There's a video and news reports of a house collapse in Ashton Under Lyne in todays newspapers and on youtube.
The newspaper reports are rubbish: "an engineer ( a guy up a cherry picker) removed only one brick (the idiot was banging away with a pry bar) and the house collapsed"
The reality was that no way should that cherry picker have been there with a worker on the platform, neither should he have begun a mini demolition. He's a very lucky guy.
The elevation brickwork collapsed sheer down bringing the roof and wall plate with it. But if the roof had spread then the hefty wall plate would have taken the man and the cherrypicker down with it.
For what purpose was he doing what he does in the video? Why was he even up there?
Where was the experienced supervision?
He, and the guy below, totally ignored the warning signs of dust and debris spurting out as new cracks appeared and more debris began falling. Instead, the guy on the platform reaches into the hole in the elevation, and narrowly misses being dragged down with the collapse.
There's a sequence of still pics that show the back of the site/building after the collapse, and one of them shows scaffolding at the rear of the property.
In other words, some kind of building work was taking place at the rear, before the collapse. Maybe this had nothing to do with the structural failure but its worth investigating?
When the alerted authorities first approached that frontage it would have been obvious that the only safe course was to immediately demolish the property after disconnecting any utilities.
Looking at the pics it seems that the party walls on either side are compromised and are now unsafe. Has anyone been inside the adjacent buildings and examined the party walls etc?
FWIW: just behind the cherrypicker platform is an enormous wooden flag pole bolted to the side of another delapidated looking structure. If the flagpole had been brought then down who knows what next? Why is it even there in a busy street? Answers please, Ashton Under Lyne council?
The newspaper reports are rubbish: "an engineer ( a guy up a cherry picker) removed only one brick (the idiot was banging away with a pry bar) and the house collapsed"
The reality was that no way should that cherry picker have been there with a worker on the platform, neither should he have begun a mini demolition. He's a very lucky guy.
The elevation brickwork collapsed sheer down bringing the roof and wall plate with it. But if the roof had spread then the hefty wall plate would have taken the man and the cherrypicker down with it.
For what purpose was he doing what he does in the video? Why was he even up there?
Where was the experienced supervision?
He, and the guy below, totally ignored the warning signs of dust and debris spurting out as new cracks appeared and more debris began falling. Instead, the guy on the platform reaches into the hole in the elevation, and narrowly misses being dragged down with the collapse.
There's a sequence of still pics that show the back of the site/building after the collapse, and one of them shows scaffolding at the rear of the property.
In other words, some kind of building work was taking place at the rear, before the collapse. Maybe this had nothing to do with the structural failure but its worth investigating?
When the alerted authorities first approached that frontage it would have been obvious that the only safe course was to immediately demolish the property after disconnecting any utilities.
Looking at the pics it seems that the party walls on either side are compromised and are now unsafe. Has anyone been inside the adjacent buildings and examined the party walls etc?
FWIW: just behind the cherrypicker platform is an enormous wooden flag pole bolted to the side of another delapidated looking structure. If the flagpole had been brought then down who knows what next? Why is it even there in a busy street? Answers please, Ashton Under Lyne council?
