Design Flaw, that Almost Wiped Out an New York City Skyscraper

The Citigroup Center in Manhattan, New York, formerly known as the Citicorp Center, had a fatal flaw that could have led to a major disaster, killing thousands of people.
In 1978, the skyscraper's chief structural engineer, William LeMessurier, discovered a potentially fatal flaw in the building's design: the skyscraper's bolted joints were too weak to withstand 70-mile-per-hour wind gusts.
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[@DanceySteveYNWA]

Don't cut corners

[@akeshp]

underrated comment

[@areaofeffect100]

ha! hahahaha funny pun

[@bonnie.duncan]

2:24 - why does the narrator keep saying “he” and “him” when referring to the student? Diane Hartley was her name...and she didn’t just have some questions...she knew it would fail...

[@paulhamilton7854]

The general understanding of the case is that LeMessurier remembered it as his being called by a male student, so that is what the reporter reported and why the narrator uses male pronouns. It wasn't until the mid 90s that Diane Hartley leaned about the retrofits, evacuation plans, etc. While working on her thesis, Diane spoke to a junior engineer in LeMessurier's office, she never spoke to LeMessurier himself. So, he probably didn't know it was a female student who made this discovery. Diane didn't learn about the impact a student had on the building until seeing a special on TV (possibly this one). It wasn't until 2003 that she learned that she was probably the student. The makers of this video didn't know who the student was at the time of making it, and LeMessurier (remembering something that happened long ago) may have never known it was a female student or may have misremembered. Now we can give her the credit she deserves, but they couldn't do so when the narration was recorded because the identity of the student was unknown. (Sources: 99% Invisible - "Structural Integrity" and www.lemessurier.com/sites/default/files/publications/_CiticorpCtrFlawPrincetonGrad%20ModernSteelConstr%20Oct2012.pdf )

[@othername1000]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/q56QaHyidsl0qsksi=Om6KdyXA89P_aC5c

[@RobertWilliams-mk8pl]

Imagine how often potential disasters are averted without the public being made aware.

[@christopherboucher9271]

It's for our own good tbh

[@christopheradams5607]

Imagine if this building did tip over, the damage done would have been at least 3 to 5 times worse then 9/11.

[@csn6234]

Considering that less than 3,000 people died during the collapse of the WTC on 9/11, I'd say the damage would be about 100 times that.

[@AG-AG]

It could've demolished almost all of midtown in 1 or 2 minutes, Thousands of people would have benn kiled, and the cleanup and reconstruction wouldv'e taken years

[@FalconSpace]

Had their been a hurricane it’s unlikely people would have been inside the building. You don’t hang out in the office during a hurricane.

[@eat_your_cereal]

About 200.000 people dead

[@berjaboy]

Used to work in NYC and walked by that building everyday during the mid to late 80s. Even then, and long before most people including myself knew about the safety issues involving this tower, I used to think to myself as I walked past it; Damn! People have to be nuts to work in that building! The base is pretty frightening when you're standing right next to it. The building itself is huge and the four column must be at least 100 feet high. You wonder how the employees working in it can do their jobs effectively when they're probably worrying if it going to fall over on a breezy day.

[@2Brian]

Same here. i couldn't understand how the damn thing stood up -- and the sight of it worried me.

[@ahyush1]

There was no problem with it standing. It was designed to be strong enough to not crush down on itself. The problem was with under-design for wind. Your point is not really a structural deficiency. They did not change how the building looked. They only made the connections stronger. So, even if it looks like it will fall to someone who doesn't understand statics, it will not :)

[@bretsonenstein]

If I was in that church I'd be praying very hard!

[@p_louis]

That ending is really comforting... 😬

[@tdolz]

Lesson learned, say "No" to all contractor change requests.

[@volleyballjerry]

Agree!!!!! Bethlehem Steel was responsible for fabrication and construction. They may advise changes in design but the *analysis* and the *approval* must be completed by a licensed qualified structural engineer. What astonishes me is that a design change such as this (going from welded connections to bolted connections) mandated that be communicated all the way to LeMessurier himself since it was his design. It did not happen. I ran the numbers based on the estimated dimensions of the H-shaped steel plates and the original connections (bolted) have a tensile strength of around 400 kps (400,000 lbs.). Assuming a tensile strength for structural steel of 72.5 ksi (72,500 psi), and a cross sectional area of the repair plates to be 28 sq. in., the strength of the new connections with the plates (there are two of them now- one on each side of the columns being joined) is 400+2030+2030 = 4460 kps (4,460,000 lbs.). This is *eleven* times stronger than the original connection. The columns themselves have a tensile strength of 5,511 kps (based on a cross sectional area of 76 sq. in.). Three-inch steel would not have made the structure any stronger (since the joints would then actually exceed the tensile strength of the columns) but they could have gotten away with 1 inch thick plate and still have been in great shape. I am not sure how available three-inch steel plate would have been but I do know that two-inch plate is very easy to find. Translation - Citicorp could survive an earthquake, 1000-year storm, or King Kong swinging from it and this thing will *never* come down. You may break every single window in the building but, short of nuclear war, this beautiful building will last ten centuries.

[@5610winston]

We had an EF-2tornado hit downtown Atlanta about 12 years ago; I had inspected rebar the Friday afternoon before the storm, and on Monday morning the column bars were bent well off the vertical. Blew a lot of windows out of a cylindrical hotel building. Matching glass was no longer available, so they had to replace every window in the building.

[@DFEUERMAN]

Rename this documentary "Too Big to Fail"

[@MisamigosmedicenRamirez]

La verdadera historia del rascacielos que pudo colapsar en pleno Manhattan y sus 59 PISOS DE TERROR contada por primera vez en español: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qovKlpmehJt1baM ¡No te la pierdas!

[@0898007]

I remember watching this on TV when I was a teenager in the mid 90's on Channel 4 or something. Thanks for posting.

[@jeshkam]

Do you happen to know the actual name of this film or series?

[@0898007]

@@jeshkam Think it was a one-off, don't remember the name.

[@jeshkam]

@@0898007 It says "All Fall Down" at the beginning, but I can't find it on IMDB. But thanks anyway.

[@jeshkam]

@@0898007 Got it! kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKjTfaBta7p4rsk 🙂

[@1209Misty]

25:00 If it takes an hour or two to determine whether or not you’re going to evacuate people when it comes down to it and the time comes, then most likely they weren’t going to evacuate anyone but themselves!!!!

[@zippy3711]

We usually learn something new when the structure is on the ground. We have to learn how to do this more often.

[@Paranormalin416]

I love how they totally neglect to mention the student that was the real cause for discovering this problem. Instead, you get a bunch of rich old white men taking all the credit, when it was their fault to begin with, and this brilliant woman studying what is the one who she gets all the credit! Makes me so angry!

[@christopherhall8788]

Been looking for this Discovery channel video for years

[@joycenobbs2871]

I have this documentary on video but unfortunately not on dvd. Working at it

[@DanRustle]

Joyce Nobbs don’t bother. It’s on KZbin forever

[@jeshkam]

What's the name of this documentary?

[@ncooty]

@2:40 Mr. Le Messurier appears to have fabricated some of the story about his interaction with the student. He likely merely received the message from one of his underlings and just assumed the student was male. It wasn't; it was Diane Hartley at Princeton, and Le Messurier did little to help identify her. 99 Percent Invisible did a very good piece on this, including interviews with Ms. Hartley and her professor at the time.

[@MKIVWWI]

I just came from that site! Yep, this LeMessurier sounds like a real "pompous a**". He had the nerve to claim the humble Lutheran Church that this building covered was the "height of Victorian ugliness"... yet his crazy design could have fallen over and killed thousands. What a jerk he was.

[@hogtek2497]

Where is the source doeeeeee

[@csn6234]

Actually, he did take a phone call from her. I watched an interview with her professor on KZbin, which led me to this video. He said she called the project engineer up and told him she didn't understand how the building withstood strong winds. To his credit, instead of reacting defensively, he listened to her presentation with an open mind. You claim that Le Messurier "likely" received the message from an underling. How do you know? Were you there? Unless you were, don't criticize people and pretend to know the true story. People like you are the reason why rumors and false stories go viral on the internet.

[@robertsmeagles1030]

@@csn6234 Well said, Chris.

[@dennisbingham3769]

@@csn6234 But Le Messurier is on the video referring to the student who called as a "he." The narrator also uses the masculine pronoun in referring to the student. Did Le Messurier not want to admit that he confessed his error to a female? Or, more charitably, did he forget over twenty years the details of the phone call, so blown away was he, so to speak, by the content of the call and the decisive activity that it launched him into that he forgot details of the call itself? How did the identity of the student emerge?

[@lowercasehill5351]

winds are getting stronger now. i hope all of NYC skyscrapers can handle whatever comes their way. maybe should shorten some.

[@kentslocum]

This is whp we need investigative journalists--to uncover the lies.

[@chinadiscotica]

Jim Dwyer really sounds like George Costanza 😅

[@stanbimi]

Watch the assessment of the key players, like Arthur Nusbaum ( proj mgr, starting 25:25). The days when Americans cooperate and get things done instead of blaming others are long gone.

[@craigbikes8831]

4:27 that literally looks horrible and obstructive in every way

[@ed1pk]

What happens during an earthquake?

[@nicvandewetering6968]

Mode shape 1. Maybe mode shape 2, That is all

[@nicvandewetering6968]

Supposed to be a period

[@colo2811]

I love the name drop of Frank Sinatra

[@dnomyarnostaw]

Overt sexism. The student that picked up the error wasn't a HE "In June 1978, Princeton University engineering student Diane Hartley wrote her undergraduate thesis, “Implications of a Major Office Complex: Scientific, Social and Symbolic Implications” on The Citicorp Center."

[@yodaiam1000]

99% of the structural engineers at the time were male. It was a fairly save assumption. If you had to choose a pronoun, "he" would be most likely correct. Even nowadays, the profession is still dominated by males. Not too many women want to get into structural engineering.

[@Ivan_Lopez2024]

They should of just built the church on top of the tower

[@tiagobcouto]

Nice documentary! Bad songs choices...

[@jeshkam]

Excellent music by Mr. Brian Eno & U2.

[@danielbustamante9682]

Im no engineer but what kind of an idiot designs a building with the supporting columns away from all four corners ????

[@danielbustamante9682]

@Jeno Tejada thank you for your input but I still think that this could have gone horribly wrong. Hopefully this building will never fail.

[@jamesdavis5096]

Maybe all the booze clouded their minds?

[@pedropires6138]

the production of the documentary back in 1995 just assumed that the mysterious student who called the head engineer was a man. it was a woman!

[@1209Misty]

Wow!!!! This could have taken out so many peoples lives and nobody was held accountable 🤔

[@steveheist6426]

"nobody was held accountable"... What's with people demanding arrests every time a mistake is made? They fixed it, avoided the issue, and you'd have difficulty finding one person to punish for it. The architects intended the beams to be welded (and therefore safe) but at some point the contractors hired to actually build the structure got clearance to just bolt them (hence the flaw).

[@TheUnlimited001]

They held themselves accountable and worked as quickly as possible to fix the issue. They also reported the problem to officials.

[@fordnut4914]

That building been standing their this long if it ain't went no where in 40 yrs it ain't going no where. Period.

[@petergriffin383]

It ain't about that. The building ain't goin nowhere anyhow

[@bionicpuma2920]

fort nut - Ever hear of a building called the Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida?

[@MKIVWWI]

4:27: "were part of an ingenious system to brace the structure..." I think not. They also screwed-up the floor-space of various offices, as that picture of the gal at her desk clearly shows. Crappy design, crappy execution.

[@gro_skunk]

I'd like to see you design a structure that could support the building without sacrificing windowed offices

[@matthewk6731]

Agreed. It is ugly on the inside with the beams running through offices. Terrible design start to finish. The guys at the top probably have unrestricted views. As long as they were taken care of they didn't care about the underlings.

[@1209Misty]

6:23 Half ass!!

[@ianbo3764]

Gross negligence by the engineer, architect, planners, citicorp. They all should be jailed for this conspiracy that could have cost thousands of lives.. Throw these scum bags in jail..

[@christodd3361]

Ian Bo most of them are already dead, sport. This happened 40 years ago.

[@leoedwards6289]

hUBRIS BEYOND MEASURE; FOLLY BEYOND EXPLANATION! ! ! Once the world was told by overpaid fools that even God couldn't sink the Titanic.

[@stiiimes]

This documentary is so poorly constructed I bet the Citicorp architect made it

[@mkay6089]

Boring video lots of music, dramatic shaky cam, repeating the same stuff over and over and slow to get to the point. The story could be told in about 8 mins

[@csn6234]

And yet, you watched it. Asshole.

[@vitox2241]

Something nostalgic about old style docs like this one..