Earthquake Rocks Bangkok: Building Collapses with 40 people inside

[Don Giovanni]

1 minute ago, ronnie50 said:

So it was a joint project with Ital-Thai Construction and China Railway Construction number 10. 

Anyone remember this?

https://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/crimecourtscalamity/calamity/2024/08/26/tunnel-collapse-while-constructing-wall-at-high-speed-rail-project-in-korat/#google_vignette 

 

I think we all know if this building collapse happened in China the CEOs would have already been claiming refugee status in the UK or USA.

 

So what's happening here? The mayor holds a press conference and said 169 buildings had structural cracks - oh, but only buildings under construction in Bangkok, he said. All the others (completed offices and condos) are safe. Well the videos and photos now available on line say otherwise. 

Finally a sane reply.

 

The Don.

[BritManToo]

I'm impressed that only one building fell down.

The way my home in CM was shaking I'm impressed it didn't fall down either.

[Rimmer]

An off topic  personal attack and replies have been removed  @hankypankee

 

9. You will not post disruptive or inflammatory messages. You will respect other members and post in a civil manner. Personal attacks, insults or hate speech posted on the forum or sent by private message are not allowed.

 

 

[KireB]

17 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

"Anyone thinking of buying a high rise condo will now have second thoughts".

Why?  Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of buildings in Thailand are all still standing, one, under construction, and only one collapsed.

 

"The list goes on and on..."

No it doesn't.  What "list"?

Did you miss the news the last 20 years?

[Don Giovanni]

Anyone remember this?

 

He is the president of the company that was building the high-rise that fell down yesterday.

 

He was also caught hunting endangered wild animals.

 

The Don.

[Liverpool Lou]

4 minutes ago, RUSirius said:

.We'll send the short bus round for you. What was the address again? 4th floor, shophouse on Pattaya soi 5 wasn't it?

"No, far from it, but "we"?    Who's the collective "we" you seem to think that you represent?  

[richard_smith237]

1 hour ago, Don Giovanni said:

Any condo/apartment owners/renters living in BKK, a word of advice - get out now!

 

There is picture/video evidence of structural damage to tall buildings throughout Bangkok all over Thai social media.

 

No high-rise building is safe from collapse there now, imo.

 

Come to Japan. Our tall buildings are designed to be earthquake resistant - they sway when the quakes hit, they don't collapse like a clumsy deck of cards..

The Don.

 

No, there isn’t - there is no evidence (as yet) of catastrophic damage, only images of the predictable: superficial harm. Dislodged tiles, cosmetic cracks in non-structural walls, and fractured cladding. Hardly the architectural apocalypse some would like to imagine.

 

Simple explanation since the concept seems elusive to you. Think of it like a minor car accident: shattered headlights, a dented bumper, some scraped panels. The car still drives because the frame - the actual structure - remains intact. This is the essence of superficial damage, it looks bad.

 

These buildings did precisely what they were engineered to do. They flexed, they swayed, they absorbed the shock - all by deliberate design.

 

Without such ductility, rigidity would be their undoing. They would crack, snap, and fail.

 

Architects and engineers understand this intimately; it is Seismic Design 101. But perhaps this is news to you.

 

The earth itself is not static. It is plastic, dynamic, and unruly. Bangkok sits atop an ancient lakebed - a soft, sedimentary basin - a fact so elementary that it is cited in every relevant textbook. Seismologists even have a name for the phenomenon: the Mexico City Effect, after the devastation in 1985. Bangkok is practically the textbook case today.

 

Japan, by contrast, dances to a different geological tune. Major fault boundaries, higher-energy quakes, and vastly different soil mechanics.

 

Japanese buildings are crafted for that reality, just as Bangkok’s buildings are tailored to their own. Consider Taipei 101 and its colossal tuned mass damper - the swinging ball - engineered to mitigate sway in tall buildings, not because the structure is flawed, but because height amplifies movement.

 

Combine all of the above knowledge and we soon see a picture that your musings are nothing more than that if an ill-informed, uneducated fool less mentally prepared for such a discussion than the most mediocre of laymen - like a trainee bricky mixing cement but attempting to advise on the structural complexities of Seismic Isolation Bearings.

 

In fact you've avoided any sensible discussion on the subject instead nudging bigotry to the fray and in doing so highliting your own fundamental intellectual flaws - a perfect example of a famous quote: "Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt"

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ronnie50]

15 hours ago, MikeandDow said:

Well you can say that building did not meet thai building code !!  must be big coruption gone on ! but this will be the last you hear of it "Swept under the rug"

Ch3 today is showing a recent (?) media launch of the construction of the new Thai government audit building after the external concrete infrastructure was complete. Big Chinese sign hanging from the top floors and a whole team of Chinese at the base and a banner. What is most interesting is the video shots from that time when the TV camera panned down into the clearly visible lower floors (mezanine levels I guess), and it became clear the main supporting structures were in the centre of the building - not the external four corners. They seemed quite close together. Hopefully the video will become more available to see more clearly. In any case, why is a Chinese company building an important Thai government building? The fast rail link can be adjacent to it.

[Mr Meeseeks]

3 minutes ago, ronnie50 said:

Ch3 today is showing a recent (?) media launch of the construction of the new Thai government audit building after the external concrete infrastructure was complete. Big Chinese sign hanging from the top floors and a whole team of Chinese at the base and a banner. What is most interesting is the video shots from that time when the TV camera panned down into the clearly visible lower floors (mezanine levels I guess), and it became clear the main supporting structures were in the centre of the building - not the external four corners. They seemed quite close together. Hopefully the video will become more available to see more clearly. In any case, why is a Chinese company building an important Thai government building? The fast rail link can be adjacent to it.

 

 

 

 

[ExpatOilWorker]

This is how it came down.

 

[Rolo89]

6 high rises in BKK already declared uninhabitable. Some of them are brand new and were supposed to withstand this.

 

The condo market in BKK is going to have dire issues.

 

https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php/?id=2407409

[Ralf001]

1 hour ago, Chongalulu said:

So will you too eschew travelling on the roads which statistically is orders of magnitude more dangerous than staying in a high building? Try thinking.... 

I was on the Bang Na expressway yesterday when it happened, I got to my destination only to see thousands of workers evacuated into the streets from the companies in the area.

 

I managed to find the GM of the comapny I was visiting to ask WTF was gooing on, he told me there was an earthquake.

 

I got straight back into my car and headed back to chonburi.... on land based roads that had no overhead expressways !

[ronnie50]

24 minutes ago, fondue zoo said:

 

 

I read an engineers comment saying that as it appears to collapse in on itself, it may have been caused by the the piles not being deep enough into bedrock. Any clay would have liquefied and foundations collapsed.  

 

As I posted earlier - a third hand story to me from an engineer - said bedrock is so far down in Bangkok, that engineering firms just guess how deep to drive/dig supporting columns in the soft Bangkok earth (some kind of depth-vs-height measurement). It's 3rd hand account and could be wrong.

[Cameroni]

I was amazed to read that Chinese scientists had predicted the Myanmar earthqauake. They had observed the Myanmar plates being locked in without moving for too long and on the basis of this, BEFORE the quake, predicted an accumulation of energy and big earthquake in Myanmar.

 

Hats off to the Chinese scientists.

[Mr Meeseeks]

1 minute ago, Rolo89 said:

6 high rises in BKK already declared unsafe. Some of them were very new and were supposed to withstand this.

 

The condo market in BKK is going to have dire issues.

 

https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php/?id=2407409

 

And so it begins...

[ikke1959]

52 minutes ago, Liverpool Lou said:

50% of them probably don't even know where the US is!

Ask a Thai on a map to show where Thailand is... You would be surprised

[Rolo89]

2 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

 

And so it begins...

That's 6 declared uninhabitable just from inital basic mostly visual inspections.

 

The proper structural inspections won't be done for at least another week to reveal the full extent of the damage. It could get so much worse.

[Don Giovanni]

14 minutes ago, Cameroni said:

Hats off to the Chinese scientists.

But not to the Chinese engineers though, eh..

 

The Don.

[Don Giovanni]

10 minutes ago, Rolo89 said:

That's 6 declared uninhabitable just from inital basic mostly visual inspections.

 

The proper structural inspections won't be done for at least another week to reveal the full extent of the damage. It could get so much worse.

And it will.

 

Much worse.

 

The Don.

[Don Giovanni]

22 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

 

@alex8912

@richard_smith237

 

Who is the fool now?

 

22 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

6 high rises in BKK already declared unsafe. Some of them were very new and were supposed to withstand this.

 

The condo market in BKK is going to have dire issues.

 

https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php/?id=2407409

 

[jas007]

22 minutes ago, Rolo89 said:

6 high rises in BKK already declared uninhabitable. Some of them are brand new and were supposed to withstand this.

 

The condo market in BKK is going to have dire issues.

 

https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php/?id=2407409

Does anyone know which six buildings have been declared uninhabitable? Someone must know.

 

I think my days of thinking about living in Bangkok are officially over.  At least not in any high rise. 

 

 

[RayWright]

3 hours ago, supersomchai said:

...

 in that got shook up.How badly have they been weakened ?And will it be covered up?

It's called 'cladding' in the building trade.

Non load bearing, potential fire risk, but aesthetically pleasing. 

Ticks all the local building regs.

[Ralf001]

10 minutes ago, Don Giovanni said:

But not to the Chinese engineers though, eh..

 

The Don.

Engineering company is Italian/Thai.

 

Chinese construction, Supervised by a Thai JV company.

[CharlieH]

16 hours ago, geisha said:

Hi , I’m in France at the moment glued to the BBC and their reporters.  Not much news from Thailand / Bangkok, mostly tourists and their filming being shown , some live. The collapsed building , and thousands of people running like hell out of shopping malls / condos, and waiting in the parks. I don’t believe they have received any instructions from the government so far. Lots of falling concrete etc and the spectacular overflowing top floor pool that looked like the hotel opposite the Erawan shrine . Obviously worries about  the sky train and metro.

As for poor Myanmar , they’ve asked for international help, rare, but not much news / phots, except collapsed bridges. Well know more tomorrow .

Im very surprised that ASEAN Now hasn’t followed this up better??

 

 

 

[Don Giovanni]

Just now, Ralf001 said:

Engineering company is Italian/Thai.

 

Chinese construction.

I am aware, ralf.

 

The endangered animal killer is responsible, as I have mentioned above.

 

The Don.

[Rolo89]

1 minute ago, jas007 said:

Does anyone know which six buildings have been declared uninhabitable? Someone must know.

 

I think my days of thinking about living in Bangkok are officially over.  At least not in any high rise. 

 

 

• Condo Life Lat Phrao Valley, Chatuchak District

• Condo Skyrise Avenue Sukhumvit 64, Phra Khanong District

https://www.facebook.com/share/1FRLjiEFcU/

 

 

[Ralf001]

Just now, Don Giovanni said:

I am aware, ralf.

 

The endangered animal killer is responsible, as I have mentioned above.

 

The Don.

And yuet you blame Chinese engineers.... are you racist or just plain ignorant ?

[Don Giovanni]

5 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:

are you racist or just plain ignorant ?

You choose.

 

The Don.

[homeseeker]

I am scheduled to move and rent a low rise apartment in Silom after Songkran. (deposit paid contract not signed )

The  owner says:
"after further inspection no damage after assessment. All structure is sound and unaffected. Our low rise building is safe to accommodate"

 

I have messaged some acquaintances in same area who say no damage where they stay.

 

I am minded moving in as per agreement.

 

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?

 

 

 

 

 

[brewsterbudgen]

2 minutes ago, homeseeker said:

I am scheduled to move and rent a low rise apartment in Silom after Songkran. (deposit paid contract not signed )

The  owner says:
"after further inspection no damage after assessment. All structure is sound and unaffected. Our low rise building is safe to accommodate"

 

I have messaged some acquaintances in same area who say no damage where they stay.

 

I am minded moving in as per agreement.

 

Anyone have any thoughts or ideas?

 

 

 

 

 

It's unlikely Bangkok will be affected by another earthquake for many decades.  I can't think of any reason not to move in.