Engineer answers sinking questions: Are San Francisco's sinking buildings causing Transit Center's steel beams to crack?

San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Terminal shut down September 27, 2018, after two cracked steel beams in the $2 billion structure were discovered.

What caused those beams to crack?

KRON4 News asked Rafael Sabelli of Walter P Moore Structural Engineers whether the cracks are related to other sinking and leaning buildings in downtown San Francisco.

 

The leaning Millennium Tower looms over the new Transbay Transit Center, but despite the close proximity of the two massive buildings, a structural engineer says that it’s highly unlikely that the cracked beams found in the transit center are related to the sinking being experienced at the condo building. 

According to Rafael, “It doesn’t appear that there’s any plausible theory by which this would be related to the foundation issues with the Millennium Tower. If there were differential sinking that would cause stresses in the structure, this wouldn’t be the first thing that would be noticed. You’d see it in the ground. You’d see distortions evident in the floor slabs, in the wall systems...”

See MOORE of Rafael’s interview with KRON4.