Ronan Point

[SUNRAY]

I think gas was used as a scapegoat here. There were other serious problems:

• it was not adequate for expected wind loading, since the wind speeds which the regulations required to be considered were much too low for a tall building—in a high wind, an upper wall panel could be sucked out, leading to collapse similar to the actual collapse
• it was not adequate in a fire, a significant fire could lead to bowing of the structure, followed by collapse as above.[7]

It's funny how different peoples memories work.
There may very well have been other problems but let's look at the facts as I remember them:

1) A gas leak [of some type] occurred in an upper floor about 3/4 of the way up the block.
2) An explosion occurred when the female tenant lit the cooker.
3) The outside walls of the kitchen and lounge disappeared.
4) Everything supported by the missing walls fell.
5) The weight of the debris falling onto the lounges below made them collapse.
6) The builders were found to have not installed the precast sections correctly, using cardboard instead of the proper products.
7) The building was repaired to the proper spec and repopulated.
8) Public pressure got the building dismantled 15 to 20 years later [note dismantled and not demolished] for precise examination.
9) As a result of 8 above other buildings of the same design were in use for many more years.
10) There were many many buildings built to this exact design and I believe this was the only one to suffer in this way.
11) When demolishing buildings to this same design they do not collapse in the same way without the use of a massive explosion comparable to that of the gas incident [tested and accepted].


All of the above is from memory, I would say I was about 11 or 12 at the time [1966-68] and I'm pretty sure it was about 1985-87 when dismantled.
If any details of 35 to 50 years back are incorrect I offer my humble apologies in advance.
As I understand it the cooker was repaired and the lady made a good recovery but a handful [very few] lost their lives as the tower was quite new and not fully let.
Lastly I don't believe anyone apart from Winston has any doubt about a gas explosion being the cause of the incident.

 

[SUNRAY]

This appears to be Winston's source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronan_Point#cite_note-forensic-7

""Hodge survived, despite being blown across the room by the explosion — as did her gas stove, which she took to her new address""

And we all know how reliable Wiki is.

 

[bernardgreen]

My best mate at the time was one of the first fire crew to arrive. Your memory of the event matches mine.

The walls were so loosely tied that ( from memory ) anything that created about one bar difference in air pressure between inside and outside could have dislodged a wall panel.

Quoting from HERE

Abstract
In the early morning hours of May 16, 1968, the occupant of apartment 90 on the 18th floor of the 22-story Ronan Point apartment tower, in London, lit a match to brew her morning cup of tea. The resulting gas explosion initiated a partial collapse of the structure that killed four people and injured 17 (one of whom subsequently died). On investigation, the apartment tower was found to be deeply flawed in both design and construction. The existing building codes were found to be inadequate for ensuring the safety and integrity of high-rise precast concrete apartment buildings. The Larsen–Nielson building system, intended for buildings with only six stories, had been extended past the point of safety. The tower consisted of precast panels joined together without a structural frame. The connections relied, in large part, on friction. The apartment tower lacked alternate load paths to redistribute forces in the event of a partial collapse. When the structure was dismantled, investigators found appallingly poor workmanship at the critical connections between the panels. Subsequently, building codes in many countries have adopted structural integrity or “robustness” provisions that may be directly traced to the Ronan Point collapse.

 

[SUNRAY]

And we all know how reliable Wiki is.

OK I've just read that Wiki and this: https://www.theguardian.com/society...18/may/16/ronan-point-tower-collapse-may-1968 [assuming they are all correct] I'm comfortable with my OP, some discrepancies but nothing serious.

 

[SUNRAY]

My best at the time was one of the first fire crew to arrive. Your memory of the event matches mine.

The walls were so loosely tied that ( from memory ) anything that created about one bar difference in air pressure between inside and outside could have dislodged a wall panel.

Quoting from HERE

Abstract
In the early morning hours of May 16, 1968, the occupant of apartment 90 on the 18th floor of the 22-story Ronan Point apartment tower, in London, lit a match to brew her morning cup of tea. The resulting gas explosion initiated a partial collapse of the structure that killed four people and injured 17 (one of whom subsequently died). On investigation, the apartment tower was found to be deeply flawed in both design and construction. The existing building codes were found to be inadequate for ensuring the safety and integrity of high-rise precast concrete apartment buildings. The Larsen–Nielson building system, intended for buildings with only six stories, had been extended past the point of safety. The tower consisted of precast panels joined together without a structural frame. The connections relied, in large part, on friction. The apartment tower lacked alternate load paths to redistribute forces in the event of a partial collapse. When the structure was dismantled, investigators found appallingly poor workmanship at the critical connections between the panels. Subsequently, building codes in many countries have adopted structural integrity or “robustness” provisions that may be directly traced to the Ronan Point collapse.

I've looked at 3 other sites and they all seem to corroborate one another. I'm actually quite impressed with my OP now, especially the dates.

 

[bernardgreen]

Ironically if the explosion had been on a much lower floor then the extra weight on the wall panel joints may have prevented the panels from being dislodged.

 

[bernardgreen]

I'm actually quite impressed with my OP now, especially the dates.

Yes impressive.

 

[SUNRAY]

Ironically if the explosion had been on a much lower floor then the extra weight on the wall panel joints may have prevented the panels from being dislodged.

Yes I saw that, and if higher there would not have been so much weight to fall and destroy the lower floors. Very very ironic

 

[bernardgreen]

I vaguely remember comments about there being no fire or fire damage suggesting it had been a very low energy explosion.

 

[Adam_151]

Didn't it result in gas being banned in all such blocks, I seem to recall an old college tutor of mine saying that when he was on the tools in the 60s it was difficult to get the MK cooker control units (presumably the huge 6" square ones) because they were all being used on jobs to retrofit cooker circuits into tower blocks. I do recall when looking at the DNO risers in tower blocks locally that out of two blocks, the later one has much more uprated supplies (presumbly as it was designed from the get go as all electric), although there were no overload issues in the other one AFAIK

 

[flameport]

Didn't it result in gas being banned in all such blocks

Yes, hysteria about gas being incredibly dangerous and causing whole blocks of flats to collapse, so ban gas from high rise buildings.
Also partly responsible for Corgi (now Gas Safe).

In reality the collapse was due to multiple failures including design of the structure and incorrect construction of the building, gas was just the trigger that caused the inevitable collapse.

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

Before COVID-19 I worked every day in an ancient town which shall be nameless. An few years ago I was sitting at the computer and there was an enormous 'boom'. I went out into the street and noticed a number of pieces of paper drifting down from the sky. I picked one of them up and, ironically, it was a half burned gas bill with an address half a mile away. I walked up to the address and found a house in the middle of a terrace row which had disappeared along with parts of the neighbouring houses.
It turned out that a pensioner had lit the gas stove to make a cup of tea and, being at the centre of the resulting explosion, suffered virtually no injury. It turned out that the gas suppliers had been working on the gas main, and a leakage had entered the house through the space around the supply pipe. However it took nearly a year for them to admit liability. We have steadfastly refused to have gas in our house. I'm sure the average person is statistically safe, but one's experiences have a significant effect on perceived risk.

 

[Mottie]

This was where I was living at the time of the explosion. 36 Brixham Road. Didn’t even wake me up and I went to school that day. In the afternoon, my mum came and got me and we went to my aunts as there was a rumour that the whole block was going to fall down! Brixham Road is no longer there now of course, slum clearance. We were one of the last to move out and I think every mouse and rat in the area moved in with us. Up the top of our street on that bomb site, used to be an Italian prisoner of war camp - we used to play in the Nissan huts.

 

[ericmark]

Sorry if I jumped in with both feet, it annoyed me that a so called electrician was trying to push the use of gas for cooking.

We use to say now we are cooking on gas, meaning doing it fast, and to be fair the old contact cooking which needed ground base pans, and slightest bit of coke left on hot plate would slow everything up.

However things have moved on, today the electric hob and oven use far less energy to gas, and the main advantage is a cooler kitchen, since gas is cheaper there is no real cost advantage, but naked flame is never really safe. Be it a candle or cooker. However I was wrong to bring up Ronan Point to try an make a point, sorry.

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

Sorry if I jumped in with both feet, it annoyed me that a so called electrician was trying to push the use of gas for cooking.

That was not an electrician in any shape or form. The person referred to has no training, and has no copy of BS7671, and is just a troll of several electrical forums because he has a number of ill-informed prejudices about the english language and what he thinks the regulations should say if he were ruler of the world (god forbid).

Regarding your example, it is in any case likely to become government policy to outlaw gas, for environmental reasons, so it is probably not a great idea to invest in gas appliances anyway.