Why do we never learn lessons when buildings collapse?

Florida’s rapacious weather finally decided matters.

On Sunday, the last of Champlain Towers South was demolished ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa making landfall. The controlled implosion brought an end to rescue attempts after specialist teams had conceded that it was unlikely that anybody was left alive under the rubble of the building which had partially collapsed nearly a fortnight earlier, killing 24 residents with 118 still missing.

The story is notable in the way of all inexplicable tragedies where the impassive force of nature meets the predictable ineptitude of humans. Should the focus be on the corrosive effect of warm humid salt air on concrete or the failure of America’s building codes? Or is it just another story of natural resources being exploited too heavily? Had the removal of too much groundwater left cavities to form deep underground, producing the increased number of sinkholes that plague the state?

Yet whatever the cause of the collapse, the tragedy touches all of us because it ultimately comes down to a matter of human inaction. Back in 2018, structural engineers had warned that the towers required urgent attention. This is how safety checks are meant to work. Danger had been identified and a solution proposed. The cost of the job was set at $15 million.

Except, that’s when people began to procrastinate. Each resident was looking at a bill of $120,000. Few were willing to pay until 24 June, when 142 paid a much higher price, and many more were left with lives devastated.

Perhaps it’s such a familiar story because the human capacity to avoid a bill is hard-wired into our nature. “A man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance,” said Hunter S. Thompson in The Proud Highway, and so it generally proves. Wasn’t this our realisation, just a few years ago, when Notre Dame went up in flames? Blame was quickly apportioned to some luckless smoker working on the cathedral’s renovation but that was merely the smouldering ember that set the fire. The reason the cathedral came perilously close to total collapse was that nobody had ever planned for this inevitability. The ancient pile had survived centuries without any reasonable defence against fire. Why would anybody want to pony up the cash on 14 April 2019? Yet by 16 April, it would appear such a small price to have paid to avoid the events of the 15th.

In the aftermath of Notre Dame, the usual earnest words were spoken about ensuring that the same doesn’t happen to other world heritage sites. Yet here in the UK, the most infamous fire risk has barely seen any progress towards solving the ongoing problem. The restoration of the Palace of Westminster has yet to be greenlit. Even now, the government is still canvassing the public for advice on how Westminster might be restored. If you visit the Houses of Parliament Restoration & Renewal portal, you too can join the debate ahead of the parliament again debating the matter in 2023.

Such dilly-dallying is hardly a modern phenomenon. In 1789, a group of 14 architects signed a report warning about the danger of fire at the former Palace. One of the architects, John Soane, repeated the warning in 1828, just six years before a fire did break out. The so-called “Great Fire” destroyed the majority of the Palace, leaving only Westminster Hall and the Jewel Tower intact.

The lesson here isn’t simply that warnings were ignored but that decades passed between the earliest warnings and the eventual calamity. With that comes a deepening complacency. Deepening too is the sense that there’s always another administration who can deal with the problem. “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow,” as Mark Twain is said to have once quipped.

Yet political problems do eclipse any problems of engineering. We’re still only two years into the 10-year renovation of Buckingham Palace which is predicted to cost a mere £369 million. That sum triggered complaints from the usual sources, but the number is tiny compared to the £4 billion now predicted for the Place of Westminster’s restoration. Not so much a political hot potato as a smoking lump of incandescent tuber.

That decision will ultimately be one for Parliament to make. In a debate in May last year, the current Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, rightly framed it as a bipartisan decision, suggesting that the work “will proceed only if we can achieve the broadest possible consensus across the House.” Yet that does nothing to discount the reality that the sitting government will ultimately take a hit for spending so much on renewing something viewed by many as an anachronism. Which prime minister will want to rationalise the restoration of a relatively young building (construction started in 1837) built according to a gothic style that is entirely impractical in the modern era?

MPs have already voted to leave the parliament building whilst the renovation work is undertaken. It was the sensible choice, given the difficulty of maintaining a functioning legislature around extensive building work, but their vote has thus far not seen any plans put into place. They certainly won’t leave until 2025 at the earliest.

Let’s hope they make it. The problem with old buildings is that they rarely wait around for politicians to decide who will pay for their upkeep. Then disaster strikes and narratives change as the rationalisations begin. Calamities, we’re told, are great opportunities to rebuild using modern technology and materials, whilst also providing decades of work for craftspeople whose industries have been decimated. There’s enough work to train a new generation of stonemasons and carpenters…

Too often it’s only when they’re standing for photo-ops in the ruins of much-cherished buildings that politicians agree that even bigger sums of money for rebuilding make any sense. It’s just a shame they can’t be thinking that now, lest the inevitable does happen.