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San Francisco's 58-Story Millennium Tower Seen Sinking From Space (sfgate.com) 242

Posted by BeauHD from the Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: Engineers in San Francisco have tunneled underground to try and understand the sinking of the 58-story Millennium Tower. Now comes an analysis from space. The European Space Agency has released detailed data from satellite imagery that shows the skyscraper in San Francisco's financial district is continuing to sink at a steady rate -- and perhaps faster than previously known. The luxury high-rise that opened its doors in 2009 has been dubbed the Leaning Tower of San Francisco. It has sunk about 16 inches into landfill and is tilting several inches to the northwest. Engineers have estimated the building is sinking at a rate of about 1-inch per year. The Sentinel-1 twin satellites show almost double that rate based on data collected from April 2015 to September 2016. The satellite data shows the Millennium Tower sunk 40 to 45 millimeters -- or 1.6 to 1.8 inches -- over a recent one-year period and almost double that amount -- 70 to 75 mm (2.6 to 2.9 inches) -- over its 17-month observation period, said Petar Marinkovic, founder and chief scientist of PPO Labs which analyzed the satellite's radar imagery for the ESA along with Norway-based research institute Norut. The Sentinel-1 study is not focused on the Millennium Tower but is part of a larger mission by the European Space Agency tracking urban ground movement around the world, and particularly subsidence "hotspots" in Europe, said Pierre Potin, Sentinel-1 mission manager for the ESA. The ESA decided to conduct regular observations of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Hayward Fault, since it is prone to tectonic movement and earthquakes, said Potin, who is based in Italy. Data from the satellite, which is orbiting about 400 miles (700 kilometers) from the earth's surface, was recorded every 24 days. The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
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San Francisco's 58-Story Millennium Tower Seen Sinking From Space More

San Francisco's 58-Story Millennium Tower Seen Sinking From Space

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  • Happy or sad that is was not a Trump Tower?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Conundrumpf?

    • Trump doesn't really own Trump Tower (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's mortgaged up to the hilt, if Trump Tower did collapse he'd happily take the insurance and run.

      Most of his businesses are mortgaged up to the hilt and beyond. It's all dodgy as f*** in there, Bernie Madoff numbers.
      http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-8-billion-dollar-man/

      Trump tower had another $100 million mortgage taken out in 2012.
      40 Wall street has $160 million mortgage against it at 5.71 percent interest, those most recent numbers show it generates $6.49 million in profits, to pay a $9.1 mill

  • "safe and could withstand an earthquake" (Score:5, Funny)

    by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @03:08AM (#53390879) Homepage

    Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.

    fine prints: "As long as the earthquake tilts it straight and doesn't make it tilt more in the northwest direction"

    • Re:"safe and could withstand an earthquake" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by guises ( 2423402 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @03:27AM (#53390947)
      No no, there's no condition there: "If the building isn't safe for occupancy, we'll lose a lot of money. Therefore, the building for safe for occupancy. Also earthquakes. Also dragons. Anything you want, safe."

    • Re:"safe and could withstand an earthquake" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @03:30AM (#53390961)

      The building itself might be able to withstand an earthquake, but the ground it's built on might not [wikipedia.org]. In SF, that'd be a concern - especially since the very fact that the building sinks indicates that the ground underneath might be of the type that loses its strength when shaken.

    • Most of the shaking during an earthquake happens at frequencies which most closely match the resonance frequency of a 3-story building. If you look at pictures buildings damaged in the Loma Prieta [fdncms.com] and Northridge [livescience.com] quakes, you see most of the collapsed buildings were 3- or 4-stories. Those two were quakes which were just on the cusp of being strong enough to collapse buildings (in an area with strict earthquake building codes). It's harder to see this in larger quakes because they have enough energy to coll

    • Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.

      fine prints: "As long as the earthquake tilts it straight and doesn't make it tilt more in the northwest direction"

      Also, building units will automatically convert to underground bunkers in the case of earthquake, making it even safer!

  • The "Mil-Lean-eum" Tower (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GerryGilmore ( 663905 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @03:13AM (#53390899)
    Gee, let's build a concrete, 58-story tower on top of landfill. No problem!

    • Gee, let's build a concrete, 58-story tower on top of landfill. No problem!

      As long as you live near the top, you shouldn't have a problem for a long time!

    • Gee, let's build a concrete, 58-story tower on top of landfill. No problem!

      I can't wait for the engineering reports that said it was unsafe to be leaked.

      Then again, those reports are probably somewhere in the foundations of the building.

      • Re:The "Mil-Lean-eum" Tower (Score:4, Funny)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @07:32AM (#53391507) Homepage
        Of course they are. That's the display department. You'll find the documents located in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard”, oh, and don't forget to take a flashlight and rope; the lights and stairs are both out.
      • You'll find them along with the city waiver, as the politicians were, no doubt, hungry for the taxes they could get on 58 floors of high-end condos...
    • It will stabilize once all the bin-liners it's resting on burst but I suspect nobody will want to live on the lower floors because of the smell

    • This is what I think when people start banging on about how SF is mean and nasty and creating a housing crisis because it won't let anyone build more housing. But there's only one way to go without destroying all that is good about SF (its parks) and that is up. And that is not a good idea.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by TheSync ( 5291 )

        But there's only one way to go without destroying all that is good about SF (its parks) and that is up.

        Up, but not that far up - Paris, for example, has a far higher population density than San Francisco, but has very few very tall apartment buildings. Paris does not have the nutty 40 foot height limit that most of SF has, instead the limits in Paris have been 121 feet (but were just raised to 164 feet).

        If you would like to see examples of very livable and park-filled concepts for 100,000 person per square

  • Gotta imagine that at some point regarding prices of litigation after a major catastrophe, prices of trying to come up with a fix, risks of total collapse, among several other things, a construction company might just decide to keep paying specialists, analysts and whatnot to keep denying the whole thing while they prepare to flee the country with as much money as possible.

    I mean, a misstep of this level must involve a whole lot of people. Construction company aside, wouldn't governmental regulators and suc

  • Developers say it is safe? What about engineers? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wasted ( 94866 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @04:36AM (#53391135)

    The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.

    In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.

    Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Chrisq ( 894406 )

      Re:Developers say it is safe? What about engineers?

      Don't you think that people have had enough of experts [newsweek.com]?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Maritz ( 1829006 )
        It makes perfect sense that the ignorant can convince the ignorant to ignore the educated. The race to the bottom is underway.

        • The race to the bottom is underway.

          Goddamn this race is boring. 1.5 inches a year! I think racing lichen would be more entertaining.

    • Re:Developers say it is safe? What about engineers (Score:4, Interesting)

      by stealth_finger ( 1809752 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @06:02AM (#53391269)

      The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.

      In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.

      Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.

      Look, it's safe until it's not okay, now shut up and get in there.

    • The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.

      In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.

      Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.

      Real estate developers are impeccably trustworthy, that's why we elected one as President. If the developer says it's safe, then it's safe!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by schnell ( 163007 )

      In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales.

      What "developer" means in any real estate-related context is the company that bought the land when it had something else (or nothing) on it, figured out a business case for what to build on that land, got the permits, borrowed the money, built the building(s) and assumed the risk/reward of trying to sell the resulting building space to people or companies. It doesn't refer to any specific business function within the company, because any sizeable real estate developer will have on staff (or contracted) any

  • Hi from New Zealand (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mistakill ( 965922 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @05:47AM (#53391239)
    After the 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, NZ, 22 February 2011, we can tell you that what you thought was safe, isnt... We had buildings that should have survived the quake, but didnt...

    And then we had a 7.8 in Kaikoura, on November 25 2016...I wouldn't want to be within a mile of this building in an earthquake

  • Measuring from space (Score:5, Informative)

    by Melkman ( 82959 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @05:57AM (#53391263)

    Wow, mapping a buildings from space with millimeter accuracy. From an orbit 693km high. That's an accuracy of 1:100,000,000 while flying 24,000 km/h.. Crazy. And then imagine the capabilities of really good US satellites aren't even known because classified.

    The ESA link to this story: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Satellites_confirm_sinking_of_San_Francisco_tower [esa.int]

    • Measuring from space - Geology is IMPORTANT (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The imagery looks like the actual measurements are LiDAR derived.
      Similar levels of accuracy are available from the GPS system when differential GPS is used. More information about GPS here:
      Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) http://geodesy.noaa.gov/CORS/ [noaa.gov]

      It is rocket science, however today not surprising. The really hard part of this is that the data is available in near real time. See the Sentinel mission website
      https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions [esa.int].

      Any time a building incurs set

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      Thats pretty cool but I want something that can tell me where the gophers are in my yard when will it be accurate enough to do that?

    • Not to put a damper on the wonderment of modern science, but we've had very accurate survey level measurements using GPS for a couple decades now. They didn't go into their methodology (could have involved manual or GPS assisted ground truthing, then change monitored by imaging to calibrate the satellite for Europe), or statistical error. While the measurement is in mm, that isn't to say to what degree that measurement is statistically accurate or not. As mentioned, other analysis disagrees with the value g

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Melkman ( 82959 )

        The measurements were not done on the ground or with GPS assistance. The payload of the Sentinel-1 satellite they used is the CSAR radar. That radar does automatic distance/altitude mapping of entire swaths. I'm just amazed by the precision.

    • Wow, mapping a buildings from space with millimeter accuracy. From an orbit 693km high. That's an accuracy of 1:100,000,000 while flying 24,000 km/h.. Crazy. And then imagine the capabilities of really good US satellites aren't even known because classified.

      The ESA link to this story: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Satellites_confirm_sinking_of_San_Francisco_tower [esa.int]

      THAT'S the damn thing that pulled an eye image when I looked to the sky the other day. I was wondering how in the hell the government of Jaiaguanaga found me after all of this time. *shakes fist at sky...and stuff*

  • It's actually a self-secluding underground survival community for rich yuppies being deployed incrementally to save excavation cost.

  • It has sunk about 16 inches...

    errr, how many billion dollah landers are you going to smash into Mars before you start using the metric system? this is ridiculous.

    • Re:metric (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gabe Ghearing ( 3618909 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @10:38AM (#53392445)

      It has sunk about 16 inches...

      errr, how many billion dollah landers are you going to smash into Mars before you start using the metric system? this is ridiculous.

      The USA hasn't crashed a Mars rover landing(there have been 4 so far)... I believe every lander Europe and Russia has sent to Mars has crashed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • No, but we lost a whole satellite due to a minor glitch, which was elevated by an engineer and dutifully ignored by his management...

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        • Right. Because of the use of the metric system. If they'd used real (i.e., US) measurements, it would have been fine. You start sticking in weird furrin' measurements and you have problems.

          The problem with the metric system is that it makes the math easy. And anytime the math is easy, you're going to make mistakes. When the math is hard, you double and triple check it to make sure you haven't made some silly mistake.

          (Yes, I'm being facetious.)

  • Sinking: from the top, or ground? (Score:3)

    by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @10:01AM (#53392179) Journal

    I'm sure the experts have thought of this, but don't see an answer: is the 16 inch sinking measured from the top of the tower, or from ground level?

    In other words, does that measurement include settling within the 58 above-ground stories? I would think that a building that large would have some internal compaction over time, independent of the ground beneath it.

    I presume that the ground surrounding the building is deformed downward with the building, otherwise the entrance threshold would have moved markedly compared to the street level. Road crews could probably identify pavement cracks in vaguely concentric rings around the building.

  • Of course it's safe, there's no doubt about that -- provided of course people believe in it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ujRE2IkEIo [youtube.com]

  • I wonder why you can't see it up close. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @01:40PM (#53394113) Journal

    I just walked by the Tower and expected to see the foundation slab sunk below the level of the sidewalk, but nothing like that is visible, I wonder why?

    • Did it start off *higher*, though?

    • Steel buildings flex. I would wonder how stable their sensing is because if it doesn't average over time it could be movement of the building they are detecting... if not, how do they compensate for that?

      Also, they are measuring from space so one would assume they can only measure the top and the street next to the building. Again we have a sampling problem in that both of those could change with temperature enough that I would think a tower would differ in height... even concrete has to have expansion join

  • What happens to the pipes and things underneath? (Score:3)

    by Loconut1389 ( 455297 ) on Wednesday November 30, 2016 @02:26PM (#53394549)

    There's only so much flex the gas and water and all that can have.. isn't that a gas and/or water disaster waiting to happen?

  • Engineers in San Francisco have tunneled underground to try and understand the sinking of the 58-story Millennium Tower.

    "Hey, Bill, is the roof of this tunnel getting lower?"

  • Let's just pause for a moment and reflect that we even have the ability to measure the position of a building within a centimeter or so using satellites orbiting the Earth.

    I find it astonishing.

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