Berkeley balcony collapse report ‘is like a horror film’
A NEW report from authorities in California into the Berkeley balcony collapse reads like a ‘Stephen King horror movie’ and showed catastrophic construction failures, experts say.
The contractors of the balcony that collapsed with tragic consequences in June 2015 did not protect it from bad weather as they should have, the report revealed.
The incident led to the deaths of five Irish J-1 students and one young Irish-American woman.
And it has now emerged that the contractors left the balcony exposed to the elements for ten months during which time more than 3ft of rain fell on it. The report by the California State Licensing Board said 38in of rain was allowed to get in and caused ‘long-term moisture saturation’.
The CSLB has already concluded poor waterproofing and substandard materials led to the balcony plunging four floors to the ground during a 21st birthday party in the early hours of June 16, 2015.
Those who died in the accident included Irish J-1 students Olivia Burke, Eoghan Culligan, Lorcán Miller, Niccolai Schuster and Eimear Walsh, all 21.
Dual Irish-American citizen Ashley Donohoe, 22, from California, also lost her life.
Another seven Irish students – Aoife Beary, Clodagh Cogley, Seán Fahey, Conor Flynn, Jack Halpin, Niall Murray and Hannah Waters – suffered appalling and life-changing injuries.
Yesterday, the CSLB released 148 pages of documents including an 18-page report by Robert Perry, a licensed architect and general contractor.
The report said that ‘the failure mechanism which ultimately led to the collapse of the balcony appeared to be dry rot damage’.
It concluded that the weight of the students was ‘well within the design limits of the balcony structure’.
Bill Leys, a US-based deck expert who has followed the Berkeley balcony tragedy, said the reports show a construction operation where no-one followed instructions.
He said: ‘Basically, it says that anything that could’ve been f ***** up was f ***** up. In a nutshell, the report reads like one of Stephen King’s horror stories if he wrote construction horror stories.’
‘No-one followed instructions’