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The building itself appears sound and well-maintained. The addition of a modern verandah must have gone through the normal application and approval procedure, and the work must have been inspected.
It was only a small part of the continued expansion and development of the large city block housing the business, but was no different in essentials from the rest of the new work at the complex.
Whatever else can be said, this was no jerry-built complex or some near ruin but rather a serious and welcome investment that has done a great deal to redevelop the southern edge of Harare’s central business district and reverse a trend of urban decay in that part of central Harare.
So the cause needs to be found quickly, since what happened at the wholesalers could happen at other new developments and redevelopments, some of which we hope will be in the same area, which was becoming very run-down before the arrival of Mohamed Mussa Wholesalers.
We saw this sort of accident last when there was a failure in construction lifts at an ultra-modern tower block being built in Samora Machel Avenue almost 15 years ago.
That accident did serve as a warning and led to changes in several procedures.
The same detailed investigation is needed again.
Government inspectors have a number of questions to ask.
Was there a fault in the design, and if so why was this not picked up at the approval stage?
Were there errors in the construction, and if so why were these missed during inspection?
Most worrying is the question of whether there was some fault in the materials, since it is very difficult for either inspectors or contractors to tell whether materials do in fact meet their stated specifications; they do tend to go by the label.
The section of girders that fell were anchored at the back and on one side, and a small section of the back wall was pulled loose and the joints with the continuation of the verandah to the north were sheered.
There is a possibility that the small amount of extra mass of the workmen tipped an underlying fault, but the combined mass of these men must have been less than just one of the I-beams that fell. It is interesting that the identical section to the north did not collapse, but is still there undamaged.
There tend to be three sorts of building accidents.
There are those where some decrepit and unmaintained structure just collapses.
That is not the case here.
Then there are buildings where building codes are flouted to save money, as we have seen in some east Asian countries over the past decade, or where the codes are not even applied, as we have seen in other parts of the world.
That does not appear to be the case here.
So we have an example of someone making a mistake.
Either the engineer got his sums wrong, or the design was faulty if still legal, or the contractor of this section, or the underlying anchor wall, did not do his job properly, or the manufacturer of the materials made an error.
We hope that the inspectors go beyond just finding the cause.
They must be prepared to make for recommendations if necessary to upgrade design, construction or inspection systems to prevent such an accident happening again.
Online Reporter