Collapse of the Metrodome

Most people here in the US (and certainly American football fans) saw the news of the Metrodome in Minneapolis collapsing under approximately 16 in. of snow. Fortunately, structural failures are relatively uncommon news and this one happened just in time for game day, so it got even more coverage.

(image: AP, courtesy of BBC)

However, just in case you missed the footage, here's NFL on Fox's coverage containing some of the security camera footage of the roof rupture:

Now, that's amazing stuff. However, as a structural engineer, the most amazing part to me is that nothing truly devastating happened. Notice those heavy loudspeaker units bouncing about? None fell crashing to the floor. Further, that bulging roof structure gave ample "run time" for anyone who was in the building (it was, thankfully, essentially empty when this happened). Much of the public focuses on this as a failure, but in my mind, this is a complete success of the structure1 in terms of servicability and life safety.

1 Granted, I don't know what the design snow load was. I can only assume it was something less than 1.33 ft.

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