A 51 story tower sounds like a nightmare in any kind of emergency. The hallways are pressurized so one infected person can spread the latest virus to every apartment on the floor, and if there’s a fire, you get to see just how short the ladders are at the local fire department. I lived in a well built three story apartment building at university, literally only one year old when I moved in. The noise was minimal due to lots of concrete construction, but the general consensus was in any kind of earthquake the entire building was going to be a death trap due to a lack of emergency exits with external staircases.
I’m never sharing walls or living in a multistory building again unless it can be designed to my spec, and I’d want it built to withstand 10,000 year events because 100 year events just aren’t really uncommon anymore.
The hallways are pressurized so one infected person can spread the latest virus to every apartment on the floor,
The opposite actually, since the one infected persons virus stays contained in their unit. We had virtually no spread of Covid in the building during lockdowns, with infected people’s illness staying contained to their unit.
and if there’s a fire, you get to see just how short the ladders are at the local fire department.
The fire department doesn’t need ladders to get up the building, the all concrete construction prevents fires from easily spreading unit to unit. We’ve never had a fire spread from one unit to another in the 13 years I’ve lived here.
in any kind of earthquake the entire building was going to be a death trap
Also false, tall towers can easily be built to be Earthquake proof, just look at Japan, or LA.
Seems you don’t really know anything about the actual construction of tall towers or what it’s like to live in them, and are just going by false convictions.
You might want to listen to the first season of The Big One, which was on NPR. One of the things they talk about is how many towers haven’t really faced a big quake since they were built, and the City of LA refuses to say which buildings won’t stand up to even a medium quake. Quake liquifaction is a thing you should read up on; it’s scary because it’s a distinct possibility in some of the most populated cities in the world. Japan has done a great job of building earthquake resistance into their buildings, but again, very few of them have actually faced a massive, local quake, so it’s all based on best guesses. I know my single story isn’t coming down like a tower, and I can personally turn off my natural gas line to reduce fire risk. Towers don’t have individual gas shutoffs AFAIK.
All concrete construction reduces the risk of small fires spreading, but like the Twin Towers proved, once the building is on fire the only way down is the stairs, because external ladders aren’t tall enough. It also doesn’t help when the buildings are clad in flammable materials, like the residential tower in the UK that went up like a candle. I literally don’t stay above a certain floor in hotels when I travel in the US because even the FDNY’s tallest ladder only goes up 137 feet (41.75 meters for the metric lovers). Internationally, I don’t stay above the fourth floor, because most fire departments don’t have ladders to reach much higher than that.
That your building escaped without people inadvertently infecting others is great, but I hope you realize that part of what made Covid so dangerous, especially in the first year, was that it could spread before symptoms presented strongly, and that there was strong asymptomatic transmission. It’s not crazy to think some of those characteristics will be shared with other, much more deadly, viral strains, given that we’ve seen such hopping in bacteria. That’s why antibiotic resistance is so dangerous; germs share with each other. Positive pressure in the hallways being a positive presumes contagious individuals know they’re contagious and will stay inside their flat until they’re no longer contagious. I don’t think I need to tell you how unlikely that is for large segments of the population.
I know my single story isn’t coming down like a tower,
No, but good chance it collapses anyway. I know 100% my building isn’t going to fall due to an earthquake ever.
And those towers in parts of Japan and LA have faced severe earthquakes without collapse.
but like the Twin Towers proved
Several entire floors were destroyed and set ablaze simultaneously, blocking off the stairwells and ensuring an incredibly large part of the building was on fire at the start. Not in any way comparable to a standard fire starting in a condo tower.
like the residential tower in the UK that went up like a candle
Sure, and in any sane country that’s entirely illegal to do. There are zero buildings with flammable cladding in my city. And having seen apartments on fire in other buildings, and that fire failing to ever spread to another unit, I can indeed confirm that most buildings do not have fire spread between units.
Internationally, I don’t stay above the fourth floor
Utterly ridiculous of you, that is a completely irrational phobia. If tall buildings were as dangerous as you think they are we’d have millions of people dying in them annually, but we don’t. Even considering some of the shoddier builds in China, apartment fatalities are rarer than people dying in their own houses.
was that it could spread before symptoms presented strongly, and that there was strong asymptomatic transmission
And yet in a positive pressure building it did not spread, even with confirmed cases in some units it never spread to any neighboring units. We would have been very aware if someone had been symptomatically spreading it in the building as we would have had cases spike, but that did not happen. So no, even a very transmissible airborne virus will not spread between units in a well designed tower.
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A 51 story tower sounds like a nightmare in any kind of emergency. The hallways are pressurized so one infected person can spread the latest virus to every apartment on the floor, and if there’s a fire, you get to see just how short the ladders are at the local fire department. I lived in a well built three story apartment building at university, literally only one year old when I moved in. The noise was minimal due to lots of concrete construction, but the general consensus was in any kind of earthquake the entire building was going to be a death trap due to a lack of emergency exits with external staircases.
I’m never sharing walls or living in a multistory building again unless it can be designed to my spec, and I’d want it built to withstand 10,000 year events because 100 year events just aren’t really uncommon anymore.
Nope, not a nightmare at all.
The opposite actually, since the one infected persons virus stays contained in their unit. We had virtually no spread of Covid in the building during lockdowns, with infected people’s illness staying contained to their unit.
The fire department doesn’t need ladders to get up the building, the all concrete construction prevents fires from easily spreading unit to unit. We’ve never had a fire spread from one unit to another in the 13 years I’ve lived here.
Also false, tall towers can easily be built to be Earthquake proof, just look at Japan, or LA.
Seems you don’t really know anything about the actual construction of tall towers or what it’s like to live in them, and are just going by false convictions.
You might want to listen to the first season of The Big One, which was on NPR. One of the things they talk about is how many towers haven’t really faced a big quake since they were built, and the City of LA refuses to say which buildings won’t stand up to even a medium quake. Quake liquifaction is a thing you should read up on; it’s scary because it’s a distinct possibility in some of the most populated cities in the world. Japan has done a great job of building earthquake resistance into their buildings, but again, very few of them have actually faced a massive, local quake, so it’s all based on best guesses. I know my single story isn’t coming down like a tower, and I can personally turn off my natural gas line to reduce fire risk. Towers don’t have individual gas shutoffs AFAIK.
All concrete construction reduces the risk of small fires spreading, but like the Twin Towers proved, once the building is on fire the only way down is the stairs, because external ladders aren’t tall enough. It also doesn’t help when the buildings are clad in flammable materials, like the residential tower in the UK that went up like a candle. I literally don’t stay above a certain floor in hotels when I travel in the US because even the FDNY’s tallest ladder only goes up 137 feet (41.75 meters for the metric lovers). Internationally, I don’t stay above the fourth floor, because most fire departments don’t have ladders to reach much higher than that.
That your building escaped without people inadvertently infecting others is great, but I hope you realize that part of what made Covid so dangerous, especially in the first year, was that it could spread before symptoms presented strongly, and that there was strong asymptomatic transmission. It’s not crazy to think some of those characteristics will be shared with other, much more deadly, viral strains, given that we’ve seen such hopping in bacteria. That’s why antibiotic resistance is so dangerous; germs share with each other. Positive pressure in the hallways being a positive presumes contagious individuals know they’re contagious and will stay inside their flat until they’re no longer contagious. I don’t think I need to tell you how unlikely that is for large segments of the population.
No, but good chance it collapses anyway. I know 100% my building isn’t going to fall due to an earthquake ever.
And those towers in parts of Japan and LA have faced severe earthquakes without collapse.
Several entire floors were destroyed and set ablaze simultaneously, blocking off the stairwells and ensuring an incredibly large part of the building was on fire at the start. Not in any way comparable to a standard fire starting in a condo tower.
Sure, and in any sane country that’s entirely illegal to do. There are zero buildings with flammable cladding in my city. And having seen apartments on fire in other buildings, and that fire failing to ever spread to another unit, I can indeed confirm that most buildings do not have fire spread between units.
Utterly ridiculous of you, that is a completely irrational phobia. If tall buildings were as dangerous as you think they are we’d have millions of people dying in them annually, but we don’t. Even considering some of the shoddier builds in China, apartment fatalities are rarer than people dying in their own houses.
And yet in a positive pressure building it did not spread, even with confirmed cases in some units it never spread to any neighboring units. We would have been very aware if someone had been symptomatically spreading it in the building as we would have had cases spike, but that did not happen. So no, even a very transmissible airborne virus will not spread between units in a well designed tower.