Roof collapse kills at least 24 at Russian water park

They still aren't sure. Could be the weight of snow, poor foundations or the temperature differential causing the problem, they theorize.

MSN is reporting the count is up to 38 now. This is such a tragedy.

If anyone has access to the paper version of the Chicago Suntimes, there are several photos: one shows the exterior before, one shows the interior before, and one shows what it looks like now. The photos really show how large a section of roof collapsed. Unfortunately, the online version of the paper does not have the pictures. I am sure other papers have the same photos - so if you can find them, you should take a look.

Further news items and photos can be found at the BBC news site

A sad incident all round really.

-Jim

According to the article posted by invy, the roof was designed to support 5 feet of snow and there might have been 10 feet of snow on the roof. WOW, that is a lot of snow. This isn't definitive because the quote came from the construction company that built the roof, but ten feet of snow over that large of a span would bring down a lot of structures.

I don't know about that dude - ask someone in Buffalo or Albany NY (just the ones I know of offhand) about what structures stay up under 10' of snow.

I don't know exactly what the measurement is equal to, but there is such redundancy built into the construction of roof structures, in addition to overconservative representative loadings. In non-CivE terms, structural engineers in this country account for a s***load of snow on a structure in addition to a work crew repairing the roof, some ice load, a 100 mph wind, and of course the self-weight of the structure ... then you multiply all that by at least 1.6 if not up to 3.0 for high-occupancy, high-importance structures.

Maybe in Russia where the building codes aren't as strict, but I think anything that big in this country would be able to stand 10' of snow, or at least not have catastrophic failure without any kind of notice to allow evacuation.

Note: this post was made without looking at any pictures of the fallen structure, so take that for what its worth.