Dive summary:
- An engineer's inspections of a rooftop parking garage at a mall in Elliot Lake, Ontario, likely will figure prominently in a lawsuit filed after two women died when the garage collapsed June 23.
- M.R. Wright & Associates gave the mall's owner reports in 2009 and two months before the collapse.
- At issue is whether the inspection could properly have been done based only on visual surveillance, which is what Wright used in both instances.
From the article:
When it comes to inspecting old structures that may be damaged by water and salts, an engineer can rarely rely on visual inspection to provide enough information to justify a declaration that a building is structurally sound. ...
