Soon-to-be-Released Report Says Oklahoma EF5 Tornado Debris Reveals Construction Flaws, Code Violations
The report from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute finds violations of the International Building Code, and raises serious questions about building design and construction quality.
 Detailed in a soon-to-be-released report for the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute, an analysis of the debris of the Briarwood Elementary School showed that several of the building's steel roof beams were not attached to the walls, many of Briarwood's cinder-block walls were not properly reinforced with steel rebar and large portions of the walls were not backfilled with concrete.
Chris Ramseyer, the civil engineer who studied photographs of the Plaza Towers School, said the photographs showed similar problems and raised serious questions about Plaza Towers' design and construction quality. "Odds are, if the schools had been built right, the walls would not have fallen," Ramseyer said.
Both Plaza Towers and Briarwood were destroyed when an EF5 tornado struck. Neither school had safe rooms. Seven students were killed at Plaza Towers after walls of the third-grade center, a building next to the main school, collapsed. At Briarwood, at least 24 pupils and teachers were injured when the school's cinder-block walls fell.
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