The Ronan Point Tower Disaster 1968 | Plainly Difficult Documentary

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On the 16th May 1968 a small Gas explosion caused Ronan Point Apartment Block to Collapse....

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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:01 Background
03:41 Ronan Point
09:37 The Disaster
11:40 The Cause

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[justinadcock]

John, As someone who works in construction, I thought I’d let you know a bit more detail. There’s about 1, 500 LPS buildings still in use in the UK. 3-12 PSI is an insanely low psi to cause a collapse. Minimum you’d have 30PSI in a car tyre. But this “explosion” was no where near that pressure. When the more detailed analysis was done on the building, it was found that the wall panels was not in contact with the floor slabs creating a perfect void for fire to spread as well as all the weight of the building above being on the pins, rather than spread evenly over the wall panel.
And for the record, the company I work for will never do any work on LPS buildings, as we recognise that they all need to be flattened.

[bucktrips]

Very interesting, as a 7 year old kid I watched the block being built from another tower block ( Pattison point, Fife Rd) about a mile away. Whilst having my breakfast every morning I could see the worker climbing to the top of the crane used to lift the sections. The block went up so quickly you could see 2 or 3 levels appear overnight. I can now see why. I also remember the day it collapsed, I thought it was thunder and lighting, I was still in bed so I just pulled the blanket over my just a child hood memory.

[crochetknit]

I got scared at the mention of "no need for skilled labor" what can possibly go wrong...

[JustMeUpNorth]

My grandmother lived in a block of flats almost identical to Ronan Point, in Birmingham, from the 1960s until she died in 1991. The flats were only demolished after the milennium. After Ronan Point collapsed, the block of flats my grandmother lived in was checked and supposedly was fine (although the gas supply was supposed to be removed). It wasn't fine, and the gas supply was never removed - gas cookers were still standard in everyone's kitchens. I remember the block rocking scarily in high winds, and once Birmingham City Council finally decided to demolish the building they found many of the same issues in situ that Ronan Point had suffered with, especially floors not being bonded sufficiently to walls. How the flats lasted as long as they did was some sort of miracle.

[kjamison]

Kudos to Webb for insisting on a forensic disassembly of Ronan Point. The situation was much worse than anyone could have anticipated at the time.

[sutherlandA]

15:10 you can see the blackened scorch marks on the outside of Ronan point in the pic.
In 1984 after the vacating and rehousing of residents they used the empty building to perform a test on how fire affected such structures, they found that fire spread and started engulfing the place so fast and severely that they cancelled the experiment as there was a high risk of the heat and fire severely weakening it and possibly falling and damaging neighbouring properties

[rlm]

You raised an excellent point about Ronan Point Tower likely not being able to withstand the 1987 Great Storm (I've see a documentary or two on that one): the building would've failed catastrophically during the peak of the storm and led to a disastrous loss of life. Good thing indeed that it was demolished when it was or Ronan Point would probably now be remembered as the key event of the '87 storm.

[andon_RT]

I wonder how many people Sam Webb saved - Not just in this tower block by making sure it was evacuated, but by the knock-on effects of them finding the shoddy work done on this one.

[tsunxblog]

Watching this while sitting on the 9th floor inside one of the tower blocks built in mid 60's. Hello new phobia.

[thetman]

I’m a carpenter who works on remodels of wood construction residential homes in the US, particularly in a location where regulatory inspection is either nonexistent or poor at best. It is *shocking*, the things I’ve seen done in something as simple as a wooden house. I am not one to scare easily, yet I have found myself in the bowels of homes that genuinely frighten me because I can’t understand how the home hadn’t collapsed yet.

Of course it becomes my job to fix the problem, which I do. But it should be said, too often structures are under-built. Personally, I think overbuilding should be standard practice, but alas, economics demands the cheapest turd that can be polished enough to peddle to some sucker.

[rpgspree]

Packing critical load-barring joints with rubbish isn't just "unskilled", it's straight up stupid. Regardless of what the fools they hired to do the work did, someone onsite during the construction had to inspect and write off on their work.

[trevormillar]

Don't forget, the concrete was made with sand dredged from the sea and supplied by the Hoveringham corporation; sea sand is full of salt, which corrodes the iron re-bars used in reinforced concrete; result, collapse inevitable!

[dominicsaraga]

Despite the horrifing tragedies that have taken place in history and explained through this channel. Your excellent videos delight me at every opportunity during my day to day work week. Please keep up the good work!

[baksatibi]

Reminds me of the High-rise of Pécs ("Magasház"), a 25 floor building in Hungary that was completed in 1976 but had to be evacuated in 1989. Steel rods under tension gave the building its stability, but the material used to fill the gaps corroded these rods over time due to a construction error. Various plans were made to fix and repurpose it, but none of these came to fruition. The building was left unoccupied for 27 years, it was finally demolished in 2016, there's a timelapse of the process on Youtube called "Ghost house of Pécs".

[Fenderdfm]

I was scared of heights before I subscribed to your channel. Now I'm at new levels of terror

[henrybowden]

I lived for 36 years in a tower block in Bristol and I was unhappy the entire time I was in there - and so was my wife. Ours was by no means the worst of the blocks but I was glad to move out. We were only on the 12th floor but it rocked so muck that the water in my fish tank rocked when even slight winds were blowing. There were cracks everywhere and I was waiting for it to collapse at any time. We had a drug dealer living opposite us and she threatened me with a firearm because I had complained about her stereo being played loudly at 4 o'clock in the morning. Eventually after twice being raided by the police and the firearms being taken away - on both occasions - she was evicted. I feel sorry for anyone forced to live in a high rise block. It is a punishment.

[davidtraynor]

John, that graphic of the birth stopped my lunch and cup of tea... thankfully your videos keep me hooked and I was able to finish my food!

[Choralone]

I look forward to all of your videos, especially the ones on disasters. I love how you present them in a way that is factual and to the point without too much fluff or filler. I'd MUCH rather watch your videos on these topics than something on conventional TV where they take an hour to try and show half as much information as you do in 10-15 minutes!

[Susie_Floozie]

The description of how the community areas of new highrise complexes fostered crime brought up memories of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and the rundown Brutalist council flats where the families of Alex and his droogs lived.

[dustoff]

I’m surprised that more high rise structures have not failed. With all the shady practices that are involved in construction it really is amazing these structures still stand.