WI: The Citicorp Center Catastrophe

The Citicorp Center (actually 601 Lexington Avenue) is one of the tallest buildings in NYC and the first in USA to use a tuned mass damper system.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center) One of its main characteristic is that is essentially an skyscrapper on stilts, supposed to stand safelty due chevron load braces designed by William LeMessuier.

The problem is that during construction the original welded joints are substituted by bolted joints, turing the whole structure much more weaker towards quatering winds, allowing a 70 miles-per-hour (113 km/h) wind to topple the building in the middle of Manhattan - a wind of such strength is predicted to happen eash 16 years...

The discovery of this facts that lead to the Engineering Crisis of 1978 (and the secret correction of the design flaws) started by a phone call by a Princeton University student, Joel Weinstein... but why if the phone call was never made?

What if the Citicorp Center did collapse domino-style over Manhattan?

What would be the effects? For NYC? For architecture?
 

Hyperion

Banned
The Citicorp Center (actually 601 Lexington Avenue) is one of the tallest buildings in NYC and the first in USA to use a tuned mass damper system.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center) One of its main characteristic is that is essentially an skyscrapper on stilts, supposed to stand safelty due chevron load braces designed by William LeMessuier.

The problem is that during construction the original welded joints are substituted by bolted joints, turing the whole structure much more weaker towards quatering winds, allowing a 70 miles-per-hour (113 km/h) wind to topple the building in the middle of Manhattan - a wind of such strength is predicted to happen eash 16 years...

The discovery of this facts that lead to the Engineering Crisis of 1978 (and the secret correction of the design flaws) started by a phone call by a Princeton University student, Joel Weinstein... but why if the phone call was never made?

What if the Citicorp Center did collapse domino-style over Manhattan?

What would be the effects? For NYC? For architecture?

If it goes over as a result of a passing hurricane, very bad, but casualties wolud be reduced somewhat due to people probably not coming into the city or going inland during the storm.

If it's the result of a major thunderstorm with heavy winds, which may not need even 70mph depending on the situation, you could be looking at thousands dead in the building, and no telling how many hundreds or thousands dead from the building collapsing onto surrounding buildings.

On the plus side, the NYPD and FDNY will get plenty of experience prior to 9/11
 
Speaking as one who actually worked there (for three years I worked as a consultant out of 399 Park Ave. North, right across the street) the loss of life would not be that heavy. Even at peak traffic hours (roughly 9 AM and 5 PM) there aren't more than fifty thousand people in the area, most of whom would probably escape serious harm.

The building itself is forty stories tall and sits on top of the Lexington Ave. subway lines, which would definitely be severed in the event of a collapse. Depending on the time of day and the direction of the wind (the highest winds come from the southwest to southeast) between two and ten thousand casualties could be expected. Definitely a disaster, but one equivalent to the twin towers in scale.

While some parts of Citicorp would be severely affected, the upper levels of Citibank management probably would not be, since they are in 399 Park Ave (on the second floor, at the time I left).
 
Speaking as one who actually worked there (for three years I worked as a consultant out of 399 Park Ave. North, right across the street) the loss of life would not be that heavy. Even at peak traffic hours (roughly 9 AM and 5 PM) there aren't more than fifty thousand people in the area, most of whom would probably escape serious harm.

The building itself is forty stories tall and sits on top of the Lexington Ave. subway lines, which would definitely be severed in the event of a collapse. Depending on the time of day and the direction of the wind (the highest winds come from the southwest to southeast) between two and ten thousand casualties could be expected. Definitely a disaster, but one equivalent to the twin towers in scale.

While some parts of Citicorp would be severely affected, the upper levels of Citibank management probably would not be, since they are in 399 Park Ave (on the second floor, at the time I left).

Interesting, thank you for your input, in special your projected casualities (in a documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZhgTewKhTQ) about it, the figure given was a hundred thousand victims... maybe the difference was the urban use of the area from 1979 to the time that you work around the area?)

But what would be the consequences of the city government that such disaster happened on its watch? Would it affect the elections if it happen in 1979?
 
Interesting, thank you for your input, in special your projected casualities (in a documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZhgTewKhTQ) about it, the figure given was a hundred thousand victims... maybe the difference was the urban use of the area from 1979 to the time that you work around the area?)

But what would be the consequences of the city government that such disaster happened on its watch? Would it affect the elections if it happen in 1979?

While the number of people who transit through the area is that large, the number who worked in Citicorp Center and surrounding buildings at the time was under ten thousand. The largest number of casualties would occur during weekday rush hours, the lowest on the weekend. A hundred thousand seems very high, given the number of people expected to be in the area one time.

If the building toppled as projected it might have damaged or destroyed surrounding buildings, but the domino effect posited in the video is an extremely implausible result. Office buildings are not dominoes; they crumple and break apart as they fall. Furthermore, since Citicorp Center is taller than the surrounding buildings (the next tallest at the time was 399 Park Ave. N, at twenty-six stories IIRC) it would fall partly on top of the adjacent building(s), pushing them down as well as away and causing them to pancake as well as topple, which would tend to restrict the extent of damage to the vicinity of Citicorp Center.

Still a disaster, but not to the extent given in the video, which naturally posits the worst case scenario for dramatic effect.
 
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