In the early morning hours of May 16, 1968, the occupant of apartment 90 on the 18th floor of the Ronan Point apartment tower lit a match to brew her morning cup of tea. The resulting gas explosion initiated a partial collapse of the structure that killed four people and injured seventeen. On investigation, the apartment tower was found to be deeply flawed in both design and construction. The existing building codes were found to be inadequate for ensuring the safety and integrity of high-rise precast concrete apartment buildings. The Larsen-Nielson building system, intended for buildings with only six stories, had been extended past the point of safety. The tower consisted of precast panels joined together without a structural frame. The apartment tower lacked alternate load paths to redistribute forces in the event of a partial collapse. When to structure was dismantled, investigators found appallingly poor workmanship of the critical connections between the panels.
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