This is what happens when buildings are designed the right way While a powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck Venezuela, this building remained standing, proof that great engineering and quality construction save lives Huge respect to the engineers who designed it and the workers who built it

It’s damaged but at least the people that were inside were able to move out.

Saved lives. Very admirable. Building still needs to be demolished.

The columns crumble where there is no shear wall. The steel rebar saved lives but not the building. The design is not excellent.

100%

I agree. That rebar will stretch a mile before it snaps. The correct technique and amount of steel was used in the cement. Evidently the collapsed buildings did not do this.

Ten more seconds and that one was coming down too.

Major buckling but it did hold up and save lives/contents. Not reparable though and must be demolished.

Are You sure. Looks like one more Shake and it’s Down. I think they got lucky

Apparently all the buildings that collapsed were built by china… a Hugo Chavez project. Socialism at it again

This is fucking shit .... in out country CHILE... buildings dont even get cracked with a 7.5 earthquake ... you know absolutely nothing of anti sismic constructions

Venezuelan here. All engineers are saying precisely that unsafe buildings have exposed and bent rebars. Those buildings are actually uninhabitable.

This type of building surly saved lives. My question about after, do they repair this type of damage or tear down and rebuild?

Too much space between columns, we dont see how deeper was the fundation

maybe it's standing, but it didn't survive. has to brought down and can't be repaired.

Correction: Not one, but two earthquakes, the first of 7.1 and the second of 7.5

That building has collapsed and must be demolished. It served its purpose of protecting lives, but it is now uninhabitable. The damage to all the columns is irreparable.

Hubo miles de edificios que resistieron con pocos daños. A ese los sostuvieron unos ángeles de la guarda bien arremangados. Faltó un segundo más y se desploma.

la gente piensa que un edificio no debería dañarse en un sismo y eso es imposible, lo que se busca siempre es que se mantenga en pie

@grok Is this building habitable again?

If a wall-based structural system, like the one used in Chile, had been used instead of beam-and-column frames, the damage would have been much less severe. We have had many earthquakes with a magnitude of over 8, and only one building has collapsed.

South america is known to have buildings with zero steel and poor quality control. The bad part its literally designed to be a tomb.

Concrete and rebar should win the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

You shouldn’t flaunt your ignorance. It’s embarrassing for everyone else.

@grok shouldn’t the building be built to withstand an earthquake and not have any damage?

They should built like in Japan

Yes and no, the closed ties for the columns could be closer together. You can see this for some of the columns where the rebar buckled outwards but overall it’s done decently enough it survived. (Licensed structural engineer here)

Looks like bad construction The concrete on all the columns on the 1st floor has cracked, exposing the rebar, and there are no shear walls, is simply a faulty design. Even without aftershocks, the building could collapse at any moment Pure luck the building has not collapsed

More "luck", than engineering.

I don't think so, that building has to be demolish, you should see the buildings in Perú how they resist the earthquakes without any damage.

India Nepal Myanmar Pakistan all need to add steel beam to first & or second floor at minimum core. Big open store fronts are a risk.

Good construction! However, I suspect that the concrete mix was light on cement content. The people living in the building are very fortunate, but they will have to take the building down because it is unsafe & can not be fixed!

It's a bad design, those columns doesn't have the necesary longitudinal and transversal steal

It is also about frequency and orientation. Maybe they were just lucky.

La torre latinoamericana ha pasado tres grandes terremotos en México y creo que ningún cristal se vio afectado.