SA has high standards for construction and the Tongaat mall collapse should never have happened, says a top engineer.
|||Durban - South Africa had high standards for design and construction, and a collapse like that in Tongaat on Tuesday should not have happened, a top engineer said on Wednesday night.
Tony Smith, speaking on behalf of the Joint Structural Division of the South African Institute of Civil Engineers, told The Mercury that incidents of the magnitude of that in Tongaat were uncommon in South Africa.
“The codes of practice, codes of conduct and legal regulations we have here are world-class. The only reason that a collapse like this can occur is if these are not followed,” said Smith.
“They are put in place to prevent exactly this. Somewhere along the line, in the construction or design or a mixture of both, these must not have been followed to the fullest extent.”
Smith said he knew of four independent investigations that would take place to find out how the collapse occurred, and he was certain they would all come to an agreed conclusion.
Commenting on one aspect of the collapse, he said it was “unusual” that when the top slab of concrete came down, the one beneath it also collapsed and did not offer some sort of resistance.
The “domino effect” should not have occurred as there should have been inbuilt resistance in the layer below the top.
Smith has worked on a large number of investigations into structural collapses all over the country.
“There is never a common denominator among them, but there are common threads,” he said. “And that is that if all the codes had been followed, it would not have happened.”
Increasingly, the institute was coming across people who were doing jobs that were not suited to their skills.
Smith said the engineering community was “saddened to learn of the collapse” and did not delight in any structural failure.
He said that the industry extended its deepest sympathies to the injured workers and their families.
The Mercury