 It is 1977 and a new condo apartment building is complete. The completion is bittersweet. Money has been made by selling the condos off, but the development's history is of a bloody one. Just four years earlier it had been the site of a terrible collapse, due to a staple of this channel. You guessed it, terrible concrete pouring practices. So you may be shocked that this disaster did not unfold in the state of Florida, but instead Virginia. Regardless of the lack of Florida, the disaster is ever so familiar. Today we are looking at the Skyline Plaza disaster. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. An airport. So our story begins with the Washington, Virginia airport, the site in the area known as Bailey's Crossroads. Which opened its runway to aircraft in 1947. It was mainly used for general aviation, that is, non-commercial civilian use. The airport would be quickly enveloped by the urbanization in the area at the time. And due to the usually private in nature flights and thus less shall we say experienced pilots, complaints of low flying aircraft and near misses would be a regular thing at the site. The airport by the 1960s was almost completely surrounded by commercial and residential properties, which began causing problems for safety. The land had become rather valuable as well. This would be the final nail in the small airport's coffin. The site would be sold off in 1969 to a real estate developer by the name of Charles East Smith companies. The airport would then close its doors to aircraft on the 18th of October 1970. So at the site now in the hands of the developer a $200 million complex of residential office and retail spaces as well as an underground car park was planned. The site would gain the name the Skyline Centre or Plaza. With work starting in 1971, by 1973 the project was well underway with two apartment blocks completed and another two being under construction. All of the planned apartments had been sold off at prices varying between $23 and $62,000 depending on the size and view available of the Potomac River. The buildings were of reinforced concrete style on flat plates on top of a 4 foot foundation. They were a column and slab style building. The columns varied in size and thickness throughout the building but the general layouts stayed the same from level to level. The towers were to be 26 stories high and have a penthouse as well as a 4 story basement. Now these types of buildings are great for construction timings as they can be built pretty quickly. This is because you can start pouring concrete floors whilst others are still being set. Wooden formwork is used to create the shape of each pouring over its rebar. Each floor was poured in four sections allowing the climb to the top floor being able to be done in just a matter of months. After enough time has passed reshaws are added to support the floor above. These help the fresh floors spread out the weight throughout the rest of the structure. The architects plans required the reshaws and formwork to stay in place until at least two more floors are being constructed above it. This understandably can slow down the construction but for good reason. You know as concrete does take a while to set even when it seems like it has it can still take a while for it to be able to support its weight and more weight put on top of it. The building work also made use of cranes one of which was a climbing crane which was placed on the top of the building as it slowly made its way to the top floor. So construction was apparently going well as the 24th floor at one of the skyline plazas residential buildings was being poured. And this was on the 3rd of March 1973, a disaster. It is the morning of the 3rd of March 1973 and parts of the 25th and 24th floors of one of the skyline plaza towers are being prepared for concrete pouring. Formwork and reshawing is in place from the 23rd floor and above. Some of the reshaws used on site had been damaged in previous concrete pours. This had actually caused some cracks in some of the concrete that could be seen by workers. The formwork and reshaws were being stripped from the 22nd floor. One set of reshaws remained on the 21st floor at the same time. The building was a hive of activity with workers on almost every level. By lunchtime more reshaws and formwork was being stripped from the 22nd floor as work began on the 24th floor. Some workers observed slab deflections of approximately 150 to 600mm or 6 inches to 2ft on the 23rd and 24th floor. This was hinting that the concrete wasn't actually stable enough for the reshaws to be removed, but this didn't stop it from happening. More formwork reshaws and bracing removed at roughly 2.30pm at the same time the building began to groan, followed by a sudden collapse of a significant portion of the structure. The climbing crane on top of the building also fell and crashed into the ground. The collapse created a gap of around 60ft or 18m in the building from top to bottom, essentially splitting it into two separate structures. The section that fell crashed into the parking garage below, and that also failed. The disaster then spread across the garage, but luckily it stopped at the next building in the Skyline Plaza Centre as it wasn't structurally attached to the previous two. A policeman, who was near the site at the time, saw the collapse. Luckily enough he called in what he saw and emergency workers were dispatched to the building site pretty quickly. During the collapse between 200 and 300 workers were working around the building when it collapsed. Rescue workers would upon arriving on site begin digging to try and rescue those who were trapped. Six would be found dead pretty quickly with another 14 reported missing, but over the coming days more of the missing would be added to the death towel. In total 14 would be reported dead, with another 34 seriously injured. The same day as the disaster, an investigation was launched by OSHA, eventually bringing in the National Bureau of Standards into the investigation mix. The investigation. Initially it was thought that the crane was the cause of the disaster, but this wouldn't be the case. It was more to do with the way they were pouring concrete and reshoring was undertaken. The site developers decided to tear down the eastern section of the building almost immediately after the disaster. Stopping investigators gaining access to the site until the 5th of March. Surviving workers were interviewed. This brought to light the slab deflection and samples of the concrete was taken. Inspection of the building and its surviving sections hinted at a cause of the disaster being at least at the top of the tower. The tower was nothing out of the ordinary in design. There wasn't really any shortcomings with the plans. Two other towers on site have been successfully constructed with a similar layout and design after all. This would point more to the method of construction rather than architectural choice. Investigators zeroed in on the early removal of formwork and reshores to be the most likely cause, as it created a punching shear failure in which the newly poured concrete couldn't support the weight placed on it. After the 23rd and 24th floors failed, the falling debris caused the cascading failure, which the lower floors also then failed from the increased stress and impact damage. The MBS had found the cause of the disaster and it was solely down to human error. They had just removed the vital supports too early, likely in a bit to speed up work. This was done without any real estimation of the strength of the concrete because even if it looks solid to the eye, it can't always support serious load. Now the developers would avoid much of the blame, mainly due to the disaster being caused by the subcontractor, Miller and Long. As such, the vice president, Roger Gilbert Arnold, would be charged with manslaughter, which could have resulted in between one and five years in prison. I'm probably not going to make you lose your monocle in shock when I tell you Arnold got away with a hung jury at trial, a no-re-trial was ever pushed for, essentially getting him off scot-free. The company would have to dig into its pockets in fines however, with a whopping $300 charged for failing to use adequate shoring, although Osher would find the company a greater amount of $13,000 for violations of worker safety codes. At least that's something I suppose. Well, the site would be barred from continuing work on the Skyline Plaza for over 16 months, but eventually work would continue, being completed in 1977, which brings us back to our start of the story and the opening of the new apartment complex, which, rather interestingly, is still there today. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are created by my attribution share like licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me, John, in the currently wet and windy corner of southern London, UK. I have Instagram and a second YouTube channel to check out. If you want to watch random bits and pieces that I do outside of this main channel, I would also like to have a very nice and warm thank you to my Patreon and YouTube members who financially support this channel. If you want to check that out, you can get hold of early access videos as well as other random stuff. All I have to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play a cell please.