PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A storm that caused a west Phoenix warehouse to collapse was more intense and caused more damage than previously thought.
At least four large warehouses were damaged by a microburst that struck the area on the evening of July 24, including one where a worker was killed.
According to the National Weather Service of Phoenix, the summer thunderstorm produced 20 microbursts over 90 minutes.
“90 minutes. 20 microbursts. Never seen anything like that,” said Arizona’s Family First Alert Chief Meteorologist Royal Norman, who was monitoring the weather radar as the storm descended upon the Valley that night.
“The weird thing is that we had a bunch of activity in the mountains in Tucson. And it was pretty quiet around the Valley until just after sunset when these storms started popping up,” said Norman.
Oswaldo Montoya, 22, was killed when the roof and walls of the Freeport Logistics warehouse collapsed.
The Arizona’s Family News drone spotted damage at three additional warehouses, all within a city block of the Freeport Logistics warehouse.
One of the buildings suffered a similar roof and wall collapse. Winds in the area were estimated at 70 to 80 miles per hour.
Buildings in the Phoenix area are supposed to withstand winds of that speed. Structural engineer Joe Zbick said it is possible to figure out what caused the walls to come down.
“I would call it a puzzle,” said Zbick, who would not speculate on what caused the damage in this situation. However, he did say that the fact that several different buildings were damaged similarly led him to believe the main culprit was environmental rather than structural problems.
“I’m probably going to be concentrating on much more environmental effects and the weather. I’m going to look at the wind speeds for the area. I’m going to look at the debris that’s left over,” said Zbick, explaining how he would approach this situation if he was investigating the collapses.
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 13:00:00
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