# Roof Collapse - Hampton, VA



## dmx (Apr 7, 2021)

Roof collapses at Thomas Nelson Community College’s Templin Hall in Hampton

The roof of Templin Hall at Thomas Nelson Community College’s Hampton campus collapsed Monday.



www.wavy.com





Luckily the building was empty. Can only imagine if this were to have happened during a performance with a full house! Odd thing is, we haven't had any weather (rain, snow, etc.) in the recent past that could have been contributing factors. Building was built in 2002!

Photos from:







Roof partially collapses at Thomas Nelson Community College's performing arts building

Dr. Porter Brannon, TNCC's president, did not immediately share a cause for the Templin Hall roof collapse. She said it was "fortunate" nobody was inside at the time



www.13newsnow.com


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## JohnD (Apr 7, 2021)

One of the local stations had a chopper shot, here is a top side view:


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## MNicolai (Apr 7, 2021)

"Jeff Kraus, a spokesperson for VCCS, said that the main truss in that portion of the roof failed, sending about sixteen inches of concrete crashing down. Why the truss failed is unknown; VCCS is working with the Virginia Division of Risk Management on the investigation."

Yeah -- don't believe everything you read as theories start to circulate. No way they would've had a roof with a 16" concrete slab.


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## JohnD (Apr 7, 2021)

I do wonder if all facilities that are being shut down for over a year are being routinely inspected. I mean a minor plumbing leak could add up to lots of damage if not detected for months. Not that the problem here was plumbing BTW.


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## macsound (Apr 7, 2021)

MNicolai said:


> "Jeff Kraus, a spokesperson for VCCS, said that the main truss in that portion of the roof failed, sending about sixteen inches of concrete crashing down. Why the truss failed is unknown; VCCS is working with the Virginia Division of Risk Management on the investigation."
> 
> Yeah -- don't believe everything you read as theories start to circulate. No way they would've had a roof with a 16" concrete slab.


Would the main truss be the one in the first image?

This exterior bulge is interesting


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## sk8rsdad (Apr 7, 2021)

The sixteen inches might refer to the top of the wall that was supporting the roof truss. The still frame at the the start of the video shows the top of the masonry wall bowed out at the top.


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## tjrobb (Apr 7, 2021)

That bulge is most likely from either the bottom of the truss deflecting or the truss bracing deflecting. Those can be a cause or a symptom, but I'm not an engineer.


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## RickR (Apr 7, 2021)

A structural engineers worst nightmare. No obvious cause to point to, but there will be lots of finger pointing in court!


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## MNicolai (Apr 7, 2021)

RickR said:


> A structural engineers worst nightmare. No obvious cause to point to, but there will be lots of finger pointing in court!



Not _that _much finger pointing. Usually structural stuff comes down to the engineer, the contractor, or the supplier. In a case like this, the supplier seems unlikely as this type of construction is common and isn't anything particularly custom or complex. So then it comes down to the engineer or the contractor.

There could be external factors though. That other theater that's roof collapsed recently clearly had backed up roof drains that caused a bunch of water to back up on the roof and was clearly the direct cause of the collapse. Doesn't seem like that's the case here though.


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## RickR (Apr 7, 2021)

Structural, contractors (general, steel, concrete, roofing), suppliers for all above (engineer for the truss supplier!), architect, maybe plumbing engineer, plumbing contractor, facilities maintenance, soils reporting, 

and lastly anyone else the lawyers can make up an excuse to blame.


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## TimMc (Apr 7, 2021)

RickR said:


> Structural, contractors (general, steel, concrete, roofing), suppliers for all above (engineer for the truss supplier!), architect, maybe plumbing engineer, plumbing contractor, facilities maintenance, soils reporting,
> 
> and lastly anyone else the lawyers can make up an excuse to blame.



My late father was an attorney. The rule of thumb is name EVERY possible party as a defendant and let the court decide who is without complicity and gets removed from the suit.


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## TimMc (Apr 7, 2021)

dmx said:


> Roof collapses at Thomas Nelson Community College’s Templin Hall in Hampton
> 
> The roof of Templin Hall at Thomas Nelson Community College’s Hampton campus collapsed Monday.
> 
> ...



Rick, so good that the hall was empty and there were no injuries or deaths. We can fix concrete and steel...


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## JohnD (Apr 7, 2021)

TimMc said:


> My late father was an attorney. The rule of thumb is name EVERY possible party as a defendant and let the court decide who is without complicity and gets removed from the suit.


Like for example JBL being named in the RI fire and quickly settled just to make it go away. The issue is there were JBL speakers which had foam surrounds on some of the speakers.


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## TimMc (Apr 7, 2021)

JohnD said:


> Like for example JBL being named in the RI fire and quickly settled just to make it go away. The issue is there were JBL speakers which had foam surrounds on some of the speakers.



Yes. Harman decided it was cheaper to offer a settlement of $100,000 because the cost of defending themselves would have been greater, and just how much greater was a variable they wished to avoid.


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## Jay Ashworth (Apr 8, 2021)

That aerial photo, and the pattern of darkness around the opening, sure as hell makes it look to me like it was standing water, at least as a contributing factor. Clogged flat-roof drains, maybe?


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## Ted jones (Apr 14, 2021)

First off: We are all fortunate that no one was in there.
Second: Wow! Could you imagine if you onstage when it went? It would have been scary but fascinating.
Third: The lawsuits will fly. But an 18 year old building with no one inspecting it for 14 months? The building is on a peninsula between the James and the Chesapeake, at the ocean and has survived multiple hurricanes, including last hurricane season. I'm willing to bet that all who built it will be found not responsible.


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## mrtrudeau23 (Apr 21, 2021)

JohnD said:


> I do wonder if all facilities that are being shut down for over a year are being routinely inspected. I mean a minor plumbing leak could add up to lots of damage if not detected for months. Not that the problem here was plumbing BTW.


We had a water valve break open in the mechanical room behind the booth in one of our spaces last month. If not for a student walking past the lobby and reporting seeing it raining inside to a separate department who came and found me, the only theater staff member in the building at the time, we probably wouldn't have found it for days. Standing water on the booth level in both sides of it and 2 storage closets with most of our video equipment and misc lighting equipment, and water raining through light fixtures in the lobby and the light locks of the theater entrances. Haven't looked recently to see if they've fixed the ceiling drywall.


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## MarshallPope (Apr 21, 2021)

We found 5' of water in our orchestra pit last month after the sump pump failed. As of yesterday, we've finally stripped out all of the waterlogged wood.


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## sk8rsdad (Apr 21, 2021)

MarshallPope said:


> We found 5' of water in our orchestra pit last month after the sump pump failed. As of yesterday, we've finally stripped out all of the waterlogged wood.


We're built on a swamp so we have 2 sump pumps stacked one above the other and a spare sitting on the shelf. A high water alarm is tied to our security panel. It still isn't failsafe.

A dance mom unplugged the pumps so she could power a curling iron for her precious pumpkin and never plugged it back in. Some time later we had heavy rain and our first row ended up with a few inches of water in it. As fate would have it, the high water alarm had been set to "ignore" by the monitoring company a decade earlier for a little maintenance job and never got turned back on.


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## cbrandt (Apr 21, 2021)

We have a truck dock that is about 3 inches above the water table, which also happens to be the place that our entire parking lot tries to drain into. It is a matter of constant vigilance with 2 sump pumps, a dock sensor, and 2 cameras pointed at it to ensure that thing does flood every time it sprinkles. When everything is work, it doesn't get more than damp. When it isn't, it can flood over the door frame in 5 minutes.


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## mrtrudeau23 (Apr 21, 2021)

The summer stock I worked at for years is located on the shores of Green Bay in Door County, WI. The new theater was built in 2005-2006 with a full basement. They had to blast limestone to dig for it so they could have an orch. pit. The theater is also at the base of the Niagara escarpment that runs through the county, so in the spring all the snow melt runs straight down the hill and into the basement. The basement floods every spring, so everything stored down there is up on cinder blocks, or legged up higher on platform style shelves. The worst it ever got one spring (you can see the water line clearly on the stairs down into the basement) was about 3' deep. The 2 sump pumps are no match for Mother Nature flowing into the bay. We also had a really wet summer once while I was there where we had a foot of standing water in the basement. Super exciting when we had to try to dry it out so we could put on the musical the next month!

This doesn't even include the old scene shop building that floods every time they get rain that lasts for more than 30 minutes. Lol.


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## FMEng (Apr 21, 2021)

I recall _This Old House_ showing water powered sump pumps for backup during power outages. They run on municipal water. Pretty clever. You can't have too many backups where flooding is concerned.


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## tjrobb (Apr 21, 2021)

I recall my old apartment building flooding. When I went to move my car, about halfway down the basement, it was up to the doors. At the time, I drove an Olds Bravada... There was more than one car totalled.


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## Scarrgo (Apr 22, 2021)

The High School theater I work at is also built on reclaimed swamp land ( I sense a theme here), our pit flooded with about 2' of water, I went to the storage room where the sump pit is (40'+ USR) that has two large sump pumps, and the well was almost dry. Brought in the sump/underground water folks(whatever they are called) they scoped the drain pipe that runs into the tile field under the stage/pit/house. They thought the tile field had clasped and they were going to have to dig it all up....
Instead they snaked out the drain, and broke thru and I have never in my life seen so much water come out so fast out of a 6" pipe that was not attached to a pump...both pumps could not keep up, almost flooded the hall way, and it emptied the pit of all water in 20 mins....

Cause: construction company building the place didnt take care of not throwing junk into the pipe.....

Sean...


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## TimMc (Apr 22, 2021)

Scarrgo said:


> The High School theater I work at is also built on reclaimed swamp land ( I sense a theme here), our pit flooded with about 2' of water, I went to the storage room where the sump pit is (40'+ USR) that has two large sump pumps, and the well was almost dry. Brought in the sump/underground water folks(whatever they are called) they scoped the drain pipe that runs into the tile field under the stage/pit/house. They thought the tile field had clasped and they were going to have to dig it all up....
> Instead they snaked out the drain, and broke thru and I have never in my life seen so much water come out so fast out of a 6" pipe that was not attached to a pump...both pumps could not keep up, almost flooded the hall way, and it emptied the pit of all water in 20 mins....
> 
> Cause: construction company building the place didnt take care of not throwing junk into the pipe.....
> ...



Imagine what theater, movies and TV would be like if we "built" them like the construction industry works. I do not believe there is a single word, other than "shoddy" that begins to describe most building constructions and remodels.


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## Calc (Apr 23, 2021)

The local roadhouse flooded a couple years back. The half-height dock is below grade, but the whole site has a large sump pit that drains everything. It keeps up with rain just fine, but two years ago a large water main broke in the back parking lot. The water flowed to the dock, quickly filled the sump pit, and leaked in the back loading doors where it flooded on to the stage. It spread out from there until it reached the pit cover, and drained into the basement.
We ended up with about 1/3 of the stage floor being replaced, new dressing room flooring, new paint (drywall soaked up water and the bottom foot had to be replaced), and a new grand drape (the only thing flown in at the time). Tossed out a ton of stuff that was stored in the basement. Thankfully, all covered by insurance.


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## TorrieS (Apr 25, 2021)

FYI, that theater roof had a history of water leaks. Including one memorable day when it was literally raining up in the dimmer room (just to the left of where the bulge is in the pictures) When we went up there, water was seeping between the concrete slabs. It would also occasionally waterfall down the inside of the windows in the main lobby. Fun times!


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## TorrieS (May 12, 2021)

So I went by to see how the theater was doing, it looks like it's in the process of being completely demolished.


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