Engineer says building collapse in Florida should not cause concern in Las Vegas

Steve Marcus

Farro Tofighi, a structural engineer with DeSimone Consulting Engineers, stands in DeSimone’s Las Vegas office on Wednesday, July 14, 2021.

By Brian Horwath (contact person)

Sunday 18 July 2021 | 2 am

Farro Tofighi, a structural engineer who has worked on some of the most iconic high-rise buildings on the Las Vegas Strip, has a message for anyone here concerned about building safety in the wake of the apartment tragedy in Florida last month.

“It rarely happens,” said Tofegy, managing director at DeSimone Consulting Engineers, a global company with offices in Las Vegas, New York and Miami, among other cities. “I don’t think the people here have any reason to be concerned.”

Nearly 100 people were found dead under the rubble of an apartment building in Surfside, Florida, that collapsed last month. Others are still missing and presumed dead.

Hours after the tragedy, Tofaqi began receiving phone calls from concerned friends and colleagues across the country wondering if their building might also be in danger.

“It baffles me that this is happening,” said Tofegy, who moved to Las Vegas in the early 1990s to work on building the MGM Grand. “If I were a condo owner or a building owner in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have to worry about your building collapsing. We design buildings well.”

He must know my compromise. He was instrumental in building Cosmopolitan, Treasure Island, Circa Las Vegas and World Resorts.

Since he has also worked on buildings in South Florida, Tovegy said he knows the climate there — which is humid near a major source of salt water — can be tough on buildings.

He said it was unusual for a building to collapse “in a state of dormancy” with construction completed without any kind of natural disaster such as a hurricane.

While some local guidelines can be different on a case-by-case basis, Tovegy said that new construction in the United States generally follows the guidelines set by the International Code Council, a set of building code standards that are updated every three years.

These guidelines – known as I-Codes – are followed by the three main local jurisdictions where the tallest buildings are located in the valley. Those, of course, are Las Vegas, Clark County, and Henderson.

Once the building is up and the certificate of occupancy issued, according to Las Vegas and Henderson sources, there are no more scheduled structural integrity checks by municipalities unless a specific problem or complaint arises.

For example, because the 35-story Circa building in downtown Las Vegas was completed last year, city inspectors are not required to constantly check its structural integrity.

Clark County officials have not made a building inspector available for this story, although it does have a team of “structural inspectors” working to certify projects within its jurisdiction, according to its website.

Most of the high-rise buildings along the Las Vegas Boulevard resort corridor — including the massive Resorts World project — fall under the county’s jurisdiction.

“In the United States, we all use the same symbol, and it’s one of the best standards in the world,” Toveji said. “Even if you’re not an innovative architect and you’re just using code, the building should be fine. In general, structural engineers are conservative people — we’re responsible for the safety of life. When you sign the drawings, you have your neck there.”

In southern Nevada, there are no hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis, and the intense heat doesn’t have much effect on concrete or steel, Tofeji said.

The soil here—mostly of the solid caliche type—also conducive to successful construction, but it’s an area with some seismic risks.

A 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck areas several hours north of Las Vegas near the California-Nevada border earlier this month, a fairly common occurrence in the region.

It is not unusual for people in places like Carson City or Reno to feel the effects of an earthquake, although it is less common in the Las Vegas Valley.

However, Majid Baqniyat, assistant director of construction and fire safety for Henderson, said it was possible that Las Vegas could one day be in the path of a major earthquake that could cause problems.

He’d Know Baknett – He worked for the Los Angeles City Department of Earthquake tracking in the ’80s and ’90s and was on staff when the deadly Northridge earthquake in 1994.

“The main concern in Nevada is earthquakes because of the area we’re in,” Bakniat said. “When we look at the structural blueprints of a building, the concern about seismic activity is very important. So far, thank God, we haven’t seen any major earthquakes in our area. Will it ever happen? Could. We don’t know when because it is not possible to predict an earthquake. When The Northridge earthquake hit, we had no idea it was coming.”

As in other major local jurisdictions, when a large building is planned in Henderson, engineers will check how much stress the structure can handle from a gravity load perspective—people, furniture, and just about anything inside the building—and from a side loading perspective.

The lateral loads are pressure from high winds or earthquakes, Tofeji said.

In cases of high winds, tall buildings are designed to be able to move and sway to a limited degree.

Therefore, during a wind storm, someone in a high-rise building may feel that the building is moving a little, but there is no need to worry. It’s all part of the building’s design.

“The building in Florida was a high-rise apartment building, and we haven’t traditionally seen a lot of these types of buildings in Las Vegas,” Tovegy said. “We have more of them now, including some in CityCenter. Our buildings here in Las Vegas will not fall apart, but I recommend regular maintenance. People should not ignore the obvious signs of deterioration that may or may not be a problem.”

Sam Morris

Harmon, in the center, is designed to rise to 49 stories, with condominiums built above the hotel floors. But the discovery and attempts to fix a critical construction error made CityCenter developer MGM Mirage decide to cancel the apartment part of the project.

One of Las Vegas’ most notorious construction failures in recent memory occurred over a decade ago when inspectors halted construction on a planned 47-story Harmon complex building within the Strip’s CityCenter development.

The inspectors found that the steel used on the building’s first 26 floors likely would not support the remaining 22 floors. What was completed of the building was eventually destroyed, although the CityCenter development continued to open in 2009.

“There were some defects in that building that the inspectors and engineers discovered during construction,” said Tafiqi. “But it was actually safe even where it was built, so they didn’t have to remove it. It would have required a lot of modification to add additional floors, which the owner chose not to do. Publicity and perception could become an issue in such a case. They had to consider whether Someone would buy an apartment in a building that everyone was saying was unsafe.”

Like everyone else who has paid attention to the national news cycle over the past few weeks, Dina Rosselli is aware of the apartment collapse that has occurred near Miami.

Roselli lives on more than 20 floors in one of the apartment buildings in the Turnberry Towers in Las Vegas, but she said she’s not concerned about the structural integrity of the place she calls home.

“I’m aware of what happened, but it’s not something I’m thinking about happening here,” Rosselli said. “It’s very rare for something like this to happen, and I know the folks at Turnberry Towers keep track of units maintenance and checks. I feel confident I’ll notice if something isn’t right. I feel completely safe here.”

As local and national investigators and officials continue to piece together the mystery of the Surfside building’s collapse, Tovegy said structural engineering professionals will learn from it as the answers are discovered.

It’s all part of an ever-evolving field. Besides, he said, the buildings in the valley are young and are nowhere near the environmental factors here that are found in places like Florida.

“A 40-year-old building in Florida might be the equivalent of an 80 or 100-year-old building here,” Tuveji said. “I hear people get nervous here, but there’s no need for that. Could a plane crash? Yes, but that doesn’t happen often. Yes, anything can happen in this world, but people shouldn’t worry about what happened in Florida happening here. “.

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