 2. No map on the Internet, scrub presumably for security purposes? 3. What was the design parameters of the pipeline specifically at what pressure was the pipeline initially designed for and has the oil companies exceeded that initial design pressure?
Only a NY'er would say "I don't see any one around me committing a crime so maybe crime isn't a problem ". You are so used to having criminals , crazies and just unstable individuals all around that if a murder isn't going on right in front of your eyes it's a plus . It used to be that criminal activities were actually hidden from the general population by the criminals because the general population took a dim view of such activity and tended to do something about it , even if that was just reporting it to the police .
18:55 When you pick the lowest bid, you get contractors that cut corners and engineers sign off on this stuff and it never gets looked at until some failure.
The same building fire disaster occured in uk, known as the Grenfell Tower disaster. A fridge blew up and caught fire on the 10th floor, only since the building was built, some bright spark decided to clad the building with highly flammable insulating panels, and the builder had cut corners, To make worse they had spaced the cladding 3cm away, creating a 'chimney' which drew the flames into a roaring jet. The entire building went up like a bonfire in minutes, dozens of people killed.
My takeaway from the 2013 Mayflower oil pipeline spill was that it's cheaper to let it fail rather than fixing it ahead of time. From the Wikipedia article: "In 2015, ExxonMobil settled charges that it violated the federal Clean Water Act and state environmental laws, for $5.07 million, including $4.19 million in civil penalties. It did not admit liability."
I dont care what computers or testings that were done before the dam was built! That dam looks seriously anemic. If they built that thing anywhere near me and my family, I would seriously be looking for a new area to live in.
I agree. How many times in the past have dams been built and promised to be safe, yet unforseen design flaws or short cuts lead to catastrophic failure? There is absolutely no way that I would live beneath a dam any more than I would live on the slope of a volcano. I just could not rest easily knowing that a huge reservoir of water was looming over my head, held back by a man-made structure.
With the dam, how did they not realise that the settled part of the wall was lower. I mean it is not like you need a laser sighted spirit level, you have a great big body of water that provides a level and they were pumping it near the top every single night and the tide mark would still be visible in daylight.
I can't understand the idea of a rooftop parking lot. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to have the mall built above the parking lot? Also, how could they just ignore the leaking for thirty years? Obviously something was wrong, but they just kept on assuming it would go away and that the leaks were not causing any trouble? One would think that mold would be a problem too, but they ignored it for thirty years???😵💫🙄 The dam on top of the mountain...maybe I am just paranoid, but I would not live nor recreate beliw a dam. I don't care how much assurance there is from those who built it or from the local government/leadership, there are countless examples of shortcuts and design flaws that have led to catastrophic failure in the past. I don't want to be downstream of a dam anymore than I want to live on the slope of a volcano!!!😐😶
maybe they only had enough money to purchase land for the shopping mall but not for the parking lot. i would have put it underneath the shopping mall but hey i didn't design it.
@@takumi2023agreed. A rooftop parking lot full of concrete slabs is really a dumb idea. Even dumber, though, is watching it leak for three decades and assuming that it would all be okay!
That fire situation also occurred in Dubai a couple of years ago. In addition, many EU regulations aiming at insulating old buildings to improve energy efficiency and that covering styrofoam is VERY flammable.
Blah blah blah "US bad" blah blah blah "capitalism evil" but you aren't saying shit about Chinese industry being the cause behind 95% of the pollution in the atmosphere
Blah blah blah "US bad" blah blah blah "capitalism evil" but you don't seem to care about C.H.I.N.A. being the cause behind 95% of the pollution in the atmosphere (I have already made this comment 3 times and each time it was deleted in less than 30 seconds, #censorship)
The Alaska pipeline which started sending oil through it around 1977 had a projected lifespan of 25 years is still pumping oil across Alaska. I have no idea how many aging pipes are buried underground and sadly most will remain in operation until they fail.
@@Izanami95 Not to worry. As a kid my first job was at phoenix steel where one of the oldest steel mills in America was saved by a massive long term order for seamless pipe for a new pipeline in Alaska. We got the contract because there were so few antique steel mills left that made seamless extruded pipe that large- most the new stuff was the "new fangled" bend and weld cheapy stuff that failed in Arkansaw. Since the Alaska pipeline was a HUGE fight with conservationists the only way it got approved was EVERYTHING had to have a proven track record of 50 years in operation. Seamless extrusion pipe made from ingots and a mandrel goes back to the dawn of steel making- and was costing 3Xs the "new improved" stuff. I here the plant went broke a year after that contract was fulfilled. Google Earth shows a big mall and park in Phoenixville where the old pipe mill had stood since 1830s when it was just Phoenix Iron Works.
"The ruptured section of the pipeline was isolated and repaired" and the other 1800 miles of the same pipeline was left in place. What could possibly go wrong? "At the time you woudn't consider that risky in any sense of the word" Says Keystone oil pipeline executives demanding that they put a pipeline through your commmunity and across your river.
My workplace leaks too but ive become so accustomed to it and would never even think the roof could cave in. Luckily there is no car park but there is huge aircons up there.
It would have helped for a while. It needed a full waterproof membrane (either torch on or Volclay system) over the slabs, then another layer of concrete.
Reminds me of the Oroville spillway disaster in 2017. The water destroyed a huge section of the spillway and scoured away the loose material exposing the actual rock, looked like a canyon. The construction company prepped the rock and place roller compacted concrete to elevate back to needed height. Entire spillway was rebuilt. The emergency spillway was rebuilt as well. Out of curiosity what does the roller compacted dam structure rest on? How is the bottom of the bowl constructed?
29:34 Why wont they explain how they know it was a cigarette butt? Countless times have watched documentaries and they make such claims of knowing the cause of the fire but yet they wont say how they knew it.
I remember the London high rise fire; but not this one!!🤔 Siding lined with flamable plastic wow!! Cigarettes belong in a real ash tray not a plastic yogert container on a flamable table. How great of building codes and inspectors!!
The last one about the oil pipe is just stupid. All this talk about the pipe failing eventually and it lasted some 60 years. Meaning the rest of the piping all has this flaw. So instead of the state or company replacing the whole line. They only fixed that small segment. So it will all happen again as another big oppsie.
8:29 Foreign steel thickness is made by pressing layers of thin metal sheets together . American steel was made as it moved down a conveyor system, this thick sheet layer of hot steel was being compressed at certain stages in the line, too a lesser thickness and cut when the required amount of sheets was met.
It’s amazing that engineers found a cost effective way to release torrents of water in order to turn the turbines and create electricity to power thousands and thousands of homes and businesses and then using the same water that generates the power to be profitable can actually be stored and pumped back up into the same reservoir that in turn will eventually be released again to spin the turbines to create more electricity. This is mind blowing to someone like myself who has no engineering knowledge. I would be more inclined to think that this would be counter intuitive and defy some of Newtons basic principles. There has to be some sort of loss here somewhere to some capacity but I suppose it’s superlative and inconsequential for me to argue about. What do I know about hydrology and engineering
Your feelings about losing energy is correct...Not even close to breaking even...energy wise. But the concept does work on a financial level. That's all made possible because of how our electric grid system works. Many may think of our grid like it's a giant battery....but it's not. Power is supplied to the grid by hundreds of power stations as that power is used. The supply matches the demand. Come evening when A/C units shut down and folks sleep, the demand drops.... you cannot feed power to the grid if no one is using that power. One place that unused power goes to pump water up into reservoirs on top of mountains ...I always called them "water batteries." Just an early solution to the main problem we are still facing....storage of excess power. In addition of "water batteries" there are now huge batteries made of thousands if tiny batteries by Telsa. Lots of experimental work on different types of batteries, my favorite is a Liquid metal battery by Ambri.
In terms of energy alone, there is of course a loss: Any pumped-storage power station will always make a net loss, or in other words will be a net consumer of power, ultimately using more power than it generates. This is mainly because the moving parts are all designed to be reversible: The water-driven turbines can be run in reverse as water pumps, and the electricity generators can be run in reverse as electric motors. This is technically true of any electric motor, and this is done (albeit at a much smaller scale) in other situations - perhaps the most well-known example being electric cars with "regenerative braking", where the braking effort is a direct result of using the electric motor which normally propels the car as a generator, with the power generated by this used to partially recharge the on-board batteries. This has been done for much longer on electric railways, which have much more powerful electric motors than electric cars and have the advantage of a continuous grid connection (by either third rail or overhead cable), so have much greater capacity to absorb the power generated by the regenerative braking system. Some diesel-electric railways also used regenerative braking to limit the physical wear on the mechanical brakes - but since these are typically used where the railway is not electrified (no grid connection), the power generated by the electric regenerative braking was dumped into big resistor banks which dissipated it as heat. I can remember reading about an electric freight railway (somewhere in Canada I think) which connects a port on the coast with an iron-ore mine halfway up a mountain, at much higher elevation: It has two parallel tracks so that trains loaded with ore can travel downhill to the port at the same time as empty trains travelling back uphill to the mine. While in operation, this railway system uses regenerative braking on the full trains to limit the speed at which they travel downhill. The power generated this way is far in excess of the power required to drive the empty trains back uphill to the mine. The surplus is fed into the power grid, so this freight railway is effectively a net power generator. Back to pumped-storage power stations: The efficiency of the reversible machinery (turbine/pumps, generator/motors) is somewhat lower than machinery which is optimised for one specific purpose - an electric motor which is optimised for maximum efficiency as a motor can still be run in reverse as a generator, but the efficiency of generation will be significantly lower than its efficiency as a motor. Nevertheless, the overall efficiency of a pumped-storage power station is still better than any battery technology currently in existence, mainly due to the economies of scale: The power generated is at least 70% of the power consumed.
@@Bugdriver49 hey there and thank you for your explanation and the fact you took the time to reply and in return helped me to learn more. I am constantly on a knowledge quest lol. Seriously though, since I have graduated from school and I am not being told what subjects to study I have found an entire new viewpoint in education. I have learned more on my own through reading and investigating subjects of interest and documentaries than probably a good portion of some subject matter forced upon me in school. I finally realized that saying knowledge is power does not make you a nerd. lol. It’s actually magnificent.
Polyethylene is what caused the fire in 2 different high rise buildings in London. . Look up Grenfell Tower fire (2017), Lakanal House fire (2009). Granted the Polyethylene was on the outside of the building in panels. Look into Spencer St. high-rise fire (2019).
It was CRIMINAL management of Elliot Lake shopping mall that lead to the collapse. There should have been substantial prison time for those that allowed this to happen.
lived in elliot lake when the mall collapsed, everybody in town knew there were major issues with the structure you could see water stains and obvious signs of water damage we all knew the mall was going to collapsed not if but when. the town wasnt rich and couldnt afford the repairs and decided to let it go until this inevitaibly happened
why in the hell did they build a lake above ground to begin with? Oh, and then after a catastrophic failure, they rebuilt it AGAIN. Brilliant in Missouri are they.
What a pleasant surprise to see Grady as a talking head giving expert commentary!
I find his engineering style very practical.
His engineering style is arguably the practicalest.
Grady from Practical Engineering spotted! 😂
I'm not going to lie. I got a little excited when i saw him! 😄
So I was only listening the first time he popped up and I was like "hey, was that Grady..?!" 😂
I saw him and 'm like that's that guy from UA-cam he's on tv!
I thought the same thing! An added extra bonus of Grady sprinkled in to this show makes it better!
COOL Maroge
With the shopping Mall, calling it an Engineering failure is untrue, the fact is that there were leakage issues from the start and instead of fixing the roof waterproofing they stupidly and I would say neglectfully left it to leak for 30 years until the rusted structure could not support the car park any more. The building owners should be held responsible for the loss of life. Not an Engineering Fail, the Architects should have been partially blamed for the waterproofing only and forced to claim of insurance to get the building fixed 30 years earlier, but to allow the water to leak for 30 years that is just madness.
Not only ignore the leak but presumably permit salt to be distributed on the icy roof. I agree in Not calling it an engineering failure as the short term outcome was entirely predictable. Talk about pouring salt on a wound!
And the building inspectors should also be questioned. Why didn't they flag it? The thing was leaking before it even opened! How did they not think that was important?!
It was negligence of the owners to not spend the money to fix it at the start and to keep it in that manner while allowing the public ib
It absolutely is an “engineering mistake” and also a design flaw.
This show has a lot of hard lessons paid in people’s lives and broken hearts 💔.
We had an architecture disaster here in New Orleans. 3 men lost their lives, including one who had been reporting problems with construction site. Our community still mourns. 😢
This is why 'failsafe' engineering is important. 'Failsafe' doesn't mean it is safe from failure. Nothing ever is. Failsafe means it's designed to fail in a safe way. EVERY retaining wall will fail, sooner or later. EVERY sensor will give false readings, eventually. You're putting massive amounts of water on top of a mountain. That's not where it would naturally go. Plan for it to get out of there in ways you don't want it to.
personally i would plan for it to get out of there in ways that i DO want it to. but that's just me.
@@darkracer1252that's already a part of the design. What he's talking about is planning the design to control what happens when the inevitable failure does occur. That's one of the reasons overflow spillways are created. It's inevitable that an overflow will occur so instead of letting it just overflow and destroy the dam you create a reinforced section designed to handle overflow waters preventing a breach. The whole idea is about looking at failure modes and figuring out how to prevent or control the failure in a way that minimizes damage, especially to the surrounding areas.
@@ianbelletti6241thanks, a good, well worded and patiently presented explanation.
Roman Concrete and Granite doesn't fail.
😂 how are the damn 8500 year old walls up but yall can't build one woth nasa beh8nd ya?😂 fr though
I lived there ! on the day it collapsed I was on my way back to Elliot Lake where I lived and heard about it on the radio . I went directly to the mall anticipating to at the very least, donate blood or go get coffee. The place WAS DESERTED . There were NO rescuers working around the clock, nothing. Two women, I learned later were still inside and alive apparently. The local geniuses had decided that the scene was "too dangerous" to work, any rescue equipment was several hours away at best, so they just left the place overnight. Remember, this was a logging and mining town. FULL of experienced people. There was plenty of privately owned equipment and the people to operate it and even if somewhat unconventionally, they were willing and able to attempt rescuing the two women still alive at that time. THEY WERE PREVENTED FROM TRYING. I knew these people and had heard many stories of what they had done over the years. I am sure that they could have saved these women. It was more than 24 hours before any attempt was made by which time it was way too late. The collapse was a disaster for sure, the death of the two women was borderline criminal by not allowing locals to attempt a rescue.
Wow, that is, at best, incompetence, at worst, cowardice. I hope the supervising first responders were all cashiered and prevented from working the same job elsewhere. However, as an old print journalist who has covered many disasters, from apartment building fires, to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, to 9/11, I know that's not likely.
@@thomasbell7033 when I turned up a few hours after the initial collapse I thought I heard the news wrong. THERE WAS NO ONE THERE. I shopped in that mall all the time as did most Elliot Lake residents. It was surreal. Had I not seen it with my eyes, I too would doubt my recounting of the events.
That’s disgusting.
Hate the coward.
I lived here since 2015. The new mall now is the EXACT same. My girl was the mall cleaning lady. She used to spend half a shift emptying large garbage pails full of water from the NEW ROOF? Doors put on reverse. Malfunctioning automatic doors that slam shut on you if you're not fast enough. And maintenance workers who smoke crack and are never there. Next collapse coming soon. Just like the welcoming center had a roof collapse in 2018.
If the mall was leaking water before it even opened, then the city is partly responsible because it should have been red tagged on final inspection. Good enough IS NOT good enough
Exactly. Instead they pretended like it was no big deal for thirty years. I don't understand that. And seriously, would that not eventually have turned into a mold problem as well? But hey, just ignore it for three decades. It has been doing this for 29 years, so I think we are in the clear!!!😅
Like sweeping it under the carpet, at the final inspection , crazy,nothing to see here sign sign sign😢
right they said it was leaking before it ever opened
I live in Elliot Lake, the city was terrified to close the mall because it was a chief reason people were moving here. When it collapsed it was nearly impossible to sell a house here until 2017. They didn't mention that we lost our civic center to another roof collapse in 2019. The city is terrified to condemn buildings here
@@Essence1904 Would have no need of closure tho, there are ways to refurbish such buildings. The roof could have been fixed while the mall is still in operation. The problem should have been addressed from start so as to prevent future headache.
The first video the woman said the roof collapsed with no warning. 30 years of water leaking was the warning.
England’ worst apartment/building fire killed 70 in 2017 24 stories. It happened because of the same reason. Flammable plastic behind exterior cladding. Made worse because of horrible ventilation and they refused to evacuate with the shelter in place policy because they claimed the individual apartments were insulated from each other and the fire couldn’t spread. Thing went up like a dead Christmas tree in July. Wrapping around the entire exterior and burned for 70 hours. There’s video of people live streaming, choking on toxic smoke from the burning plastic exterior. Screaming to the people on the ground floors for help that never comes. It’s one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in a documentary.
I remember driving my Jeep TJ up onto the roof parking lot at the Algo Mall back in Dec. of 2005. It was a cold night with slushy snow on the lot and I remember backing it up to a spot across from the entrance door ...just as I stepped out onto the roof parking, a pickup truck had come up the slope leading to the parking and crossed the lot in front of me heading for a closer spot near the door of the building ..as he was he passed by I felt the parking lot shake under my feet ..I remember thinking "oh my gawd"! It was a very unsettling feeling so much so that I jumped back in the Jeep and quickly drove down to the ground level parking. Years later I heard about what happened to it and it really bothered me that I never mentioned it to anyone ..would they have listened to me? There must have been others who experienced similar shaking as I did, I don't think the driver of the pickup would have noticed it unless he stepped out of his vehicle like I did just when someone drove across the lot ..maybe they considered it normal occurrence. I wasn't from Elliot Lake, it was my first visit. I did return to the mall on occasions when I was up for shopping but I never would park on that roof ever again! I do remember the buckets and mops and the cordoned off areas near the bottom of the escalator ...wish I had said something ..but to who?? ..in retrospect the ones running the mall would have buried it.
Bless your heart, Doug, but please don’t take on this responsibility. They may have documented it, but more than likely not take action. I believe it’s a true testament, though listening to your gut feeling. I believe God whispers in our ears, it’s up to us to listen. I pray that you place the cross as it’s not your burden to bear. May the good Lord shine his face upon you and give you his precious peace🙏🏻❤️🇨🇦
@@gabriellafox7948 From how the treated those cracks I can tell you they would have ignored him.
If you noticed it, other people noticed it too, but the people who had authority to fix it did nothing.
They wouldn't have even written it down. They did not care as long as the mall stayed open
Leaked for 30 years…No warning before collapse🙄
I think the leaking was in itself the warning.
The building was leaking before it opened. They should never allowed cars on the roof until the leaking was fixed or never allowed cars on the roof ever. Leaking leaks to rust. Just leads to weakening metal. Why was this ignored for the last 30 years? They knew it was leaking the whole time. This was 100% prevetable.
30 years of warnings with every drop of water !
@@michaelreid2329 As were those cracks you can see where it collapses.
@@jimmywilliams9824 As was every crack. The cracks were actually the structure failing.
I love these oh so descriptive analogies! How powerful they are in helping the average viewer understand something they could barely imagine otherwise.
And who among us doesn't immediately relate to "2000 Olympic swimming pools" of water being dumped "over the side?"
IM NOT THAT STUPID TO UNDERSTAND THAT A POLITICIAN WAS PAID FOR 30 YEARS TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY AS THIS WATER LEAK WAS THERE SINCE DAY ONE.
I’m with you , and this problem is persistent through out the entire globe , but I have to say most politicians don’t know shit about engineering, there are countless of building safety regulators that there hole job is to prevent this from happening.
And lack of integrity and lack of transaction transparency is the main culprit 🤦🏽♂️
WHY DOES THIS NEED WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS
UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE NO BIGGER FONT TO COMPETE..
i could use s p a c e s !
@@herauthon I DONT SEE WELL ANYMORE ... IF IT BOTHERS YOU DONT WORRY... ILL BE GONE SOON ... DIABETIC
PLEASE TYPE LOUDER, I CANNOT HEAR YOU.
@@jamesfuller8181I SURE HOPE YOU DON'T GO BLIND...
Australia might have learned from its building fire. The UK is a whole other thing. There are 1000s who still live in flats in dangerous buildings they can't sell and can't afford to fix, even though our similar tragedy was actually fatal. 💚
As soon as they mentioned the cladding on that building, I immediately knew what happened - and for exactly the same reason (cheap, combustible cladding substituted for more expensive resistant cladding after approval).
However, at least in that building, the fire stayed on the outside rather than penetrating in, and the fire department's strategy was to evacuate the building, rather than tell everyone to stay put, so avoiding tragedy.
I wouldn't be surprised if there have been cladding-related fires elsewhere in the world - I didn't know about the Australia one until watching this video.
In 1871, Chicago was a city made out of wood. Starting on October 8th and ending on the 10th, 8.5 square kilometers of the city burnt to the ground, killing 300 people and leaving 100,000 people homeless. That really brought fire safety to the US but not completely. We still have homes made out of wood with fossil fuel roofs, out west, where there are forest fires. I'm talking about tar shingles.
@mittfh council houses and flats are just as bad. We were moved into a 3 bedroom maisonette on the ground floor of a block of flats. It was on two levels. One of the bedrooms started to get mold, so a council worker came out and ripped a huge chunk of wallpaper down, which revealed a crack in the wall, and extensive mold. The crack was the full thickness of the wall, and you could see it outside. Surprise surprise...the council didn't do anything about it.
@@FreedomTalkMedia London had a similar experience a couple of hundred years earlier (2nd - 6th September 1666), destroying 13200 houses, 87 parish churches, The Royal Exchange, Guildhall and St. Paul's Cathedral. The official death toll was only 6, but only the wealthier residents would have counted - many people would have been effectively cremated so leaving no identifiable remains, while the 87 destroyed parish churches would have held the records for their parishioners.
Aside from the wooden buildings, thatched roofs, and paper, many riverside properties had stores of black powder.
Firefighting efforts were hampered by resistance to the King's orders to demolish houses to act as firebreaks (both due to suspicions of a power grab and claims by the local government that as many buildings were rented, they needed to contact the owners first) and send extra troops into the City to help, as well as the narrow, congested streets (even more congested with people trying to flee).
Also, in a sign that some things never change, there was a lot of suspicion that the fire had been started deliberately by immigrants, who people alleged were also setting off additional fires to further the spread.
Why don't you see more 30 year old cars on the roads in Canada? Road salt -> corrosion. Rooftop parking lot full of cars dripping salt water. I suspect that many parking ramps in snow country would show similar damage ........ if they managed to survive that long.
It only becomes a problem if the water seeps into the concrete.
Parking garages/ramps in our climate tend to get resurfaced/inspected/etc. But they also have to be extremely robust in holding up all that weight to begin with - much more than a shopping center with rooftop parking would. After all, there's only one layer of cars on that roof that needs to be supported, unlike with a parking ramp which can have multiple floors of vehicles on it.
There's also the fact that the average weight of vehicles have increased over the decades, even as car manufacturers have shifted to lighter weight materials. And the average size of vehicles have also increased pretty drastically with SUVs even taking over what used to be sedan models in recent years. But that has to do with the fact that SUVs occupy a regulatory loophole that still hasn't been addressed in the US (and probably in Canada as well).
Same in the US Midwest and NE. California and SW cars are preserved by the weather.
The fact that with 4 disasters.. only 2 fatalities.. that alone is amazing.. still, mistakes can be costly..
It's great to get more context on The Algo Mall collapse, living in Southwestern Ontario, it's so easy to forget about some of these northern communities.
It's outstanding the mall resists 30 years, but as usual, even seeing proof of leak, nothing done until it's too late, money first is the rule.
A lot of the building were only ment to have a lifespan of about 25years wich is why ceos think when it lasts longer that it’s better and doesn’t need attention even if there is evidence to prove it
Seeing the roof cracking didn't do anything for them either and so they just tarred over them. I knew where it was going to fail by looking at them.
Good, Great, Wonderful job, Melbourne firefighters. That was a SupaKewl job saving lives in that high-rise fire.
I live in Sudbury Ontario, not far from Elliot Lake. The mall there was almost identical to the mall here in downtown Sudbury. The mall in Sudbury was just as bad. There were countless inspections and millions spent to fix the Sudbury mall. Everyone seen the rust, and parts of the roof were sagging due to asphalt being laid each time pot holes in the roof garage formed. It was a disaster just waiting to happen. If it wasn't the Elliot Lake mall collapse, the Sudbury mall would have collapsed long ago. To this day, May 2024, I refuse to go in the disaster of a mall just waiting to happen. But why was it allowed to happen? Elliot Lake and Sudbury have identical climates. You didn't need to be an engineer to notice the buildings were in disarray, you can see the leaks and the sags and the rust. I have an anecdote that would explain exactly what caused the Elliot Lake mall collapse.
I use to live in an apartment on the Kingsway in Sudbury. It was a 3 story walk up, I lived on the 3rd floor. The landlord at the time was an old lady who owned the building for a long time, and it was her husband that did any repairs. There were small leaks on the roof, and the building needed a lot of repair. The couple was old and the repairs needed were too great for an old man, and too costly, so they sold building to a number company in Toronto. Repairs were never done, the people that ran the building were basically slum lords and no money was put into the building. One summer, in June and July, there were many storms with heavy rain. The roof would leak, bucks would be put in the hallways and people complained, but nothing was done. All we were told is they were looking for a contractor to fix the roof. The city was called, they ordered the manager to make repairs to the roof, and we were all told, the roof was going to be repaired. That never happened. Storms kept coming, and the roof leaked more and more. Once again, the city (by-law officer) came and ordered repairs, but none were done. What the tenants didn't know, the old guy that use to do the repairs, didn't know what he was doing. When leaks would start, he would go up on the roof and poor a bunch of tar to patch things up. Over time, on hot days, that tar would melt and flow into the storm drains on the flat top roof. The drains were plugged up and water had nowhere to go and just accumulated. That summer was really hot, and there were many heavy rains. Over four feet of water pooled on the roof and one afternoon, the roof exceeded its max weight capacity and started to collapses. Water poured in the hallways outside my apartment like Niagara Falls. The fire department came, shut down the electricity, evacuated everyone and condemned the apartment until the ordered repairs were met. The building manager cut out some of the old pipes that were clogged, and did some patch work on the roof, and some people were allowed to move back with the promise repairs would be done. Proper repairs were never done. They defaulted on payments to the contractor that did some repairs, same with the electricity bills that mounted to over $50,000. The place stunk, people complained to the city, nothing was done. After, like a year, the city finally got tired of people complaining and condemned the building. I lost all my belongings, because the city failed to force the new landlords to compliance and allowed the building to degrade to the point it was a major hazard. It was clear the owners of the building never had any intentions to fix the building and it was clear the city had no intentions to do anything about it.
The Elliot Lake mall, and the Sudbury mall were allowed to become disasters because both cities turned a blind eye and accepted the "Ya, were are fixing it, we are hiring contractors bla bla bla" BS. In my case, the city didn't do anything until it was costing them 10s of thousands. City inspectors need to do their jobs and the city needs to enforce the penalties, and put people in jail for not doing their job. It wasn't snow and salt that caused the Elliot Lake Collapse, it is useless city council members and workers that didn't do their jobs to prevent it from happening in the first place.
"this failure was so sudden", ummm no it was failing for 30 years
*Remember when buildings were made from non flammable materials?* ... Ah, those were the times! Cladding a building in polyethylene is beyond stupid. PE is basically a fancy variant of candle wax. And when exposed to enough heat, it will of course ignite. Plastic in building cladding has claimed so many lives already, just the IDEA of wrapping a building in highly flammable material is preposterous. However, this is exactly what is required in many Western countries these days, you know, mostly because of the -Holy Climate Church and a decreasing scientific literacy- ... ignorance of crowd-pleasing politicians.
i think it was more of the cost cutting builders/designers than anything else. it always go back to the bottom line.
The video states that the plastic core covering was NOT compliant with building regulations. It was supposed to be non-combustible mineral fibre core. The politicians had ensured that the scientific literacy was there, those that were required to implement it failed.
politicians in "two" party states are always extremely donor pelasing. Which is why, you generally don't have much in terms of inspections. They been cut. "Two", because it's actually one, just pretending to be a left and a right wing party.
It's even mentioned, it wasn't approved.
Nah, it's 100% about profits. Money makes the world go round and all that.
See grenfell tower in London
There was a similar incident in London. Grenfell Towers. The cause was the same, flammable cladding. Not so lucky that time- 72 dead. We just never learn.
There was a flurry of similar fires that culminated in Grenfell. The Torch Tower fire in Dubai in 2015, for example. UK fire safety rules were weak, and enforcement of the weak rules was also terrible. On the bright side the local government saved about 50,000 pounds by not using the non-combustible core...
Wrapping a residential skyscraper in combustible cladding is stupid, mindless and ignorant too. This is not hidden knowledge, it's a basic government failure that allowed this kind of construction, it's not acceptable.
@@martentrudeau6948Our govts are failing us constantly now. Allowing mass illegal immigration, money for murderers, epstein episode.
@@richardmccann4815 ~ Our governments are incorporated. Governments and corporations run on credit and the creditors run the world. "The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender." All governments and corporations are a debt slave to their lenders. Governments are enforcing the Glibelist (the powers that be) to take over the world. They can conjure all the money they need to own and control the world.
did either fall though?? Nope!
I toured that plant as an entering student and I asked how do you sense when it is full. They said a float with a microswitch. I said that is too likely to fail! They said it was inspected daily. And it overtopped.
So they had been told, by you, and still didn't install another couple of switches!
These people need to invest in a transom.
Should have used flex seal on that roof and flex tape on that dam.
Weird flex but ok 🥸
good one! ..luv it!
"Now, that's a lot of damage"
😂😂😂
@@patrickwilson6918it’s called Flex Seal in Canada
the dude from Practical Engineering XD
That be the Awesome Grady Dude!
John Goodman! XD
Elliot Lake unfortunately did not get a new mall! They got 3 stores back ..! The loss of the mall and all its businesses still hurts the town !
Ok...!
Hahahahaha
Unfortunately, it's not a short drive to the nearest town with a mall either. The Sault is what, 2-3 hours away?
Both my grandparents were in the mall food court when it collapsed. It set in motion health problems for my grandpa which ended up causing him to die much sooner. Not to mention the mental strain and toll it took on both of them for years. The lawyers accomplished nothing...no one was compensated. The town has never been the same.
I just came across this channel and have watched 2 episodes so far and I absolutely enjoy the videos you have.... Extremely informative and alot of wow factors... Keep up the amazing videos Banijay Science!!!
The recent Oroville Dam Spillway collapse disaster - exactly the same scenario.
Construction companies lying their butts off.
_Yeah! We built on top of bedrock. No no, we weren't lazy and put it on soil! Bedrock, yes, we put it on bedrock._
How many other dams are unsafe due to paid-off or lazy inspectors, and psychopathic construction company brass?
Oregon's Trojan Nuclear power plant cooling towers were found to be built unsafe, not to code. Ready to collapse in a very minor quake.
They were imploded before a disaster could happen.
But how many engineering ticking time bombs remain?
19:00 so basically this overflowed because nobody bent that little black float arm in the toilet when the wall settled to make it stop running
Since Elliot Lake has lost it's mall it has also lost it's Civic Center a few years later due to an overload of the roof with an Air Conditioning Unit and excessive snow loads. And now it is about to lose it's hockey rink due to old glued wood beams no longer up to the snow loads. In Ontario Canada we have a very good building code, yet in Elliot Lake things seem to fail? It is common for homes needing roof trusses to be repaired at the wood joints as the old trusses were designed to barely handle the snow loads, who would think it would snow in Northern Ontario. But this was a mining town with the mining companies building and owning everything, when the mines closed the homes were sold for pennies on the dollar, we get what we paid for in Elliot Lake.
Uranium deposits in the air might mess up materials differently.
My buddy use to go see his aunt there . & He had a Giger reader I think it called, reads radiation, Elliott lake has a odd reading going from .8-2.3
in their defence, Elliot Lake was designed as a temporary town to house workers while mining and not expected to be there as long as it was. It was a town with an expected short shelf life
The prices at that mall were hard to beat, attributed to low overhead.
That reservoir is beautiful and majorly cool.
I remember when the provincial Special Response Team or something like that, the elite rescuers, were afraid to go in to rescue two women that people could hear screaming. The former miners, some of them specialized in mine rescue were prevented from going in. That special "provincial" team should have been disbanded after this and the members should have been made into parking attendants, an obviously useful profession for them. This was a sad tragedy which I'm sure came down to money. RIP to the two women who died because of decisions made by morons. My opinion.
I used live in a suburb on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia where the community of Tuggerah use a 2 level shopping centre with roof top parking. Parts of the shopping centre at the eastern end have been plagued by a leaking roof whenever rain falls. We have moved from that area and note that the age of the centre would be approaching 30 years. I wonder who inspects the mall?
The city should have building inspectors. Granted, they did say that one of the problems was the particular type of slabs they used, but the abundant leaking would indicate a problem with the water proofing on the roof. At best, they just need to redo the roof. At worst... yeah.
Honestly, I'm surprised there's still buildings with that design around. Parking lots beneath the building have tended to fare a lot better and have less maintenance issues long-term. Not having road grit, oil, and heavy vehicles on a roof really does expand the life of a roof, weirdly enough.
However no ice or snow build up in Tuggerrah. I guess that means we have longer
@@michaelreid2329 Yeah, the lack of road salt in particular would have a pretty big impact. There's a reason everyone in the Northern US/Canada just accepts rust on the undercarriage of our vehicles as normal. There's just no avoiding it with all the road salt in the winters.
surprised Grenfell Tower fire wasn't in this video.
It was really bad and lessons haven't been learned from that either, it's just a matter of time!
This show was made years before Grenfell happened.
@@JaneMurray-di3gq The Grenfell Tower fire was on 14 June 2017, this show was in 2021. So no this show was NOT made before that fire!
Excellent Documentary. Straight reporting, no B.S. Lots of information to ponder. Thank you.
Designers and architects come up with weird designs and unusual materials without a single thought about the safety of the people who use these structures, the builders and operators also share some of the responsibility.
Allot of structures are built with safety in mind but years back they dident know as much as they do now, as said failed waterproofing was a factor…. They dident know that it was not adequate
Take a look at the structural failures of canal systems in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. They too thought that they were using the best designs for their time.
Long story short, they failed and flooded various parts of the New Orleans area.
Other failures of Katrina were various, widespread, and severe.
Katrina could be documented in a miniseries. 😢😢😢
i swear some Architect's designs, only have one objective...... to test the breaking point of engineers and there ability to tolerate the ridiculous joints/butts/ect without any consistency or any kinda standardised system, they are such Irrational angles ect, in my field of engineering we are expected to 1 make it strong but efficient, 2 practical but not an eye sore.
why cant they try make buildings look nice but also follow the long standing methods then build of that.. example, a school for the seventh day Adventists i put together (swear the arch had some phobia of straight lines and industry stands)
4 buildings, 2 of them double story and throughout all the buildings, how many "say" structural right angles or straight edges would one expect to find (countless)
yep not one some of the normal door frames were 90 plus the stair cases "the steps" 90.
worst is the slight curve he put on every aspect, not even the foundation pillars followed a consistent layout, but the slight cure on every wall was by far the most torturous task, again no consistency same wall yet changes curve angle 5 times over 100m, 3 degree, 2 degree, 2 degree, 3, 4, 5 degree. hole job made worse by fact original contractor quite half way though the job an took all final plan documentation with them, never to b seen again, leaving me with multi stages of outdated plans, plus a kinda clued on bloke that we tracked down that worked on site originally who had vital knowledge needed to actually complete project
It's Grady!!!! If you don't watch Practical Engineering, you should. I love his channel.
I call bullcrap about the rescue efforts as they would not permit the men (who were miners by trade) to go in and get the then alive trapped inside.
The building was never built to permit parking on top.
just read your post after mine, look at paulbunion , fully agree with you
I grew up in Elliot Lake took my driver test on the roof of the mall and spent thousands of hours in the Arcade there. The roof leaked since day 1
Pretty sad when the heart and soul of a community is a defective 80's mall.
@43:32 the pipe was isolated and repaired, wait so that section of pipe was repaired but not the rest of the underground of known pipe that suffers the same defect?
Yep, and the repared pipe will now most likely be the strongest link in the chain, so just a matter of time before the same thing happens again on a different section of pipe.
I noticed that too. There was no mention of the rest of the system being inspected, or for that matter, buried pipelines in other parts of the country that were made at the same time.
Seeing the intro of this show reminds me of another tv series i use to watch long ago called Destoryed in Seconds. its pretty interesting to hear and see them compare side by side of the intro.
I didn’t see that, but have seen “seconds from disaster”. There are some episodes on UA-cam.
My local town has a pump storage resevoir. It sets on bluffs above Lake Michigan & is operated by Michigan's 2 largest energy providers. It is an 800 acre resevoir. Built in the late 1960's, so far no problems.
Most engineering disasters come from cutting costs to feed greedy pockets.
And just cheap thinking.....and money wasted
I just find it so comical when people blame other people for being greedy. Everyone is greedy, everyone always looks to save a buck, for a discount. It's just human nature. If it weren't we wouldn't need regulations.
@@mofayer and therein lies the problem... the politicians that write the regulations are paid-off by lobbying, corporate greed, backhanders and a cushty board position once people have died and few bucks were saved
@@mofayer How else can bad behavior be regulated by society without first addressing it? Also just fyi making an argument from a place of 'it's nature' is fallacious.
Its the classic swiss cheese model. its not very often that all the holes line up. Then, in hindsight, there are a whole gaggle of places where it could have been stopped. Most of the time no one person doing the wrong thing (e.g. being greedy, hurrying, being carless, etc) seems that big of a deal, but line them all up and brand new mall+32 years=disaster scene.
So they replaced the one section of split pipe how much of that pipeline was made with that same welding technique and how much of that pipeline was replaced after this disaster? Just the one section? I wouldn't feel safe with just one section being replaced. And people wonder why there was the massive pipeline protests and the water protectors. This this exact scenario is why people don't want pipelines running through their aquifers
One look at that water Reservoir and my first thought was “no way I would build a house and/or live downhill of that thing.” 13:38
That shopping mall looked depressing to begin with. I can’t imagine that it was the one “major attraction” to that town. Combine this with plastic tarps, stains on the ceiling, and buckets everywhere - it’s hard to imagine why anyone would have wanted to set foot inside. Plus, there must have been tons of mold!
The lessons of Melbourne didn't actually make their way properly around the world, as exemplified by the UK's Grenfell tower block disaster. What we do [should] learn is that we continue to repeat our generalised mistakes ...
A system should never get to 'High High'.
The system should stop at 'High'.
They missed explaining what had gone wrong here.
We need Pipelines as long as we use oil and gas, but:
1. How old is the pipeline? (conveniently there is no date on the Internet)
2. No map on the Internet, scrub presumably for security purposes?
3. What was the design parameters of the pipeline specifically at what pressure was the pipeline initially designed for and has the oil companies exceeded that initial design pressure?
Freaking Grady with the freaking cameo practical engineering baby hell yeah
Only a NY'er would say "I don't see any one around me committing a crime so maybe crime isn't a problem ". You are so used to having criminals , crazies and just unstable individuals all around that if a murder isn't going on right in front of your eyes it's a plus .
It used to be that criminal activities were actually hidden from the general population by the criminals because the general population took a dim view of such activity and tended to do something about it , even if that was just reporting it to the police .
18:55 When you pick the lowest bid, you get contractors that cut corners and engineers sign off on this stuff and it never gets looked at until some failure.
Worst thing about the Mall Collapse was that they could have saved the two ladies inside.
23:15 Nice reflextion, makes it look like the bridge has a Renault logo as middle support.
The same building fire disaster occured in uk, known as the Grenfell Tower disaster. A fridge blew up and caught fire on the 10th floor, only since the building was built, some bright spark decided to clad the building with highly flammable insulating panels, and the builder had cut corners, To make worse they had spaced the cladding 3cm away, creating a 'chimney' which drew the flames into a roaring jet. The entire building went up like a bonfire in minutes, dozens of people killed.
🎉
Water when contained lays Flat.
Just like our oceans 😮
My takeaway from the 2013 Mayflower oil pipeline spill was that it's cheaper to let it fail rather than fixing it ahead of time.
From the Wikipedia article: "In 2015, ExxonMobil settled charges that it violated the federal Clean Water Act and state environmental laws, for $5.07 million, including $4.19 million in civil penalties. It did not admit liability."
I dont care what computers or testings that were done before the dam was built! That dam looks seriously anemic. If they built that thing anywhere near me and my family, I would seriously be looking for a new area to live in.
I agree. How many times in the past have dams been built and promised to be safe, yet unforseen design flaws or short cuts lead to catastrophic failure? There is absolutely no way that I would live beneath a dam any more than I would live on the slope of a volcano. I just could not rest easily knowing that a huge reservoir of water was looming over my head, held back by a man-made structure.
@@jamiebraswell5520 We Swiss have loads of dams. But they're monitored and maintained for real. Unlike this one.
I’m not even good at math but I can say this was a very bad idea. Water always needs to sit in a hole.
Hard to EMULATE ancient Egyptians Achievements !
With the dam, how did they not realise that the settled part of the wall was lower. I mean it is not like you need a laser sighted spirit level, you have a great big body of water that provides a level and they were pumping it near the top every single night and the tide mark would still be visible in daylight.
They said there was no warning however those cracks were the sign everyone chose to overlook.
I can't understand the idea of a rooftop parking lot. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to have the mall built above the parking lot? Also, how could they just ignore the leaking for thirty years? Obviously something was wrong, but they just kept on assuming it would go away and that the leaks were not causing any trouble? One would think that mold would be a problem too, but they ignored it for thirty years???😵💫🙄
The dam on top of the mountain...maybe I am just paranoid, but I would not live nor recreate beliw a dam. I don't care how much assurance there is from those who built it or from the local government/leadership, there are countless examples of shortcuts and design flaws that have led to catastrophic failure in the past. I don't want to be downstream of a dam anymore than I want to live on the slope of a volcano!!!😐😶
I got excited to see Grady from Practical Engineering
so much space
the decision to save space with cars parking on top is odd
My thoughts exactly!
maybe they only had enough money to purchase land for the shopping mall but not for the parking lot. i would have put it underneath the shopping mall but hey i didn't design it.
@@takumi2023agreed. A rooftop parking lot full of concrete slabs is really a dumb idea. Even dumber, though, is watching it leak for three decades and assuming that it would all be okay!
On top of a mountain that’s a foothill out west
That fire situation also occurred in Dubai a couple of years ago. In addition, many EU regulations aiming at insulating old buildings to improve energy efficiency and that covering styrofoam is VERY flammable.
And how many thousands of miles of old fragile oilpipe is still used in US?
Blah blah blah "US bad" blah blah blah "capitalism evil" but you aren't saying shit about Chinese industry being the cause behind 95% of the pollution in the atmosphere
Blah blah blah "US bad" blah blah blah "capitalism evil" but you don't seem to care about C.H.I.N.A. being the cause behind 95% of the pollution in the atmosphere
(I have already made this comment 3 times and each time it was deleted in less than 30 seconds, #censorship)
The Alaska pipeline which started sending oil through it around 1977 had a projected lifespan of 25 years is still pumping oil across Alaska. I have no idea how many aging pipes are buried underground and sadly most will remain in operation until they fail.
don't forget about natural gas pipelines either. though less polluting when ruptured , they result in massive fires instead
@@Izanami95 Not to worry. As a kid my first job was at phoenix steel where one of the oldest steel mills in America was saved by a massive long term order for seamless pipe for a new pipeline in Alaska. We got the contract because there were so few antique steel mills left that made seamless extruded pipe that large- most the new stuff was the "new fangled" bend and weld cheapy stuff that failed in Arkansaw. Since the Alaska pipeline was a HUGE fight with conservationists the only way it got approved was EVERYTHING had to have a proven track record of 50 years in operation. Seamless extrusion pipe made from ingots and a mandrel goes back to the dawn of steel making- and was costing 3Xs the "new improved" stuff. I here the plant went broke a year after that contract was fulfilled. Google Earth shows a big mall and park in Phoenixville where the old pipe mill had stood since 1830s when it was just Phoenix Iron Works.
"The ruptured section of the pipeline was isolated and repaired" and the other 1800 miles of the same pipeline was left in place. What could possibly go wrong?
"At the time you woudn't consider that risky in any sense of the word" Says Keystone oil pipeline executives demanding that they put a pipeline through your commmunity and across your river.
My workplace leaks too but ive become so accustomed to it and would never even think the roof could cave in. Luckily there is no car park but there is huge aircons up there.
How many older malls across America and Canada are in the same rotting condition?
Who determined the highest point. A simple elevation survey would have indicated the high point for very litte money
Would painting tar over the 9x2 slabs then laying concrete have helped?
Neighbourhood oil well, go get em boys!
It would have helped for a while. It needed a full waterproof membrane (either torch on or Volclay system) over the slabs, then another layer of concrete.
All civil engineering projects… huge responsibility. We hold peoples lives in our work.
33:32 "I think the cheaper and easier to use product was used by mistake" 🤯🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Used because it was cheaper - as far as it's needed to go!
Reminds me of the Oroville spillway disaster in 2017. The water destroyed a huge section of the spillway and scoured away the loose material exposing the actual rock, looked like a canyon. The construction company prepped the rock and place roller compacted concrete to elevate back to needed height. Entire spillway was rebuilt. The emergency spillway was rebuilt as well.
Out of curiosity what does the roller compacted dam structure rest on? How is the bottom of the bowl constructed?
There was 30 years of warning in Elliot Lake.
29:34 Why wont they explain how they know it was a cigarette butt? Countless times have watched documentaries and they make such claims of knowing the cause of the fire but yet they wont say how they knew it.
Yeah, they just assume we trust the source. My guess is that they learned it by interview. Or someone came forward and just said what happened.
a alke on a mountain top is the dumbest thing ever always super dangerous location
39:58 was jed from Beverly hills trying to strike some Texas tea,?
It seems the first two could have been prevented had they conducted annual inspections. Wonder why this wasn't done.
That man is too excited about a dam failure.
Remind me again, how many "i"s are in "Aluminum?"
I remember the London high rise fire; but not this one!!🤔 Siding lined with flamable plastic wow!! Cigarettes belong in a real ash tray not a plastic yogert container on a flamable table. How great of building codes and inspectors!!
Love seeing Grady!!!
The last one about the oil pipe is just stupid. All this talk about the pipe failing eventually and it lasted some 60 years. Meaning the rest of the piping all has this flaw. So instead of the state or company replacing the whole line. They only fixed that small segment. So it will all happen again as another big oppsie.
8:29 Foreign steel thickness is made by pressing layers of thin metal sheets together . American steel was made as it moved down a conveyor system, this thick sheet layer of hot steel was being compressed at certain stages in the line, too a lesser thickness and cut when the required amount of sheets was met.
It’s amazing that engineers found a cost effective way to release torrents of water in order to turn the turbines and create electricity to power thousands and thousands of homes and businesses and then using the same water that generates the power to be profitable can actually be stored and pumped back up into the same reservoir that in turn will eventually be released again to spin the turbines to create more electricity. This is mind blowing to someone like myself who has no engineering knowledge. I would be more inclined to think that this would be counter intuitive and defy some of Newtons basic principles. There has to be some sort of loss here somewhere to some capacity but I suppose it’s superlative and inconsequential for me to argue about. What do I know about hydrology and engineering
Your feelings about losing energy is correct...Not even close to breaking even...energy wise. But the concept does work on a financial level. That's all made possible because of how our electric grid system works.
Many may think of our grid like it's a giant battery....but it's not. Power is supplied to the grid by hundreds of power stations as that power is used. The supply matches the demand. Come evening when A/C units shut down and folks sleep, the demand drops.... you cannot feed power to the grid if no one is using that power. One place that unused power goes to pump water up into reservoirs on top of mountains ...I always called them "water batteries." Just an early solution to the main problem we are still facing....storage of excess power. In addition of "water batteries" there are now huge batteries made of thousands if tiny batteries by Telsa. Lots of experimental work on different types of batteries, my favorite is a Liquid metal battery by Ambri.
In terms of energy alone, there is of course a loss: Any pumped-storage power station will always make a net loss, or in other words will be a net consumer of power, ultimately using more power than it generates. This is mainly because the moving parts are all designed to be reversible: The water-driven turbines can be run in reverse as water pumps, and the electricity generators can be run in reverse as electric motors. This is technically true of any electric motor, and this is done (albeit at a much smaller scale) in other situations - perhaps the most well-known example being electric cars with "regenerative braking", where the braking effort is a direct result of using the electric motor which normally propels the car as a generator, with the power generated by this used to partially recharge the on-board batteries.
This has been done for much longer on electric railways, which have much more powerful electric motors than electric cars and have the advantage of a continuous grid connection (by either third rail or overhead cable), so have much greater capacity to absorb the power generated by the regenerative braking system. Some diesel-electric railways also used regenerative braking to limit the physical wear on the mechanical brakes - but since these are typically used where the railway is not electrified (no grid connection), the power generated by the electric regenerative braking was dumped into big resistor banks which dissipated it as heat.
I can remember reading about an electric freight railway (somewhere in Canada I think) which connects a port on the coast with an iron-ore mine halfway up a mountain, at much higher elevation: It has two parallel tracks so that trains loaded with ore can travel downhill to the port at the same time as empty trains travelling back uphill to the mine.
While in operation, this railway system uses regenerative braking on the full trains to limit the speed at which they travel downhill. The power generated this way is far in excess of the power required to drive the empty trains back uphill to the mine. The surplus is fed into the power grid, so this freight railway is effectively a net power generator.
Back to pumped-storage power stations: The efficiency of the reversible machinery (turbine/pumps, generator/motors) is somewhat lower than machinery which is optimised for one specific purpose - an electric motor which is optimised for maximum efficiency as a motor can still be run in reverse as a generator, but the efficiency of generation will be significantly lower than its efficiency as a motor. Nevertheless, the overall efficiency of a pumped-storage power station is still better than any battery technology currently in existence, mainly due to the economies of scale: The power generated is at least 70% of the power consumed.
@@lloydevans2900 thank you for responding I appreciate it very much
@@Bugdriver49 hey there and thank you for your explanation and the fact you took the time to reply and in return helped me to learn more. I am constantly on a knowledge quest lol. Seriously though, since I have graduated from school and I am not being told what subjects to study I have found an entire new viewpoint in education. I have learned more on my own through reading and investigating subjects of interest and documentaries than probably a good portion of some subject matter forced upon me in school. I finally realized that saying knowledge is power does not make you a nerd. lol. It’s actually magnificent.
informative.. thx for sharing
1400 kilometers of doomed-to-fail pipeline, they replaced 0.01 kilometers, is that right?
Polyethylene is what caused the fire in 2 different high rise buildings in London. . Look up Grenfell Tower fire (2017), Lakanal House fire (2009). Granted the Polyethylene was on the outside of the building in panels. Look into Spencer St. high-rise fire (2019).
very interesting !!
that HARD HITTING dramatic voiceover & bg music. 😆 is this a History Channel production?
Yes
It was CRIMINAL management of Elliot Lake shopping mall that lead to the collapse. There should have been substantial prison time for those that allowed this to happen.
lived in elliot lake when the mall collapsed, everybody in town knew there were major issues with the structure you could see water stains and obvious signs of water damage we all knew the mall was going to collapsed not if but when. the town wasnt rich and couldnt afford the repairs and decided to let it go until this inevitaibly happened
why in the hell did they build a lake above ground to begin with? Oh, and then after a catastrophic failure, they rebuilt it AGAIN. Brilliant in Missouri are they.
And it’s leaking through the new structure 🤔
@@StevenCassels of course it is. think of the money the contractors made building that above ground swimming pool vs a regular inground type. $$$$$$
Really, woods flammable and its all over buildings too smh