Surprised by how seriously the government took building safety and proceeded to demolish unsafe buildings out of caution. These videos tend to end on a more sour note about how governments and companies look away from disasters, so this was a breath of fresh air.
Singapore is a rich micro nation, so managing this kind of aspect is way easier, given the scale of the territory. Besides, tourism is a big part of their economy and they cannot afford to lose the trust of visitors.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of those buildings were government owned and leased out. Probably made the whole process a lot smoother than it would be in other countries, no building owners or insurance companies to drag out compensation claims through the courts.
The bravery and expertise of Tommy Gallagher and his men should never be forgotten. They risked their own lives to rescue others and were duly honoured in Singapore and applauded at home in Ireland. Without their warnings, the rubble would probably have caved in on the survivors trapped below.
After hearing so many tales of Government inefficiency in addressing disaster, it is amazing to hear one where a country took the matter seriously, compensated the families of victims, honored the rescuers and first responders, and even implemented regulations to avoid this ever happening again.
It's so rare these stories end with everyone taking accountability and making everyone's interests are taken care of. -ID'ed the problem: check -Didn't force blame on a single person for a compounding issue: check -Enacted several new mandates that did not allow grandfathering under old mandates for unsafe buildings: check -Enacted several new and better funded disaster relief programs: check -Compensated survivors, immediate family of victims, and additional compensation for children of victims: check -Acknowledged the people with the most expert knowledge without extensive arguments over who was in charge instead focusing on saving as many people as fast as possible: check -Realised a cover up and mickey mouse trial would do more harm than good to tourism and stayed mostly transparent about the whole thing internationally: check
Yes, I was surprised the government of Singapore did want they did and how long the investigation of the collapse have taken. It seems it was through and check every possible reason why it happen. Maybe the rest of world's governments should take notes on how to do an investigation without the politics involved in those types of disaster investigations.
Well, draconian states can get certain things right if they decide to. Even Nazi Germany - hypothetically if they'd had to organize a disaster relief, I bet it would've been super effective.
Singapore took this tragedy as a lesson to improve and to have a better and safe modern infrastructure and it succeed by becoming one of the top countries of high quality and safe modern infrastructure in the world! The reaction and response of the government after the collapse of the hotel was incredibly adequate and impressive by organizing a general inspection of many other buildings, how they took care and assisted the families of the victims and how they awarded the rescuers for the great heroism effort was so perfect!! This is proof how we can learn and improve to be better even out of negative and tragic events in life.
@@gilzor9376 Nice logical fallacy you got there mate. The burden of proof is on you. When you cite something, you mention the source you took your information from.
Very impressive response by the state after the collapse. New regulations and demolitions to other substandard buildings. Compensation and care for victims families etc etc. For a newish regime this is applaudable.
Honestly, the response shouldn't have been 'impressive'. I find it disheartening that we're impressed by the response to this disaster because the response usually is laughable rather than the minimum of professionalism, compassion and common decensy.
I was going to say the same thing. Although they should have made sure the original designer was qualified to do the job, the way they responded was really good.
Seems likely they were untidy in laying out the calculations. Probably calculated it, then did complicated calculations for live load then forgot to add the previous dead-load into the calculations.
Thank goodness for Tommy Gallagher and the Irish tunnellers, their courage and gallantry deserved to be honoured, despite knowing the debris could collapse on them at any time, they still when in and saved lives, true heroes.
Was originally concerned that this would be a repeat of the Sampoong collapse when the heavy equipment on the roof and support columns were mentioned. Glad it wasn't the same thing, but it's interesting when the weight isn't taken into account. There's this library in the US (think it's a university one) where the architects failed to take into account the weight of all the books, which has caused the library to sink over time.
@@pseudotasuki so kinda like the guy who took lsd/mushrooms and believed he was a glass of orange juice abd didn't want to be touched so he didn't spill type of myths? 🤔😂
What's funny is that the first time I heard that urban legend, it was when I was visiting UConn for a high school geography tournament, and their library was being renovated to correct some structural issues. But those were actually due to construction issues, rather than a design oversight. I didn't doubt it until I heard a nearly identical story years later about the Dimond Library at UNH sliding down the hillside. Lol and behold, it's a common myth on many campuses.
Didn't something similar happen in the Versaille wedding hall collapse? The live load wasn't properly recalculated when the third floor was expanded. You'd hope that someone impartial would have to recheck such fundamental calculations.
I hate that being responsible and actually care for the victims' family is considered rare even in today's world in 2022. I was also surprised that their Government was very efficient comparing to the other videos on your channel. As a kid learning about ethical values from my family and school, I thought most people would live by them. I forgot about those that failed, and I also didn't realized there are so many. Now as an adult I'm just trying to keep my faith in humanity at slightly above the negative.
This disaster had probably the best reaction out of any disatster on this channel. People were compensated, buildings with similar problems were demolished, new legislation was put in place, the investigation was thorough and uncorrupted, and even the rescuers were honored.
Once in school a teacher told us if we're unsure about our answer, give our problem and our answer to someone that doesn't like us. That way if you did mess up they have no problem telling us. Good advice
4 days and everyone, dead and alive, accounted for. I have to take my hat off to the people who pulled that off. Not only did it mean they got to survivors in a timely manner, but it also means that the friends and family of those who died could start the process of dealing with their loss almost right away. That is worthy of admiration.
what made the collapse more prophetic is that one of the mirrors mounted on the columns shattered due to the column behind it cracking long before the collapse and the witnesses who are superstitious thought it was caused by something supernatural and the fact that broken mirrors are associated with bad omen/bad luck and that one shattered without any explanation but was caused by the cracking column.
Superstition: A belief I don't agree with. But just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I'm right and the other person is wrong. There's often a fine line (or nonexistent line) between "bad luck" and "unsafe." Mirrors don't shatter by themselves.
Interesting - did she evacuate and hence survive? Superstitions might be questionable, but sometimes - even by coincidence - they coincide with actual problems. And likewise, sometimes a "gut feel" you can't explain that something is seriously amiss ends up being right.
@@quillmaurer6563 the mirror shattered the day prior I believe, the girl that was using it was only performing that specific day and wasn't in the hotel when it crumbled to my knowledge
@@theshermantanker7043 Ah, so she wouldn't have been there that day regardless? Still a very interesting thought, I wonder if she would have come in the next day if she was supposed to in spite of the broken mirror, or if superstition of the broken mirror could have saved her life?
It’s so refreshing to hear a collapse story where everyone involved took things seriously and tried their best to make positive changes going forward. Thanks for sharing
There was another (smaller but still significant) incident in which a busy roadway collapsed during tunneling works for a new MRT (Singapore's subway) line. 4 dead and a handful injured, but did make many citizens wonder, at the time, whether the extensive network of tunnels current & yet to come, would pose serious problems for buildings or roadways in the future. There is also a story of a local labor foreman who paid the ultimate price when he stayed behind during the collapse, to ensure that 8 migrant workers manage to escape to safety. It would be an honor to his heroic deed, that the story would be told to the world.
@@d3viLang3LFall3n Yes, the Nicoll Highway collapse in 2004. Unfortunately Fascinating Horror or any other researcher is going to have a hard time finding out more than what can be seen on a Google search. The Singapore media reports are highly regulated by the State, in stark contrast to the 1980's when Hotel New World collapsed.
When you look at that massive pile of rubble, it's extraordinary to think that 17 people survived! Thank goodness none of the rescuers were lost. Another awesome video.
The only reason I knew about this story beforehand is because of a great episode of Seconds From Disaster. I can’t imagine anything more terrifying than being buried alive like this. It’s inconceivable that the builders didn’t consider this basic tenet of construction. This is why I support regulation, especially in instances where people’s lives and livelihood are on the line.
Yes, I don't understand how some people yap about how licensing is unnecessary, just government overreach, etc. Regulations and licensing aren't perfect, but history has proven time and again how people behave without it. They do what they want, just so they can make money, or achieve fame, etc.
@@EXROBOWIDOW Or more likely in this scenario, the power of incompetence. From the scant details given here, it sounds very like the engineers made a fatal error, not by intent, but by incompetence. They were so inexperienced, and so without due oversight from reviews or basic due diligence, that their errors went undetected until disaster.
@@borderlineiq The owner in this case hired a draftsman (not an architect or engineer) that was not qualified to design a building. So in addition to incompetence, there's also outright fraud.
It's amazing how often the dead load or live load is overlooked or miscalculated in architecture design, and it's almost always due to the owner of the building either rushing the engineers/designers or changing plans/designs/building usage in the middle of designing or even BUILDING the damn thing. Everyone wants bigger, better, and, most importantly, FASTER, and unfortunately, faster tends to lead to simple, basic stuff getting overlooked or messed up. The Versailles Wedding Hall, the Sampoong Department Store, the Hyatt Regency catwalks, Summerland -- the list goes on and on. Not just buildings either; there's plenty of stories of ships, trains, and planes getting fked because people rushed someone doing something important.
Structural engineer here. Not accounting for dead loads is such a hair raising basic error that i can't actually fathom it being committed anywhere by anyone, let alone a building having been constructed without a single contractor catching it and alerting anyone. smh
He did say the man who drew the original plans was not fully trained. Although I am surprised more experienced people didn't catch it. The government did handle it well, after the fact. I like the way they jumped in to correct that one as well as other buildings they found to be unsafe.
I'm not even an engineer and that stunned me. Isn't that basically... not accounting for the actual building itself? Or close enough? All I know for sure is, I'm suddenly much more grateful we live in a world where certification is a thing...
@@kathyjones1576 as @asdfreii already said, it's a very basic mistake, a thing even a freshman would be scolded for relentlessly and rightfully at that
I can certainly understand why they thought of a bomb initially. A building collapses so suddenly, what else could it be? But when they did realize the cause, they faced it, corrected it, and then went to other buildings as well, and corrected them too. They were concerned about their people, and I believe the way they handled this proved to other nations "we're going to take care of your people when you visit". Is Singapore still like this?
Actually, yes imo. In our handling of COVID recently, our government was overall pretty on the ball. It wasn't perfect, ofc, but shit didn't hit the fan. Vaccination rate is currently 88% and was rolled out to the population for free in batches. Those who rejected getting it had to put up with severe restrictions in daily life until recently. Our Prime Minister at one point pleaded to the citizens in a livestream to have patience during the 3 month long nationwide lockdown back in 2020.
Yep, people in charge here are a bunch of stubborn ol' bastards, but as a national I gotta hand it to them they genuinely take no one's shit and are a no nonsense group. They don't care about your social status, they just do whatever they need to do, and if you try to argue but don't provide a convincing argument, they'll tell you to get lost. Although it's a really rough way to run a country I'll admit it's pretty admirable to be as fair as they are
Fair play to Singapore here. Their post disaster inquiry did a fantastic job of isolating the cause, retroactively checking and fixing other similar issues and paying out compensation. They totally owned the problem and moved forward positively. If only other countries could act with such a manner, instead of burying evidence, shielding wealthy mates and scapegoating
Singapore succeeds where most countries (mainly America) fail. Took responsibility, sorted the problem out, compensated the victims, made sure it wouldn't happen again. A rarely seen outcome on this channel, bravo! 👏
Are you speaking of south America or north America? You do know they are continents containing many different comteies. 🤔 if your going to speak crap at least be intelligent.
Yeah you should see them today too. Some of the most futuristic, coolest looking architecture can be found in Singapore. It's a beautiful, clean looming country, truly. They really got their sh*t together. Wish I could say the same for America's architecture & infrastructure. 😒 About 60% of our bridges are nearing collapse or have major issues. It's scary as hell...
@@crazymode341 Focus on the Civil War brewing in your country. Instead of taking offence at some random person's comment, on a video about a hotel, on RU-vid.
Yeah, I was expecting the usual greed and corner cutting. In a way, it's sadly "refreshing" that it was "just" basic if massive incompetence in the designs from the very start instead of greed making an avoidable situation worse & deadly and/or further incompetence making the disaster even worse or happen in the first place. The other building collapse disasters he covered like the South Korean mall (in "The Sampoong Department Store Collapse") and the Jerusalem dance hall (in "The Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster") are unfortunate examples of that. But, no, in this case even the attempts to fix the crumbling columns in the two days before seemed sincere. It was just too little, too late since the building was doomed from the start due to its immensely flawed design.
It’s nice, for a change, to see positive change made after a disaster in one of these videos. It feels like there’s too many cases where nothing happened and nobody received compensation, so seeing such thorough action here is welcome
If I’d have been at the hotel when it started shifting and cracking....I’d have been out of there sharpish. How frightening. Another well out together video. Thank you.
I think the speed and thoroughness of the response to this disaster is a testament to the behaviors that were responsible for Singapore's rapid economic rise.
If you ever revisit Singapore, the Bukit Ho Swee fire would be a good topic to cover. Thousands were left homeless and several were injured, but only 4 lost their lives.
once again, top tier content. I wish the channel creator would consider making a full length documentary on something that interests him. I'd bet it would really interest us, too. this channel is a high water mark for other creators to aspire to, man
I gotta say hearing that passers by were already on the scene always brings me to tears, it’s just… it’s so powerful to know that even in this nasty world we live in where people hurt others for no reason there are still HUGE swaths of normal human beings who want to show love and do when it counts. Idk. Thank you to anyone who has ever been a bystander turned helper. It’s people like that who make the world go round.
Nice to see you covering a tragedy from my home country Singapore! I wasn’t born then but I’ve heard of this from my parents as it was massive news at that time.
Great vid! Im a 19 year old singaporean and i had no idea this incident had happened. The singapore govt is really efficient but unfortunately there's loads of strict rules here and cost of living is rlly high
The rainway engineers are freaking heros! And its so weird... What collapsed the building is a lack of specialists/engineers. What saved the people was specislists/engineers.
It’s amazing that there were that many survivors from a collapse like that. The rescuers hopefully were rewarded for their heroic efforts. Imagine how much worse it could have been.
I am a Singaporean and this incident took place when I was 6. I recalled it was the headline for weeks to come after the incident. The scene from the TV news showing the hysteric family members of the deceased still haunt my mind till this day.
The load calculation error was backwards to how it seems it usually is. They forgot to account for the dead load, when usually it seems like it's the live load that gets overlooked by underqualified people. Either that, or failing to account in alterations to the design (or renovations) that affect the load of the building in a significant way (like the addition of a new floor, removal of support structures, etc.).
And you would think that they would be orders of magnitude away from each other, the building having all sorts of concrete and steel in it. I can't see how it stood for 10 minutes.
@@bryede I've no idea about construction really, but if I had to guess it was probably because calculations are intended to be very conservative, and account for age and other wear factors (like weather). A building that isn't strong enough to hold itself up properly wouldn't necessarily immediately collapse, it could be a slow process of losing that ability over time. Or at least, in this case that was what happened. I mean, if it had immediately fallen apart after construction, the failure would have been...extremely obvious. But construction materials are, by design, intended to hold itself and at least some other stressor (weight or pulling force, as applicable). So as long as they didn't screw up to the point that it falls apart like a house of cards immediately, it makes sense that it would have taken time to actually reach the point where it would collapse. I think that the fact they used standard (rather than sub-standard) materials was a significant factor in its longevity. If they'd also skimped on that, it might very well have collapsed within a year or two, and likely would have shown obvious problems right away.
It’s pleasantly surprising the heat how seriously the government took this disaster. Most just investigate, charge and move on, rather than inspect other buildings and take subsequent action. The people who worked without breaks for days to rescue all they could deserve honor and recognition for certain- they are heroes.
Wow they dealt with this remarkably well. I think this is the first man made disaster documentary I've ever seen that didn't involve corruption, willful blindness, or lack of accountability. It's definitely the first one that makes the country it happened in look GOOD.
wow, so much respect for how Singapore handled the fall-out, coming up with multi-pronged solutions, many that involved them increasing funding for things and paying out instead of just regulating (not that I think regulation is bad, but I find a lot of places just pass a single piece of regulation, if anything, and don't increase money for emergency services or enforcement of said regulation)
Not sure what I can say that hasn't been said. The people nearby helping, the experts who volunteered, government response accepting that help then later taking steps to improve the system and back-check existing buildings, and doing so quickly. What happened to the original draftsman who made such an oversight? Amazing error (in a bad way), when more often it's the live load unaccounted for, or lack of accounting for extra dead load when things get added or changed.
Singapore didn't leave Malaysia, it was kicked out. Putting that aside, I got to know one of the legendary firemen when I was in national service, he was fierce and have an outstanding persona. He retired a few years ago and you can search him up as well. He is SWO (RET) Mohd Salleh Ali aka Encik Agayle, as he prefer to be called.
Hats off to the Singaporean authorities for providing a great response & not trying to BS themselves out of liability. Denying any responsibility when things go south seems the instant recourse these days.
A university I worked for previously built a parking deck on campus. They were very proud of it because all people who worked on the design and building of the new deck were graduates of the Engineering school. After it was built it was immediately torn down and rebuilt to half the capacity. Turns out they neglected to take into account the potential live load of the building, and the walls started cracking as soon as they parked the first test car at the top of the deck.
That's the kind of error we expect, though. Design a structure, and forget about designing for what the structure is supposed to do: in this case, support moving vehicles and people, in addition to its own weight. I'd have no problem with letting any level of students take a crack at the design. But there had better be an independent engineering firm to review the project with a fine tooth comb. And the recommendations of the professionals MUST be adhered to.
It's amazing how often the dead load or live load is overlooked or miscalculated in architecture design, and it's almost always due to the owner of the building either rushing the engineers/designers or changing plans/designs/building usage in the middle of designing or even BUILDING the damn thing. Everyone wants bigger, better, and, most importantly, FASTER, and unfortunately, faster tends to lead to simple, basic stuff getting overlooked or messed up. The Versailles Wedding Hall, the Sampoong Department Store, the Hyatt Regency catwalks, Summerland -- the list goes on and on. Not just buildings either; there's plenty of stories of ships, trains, and planes getting fked because people rushed someone doing something important.
This is quite possibly my favorite channel. Keep up the amazing work. Every experience you've mentioned in this channel is an excellent learning experience for everyone
The fact that untrained "draughtsmen" were able to design & detail a multi storey hotel is worrying in the least. I produce structural drawings for the construction industry & something that went to the construction stage without being properly designed, checked & approved is terrifying to me.
How in the fuck these guys didn't account for dead load is scary. This is literally the first thing taught in structural mechanics, thr fact they even got a job is terrifying
Wow, that survival rate is so much better than we got with Surfside. Granted, it was twice as tall, and twice as many people inside, only 3 of 100 survived that collapse. The survival rate in the New World Hotel collapse would been equivalent to 38 people having survived the Surfside collapse. I wonder why there's such a stark difference.
Honestly I'm kinda impressed that two unqualified people designed a building that didn't *immediately* collapse. Obviously the fact that it did eventually collapse and people died is horrible, but I'm pretty sure if I drew up the plans for a six story building it would collapse before the ground floor was even complete. I assume they must have had some sort of training, even though they weren't qualified 🤔
I thought the same lmao. I always wanted to be an architect, unfortunately I absolutely suck at maths, and anything I build would likely collapse straight away 😂 The Sims and similar games let me indulge in construction safely xD
I'm surprised a building of that size only trapped 50 people inside. When I heard it was a hotel, I really thought the death toll would be much higher.
The collapse happened at 11:45 a.m. on a Saturday. Checkout time in many hotels is 10 or 11 a.m. so all the guests who weren't staying another day would be gone and the majority of the rest were probably out sightseeing so most of the people inside would be hotel staff. Also the bank was probably not open and the nightclub was likely closed at that hour. Imagine if it had been 11:45 p.m. with a hotel full of sleeping guests and a packed nightclub.
That there were only 50 people in a building of that size when it collapsed was lucky, but the fact that they were actually able to rescue a third of them and recover all the rest is amazing.
The day of the collapse was a Saturday afternoon, if I am not wrong. Most Tourists who rented rooms are outside, and the bank at the bottom is mostly empty.
What KX said, majority of the people who booked rooms in it were likely out travelling in the streets of the small country when the hotel finally caved
Just a correction here: Singapore did not LEAVE Malaysia. It's the only country in the world that was given independence by being kicked out of a federation
Majority of the people who had booked rooms in the hotel were fortunately out travelling in the streets of the small country when this happened, which is why there were so few in the building at the time
Another great video! Would be awesome to also see you discuss some tragedies here in the Philippines as well, such as the Ozone Disco fire which is the worst fire in the country's history, and one of the worst nightclub fires in the world.
Its interesting, they tested the buildings materials and build quality and found that it was built impeccably well. So many of these stories are about companies cutting corners during construction or using shoddy materials, but this poorly designed building was actually constructed very well. It probably stood so long due to the high build quality, it was just doomed because of the failures in the design stage. Had this design been built cheaply, it might not have even opened before collapsing in on itself.
Wow - the way the government responded to this accident has left me nearly speechless. So rarely do we see total and complete accountability and compensation in a situation like this. I just don't have the words for how awesome the response to this was. The rest of the world could learn a lot from Singapore.
The quality of the content never slips, these releases now are as informative, entertaining in a respectful way relevant to what occurred, and enthralling as the early ones 👍 Some of the still images I think I recall seeing in newspapers at the time as a young boy. This one is heartening when compared to, for example, the Sampoong collapse, in that the authorities here got right on it 👍
oh wow I hadn’t heard of this! It reminds me of the 1993 Royal Plaza Hotel collapse in Thailand. I was just a little kid living there when this happened and seeing the news coverage…. awful. Just awful. Those poor people. I’d be interested to see you cover that one!
And I've been watching from my bed in the ED: kidney stone. Thank goodness for FH posting this morning to distract me from my pain! I hope you feel better soon.
I'd love to see you do a video on the helicopter accident on the set of the Twilight Zone movie. Not just the accident itself, but also the gross negligence present on the set even before the crash.
You know there's video of the accident, right? Unlike other "accident video," (Christine Chubbuck's live suicide when she was a newscaster in '74...?) That one is real. It's very grainy, but it's the real thing.
It was fortunate that the collapse happened at about noon. There were no customers in the nightclub, and most hotel guests, I assume, were out of the building. Perhaps some people that worked there were also out for lunch.
Goddamn, I appreciate the government response here. Imagine if the families of victims, survivors and rescuers didn't have to fight tooth and nail for what was reasonably due.
Welcome to Singapore I guess, what can I say? Stubborn bastards that run the country with a tight grip the lot in charge here are, but they're also very fair and by the book as well
