Devon Energy Center

[CloudDeckMedia]

The damaged areas have broken, unsecured pieces of glass and window frame which can dislodge at any time (some probably have been falling since the incident). This weekend's rains will likely bring down additional pieces, and high winds will scatter them widely. The basket is the best means of securing the damaged area, but it must be repaired & inspected before deploying it again, and in low wind conditions. So it may be a while.

[TheTravellers]

Flat pieces of glass can surf on the air and go great distances horizontally. It is one of the reasons in earthquake drills they want people off the streets in downtown areas. Sharp pieces of glass flying horizontally at a high speed is lethal...think decapitation lethal.

Yep, this happened while we were living in Chicagoland, horrible.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...006-story.html

[CloudDeckMedia]

Boston's John Hancock Tower had terrible problems with 500 POUND glass windowpanes popping out in the 1970s. From Wikipedia:

There were problems with the innovative use of blue reflective glass in a steel tower: Entire 4′ × 11′, 500-lb (1.2 × 3.4 m, 227 kg) windowpanes detached from the building and crashed to the sidewalk hundreds of feet below. Police closed off surrounding streets whenever winds reached 45 mph (72 km/h). Under the direction of Frank H. Durgin of MIT's Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel a scale model of the entire Back Bay and an aeroelastic model of the John Hancock Tower were built and tested in the wind tunnel to identify the problem. The research raised questions about the structural integrity of the entire building (due to unanticipated twisting of the structure), but did not account for the loss of the glass panels. An independent laboratory eventually confirmed that the failure of the glass was due to oscillations and repeated thermal stresses caused by the expansion and contraction of the air between the inner and outer glass panels which formed each window; the resilient bonding between the inner glass, reflective material, and outer glass was so stiff that it was transmitting the force to the outer glass (instead of absorbing it), thus causing the glass to fail.[8]

In October 1973, I.M. Pei & Partners announced that all 10,344 window panes would each be replaced by single paned, heat-treated panels at a total cost between $5 million and $7 million.[8][7] Approximately 5,000 of the original glass panes were removed intact, and were later reused by artists.[9]

During the many months it took to diagnose and repair the building, sheets of plywood replaced many of the missing glass windows of the building, earning it the nicknames "Plywood Palace" and "Plywood Ranch" (the same name as a local lumber yard chain at the time). Bostonians joked that the Hancock Tower was "the world's tallest plywood building".

[FritterGirl]

Per the press conference yesterday, there were cracks and damage to windows going down about 14-17 floors, so they are acting out of an abundance of caution.

I know of an incident in a performing arts center once where a concert goer standing in an open lobby area similar to the the CCMH got hit in the head with a portion of a program holder that had fallen off and fell three stories. It was thick acrylic with sharp corners, and fell in such a way that when it struck the person standing, sliced a nice chunk out of his scalp and knocked the guy out, causing a severe concussion. Think about a piece of glass weighing several hundreds of pounds and falling 700+ feet, then think about what that could do to the human body.

[CloudDeckMedia]

MBG marketing head Leslie Spears was just escorted out of the Gardens when she went out to take a picture, so that gives you an indication of how serious they're taking this.

[Pete]

[jn1780]

There sure are a lot of random pieces of broken glass. I noticed there was a panel out on a corner that wasn't where the basket was. How did that happen?

[Pete]

The streetcars are running again.

[DKG]

Yep, this happened while we were living in Chicagoland, horrible.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...006-story.html

I had no idea it could be that bad.

[Pete]

This is very strange...

I just took this photo and it's hard to see and it's clearer in person but they have taken out a bunch of windows.

[DoctorTaco]

Falling debris from up high hit the building at lower levels as it fell. The damage is distributed all the way down. Somebody was speculating that debris got in that "trough" and just bounced back and forth as it fell.

[jn1780]

Falling debris from up high hit the building at lower levels as it fell. The damage is distributed all the way down. Somebody was speculating that debris got in that "trough" and just bounced back and forth as it fell.

There is one window that seems way out of place. Whatever hit it must have caught some serious wind to fly back all the way back to the other side of trough 3/4ths of the way down.

[Pete]

I guess alll those windows were cracked but still in place and now they have completely removed them.

I wish I would have taken a better picture because it's amazing how much damage was done.

[Pete]

BTW, the northern part of the Myriad Gardens is still closed and they had to move a concert scheduled for the bandshell on Sunday to Centennial Park.

This has turned into a long, ugly inconvenience.

[David]

They may be open as of today: https://twitter.com/myriadgardens/st...01205465518088

HEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!! Guess what??? The fencing is leaving from our north section which includes The Devon Lawn, Meinders Terrace, and Sheridan street are OPENING! Happy summer. 😀😎☀️

[Pete]

^

That's good news. That park is very heavily used, especially in the summer.

[Roger S]

I noticed the fencing was gone from around the park, at least on the south and west sides, when I came to work this morning.

[G22]

Falling debris from up high hit the building at lower levels as it fell. The damage is distributed all the way down. Somebody was speculating that debris got in that "trough" and just bounced back and forth as it fell.

Didn't the lift "malfunction" at the bottom and impact multiple windows on the way up? Once they got to the top without stabilization, they created more substantial damage. Just my take...

[DoctorTaco]

Didn't the lift "malfunction" at the bottom and impact multiple windows on the way up? Once they got to the top without stabilization, they created more substantial damage. Just my take...

I hadn't heard that but seems plausible.

[Roger S]

Barricades on Sheridan were gone this morning.

[PaddyShack]

We went to Vast last night and there were plenty of people enjoying the northern lawn of MBG. The south entrnace to the Devon atrium was still closed and you couldn't walk along the north sidewalk of Sheridan.

We ended up walking through the Colcord to get into the Devon tower and I noticed there was a whole pan of glass removed in that little hallway between the hotel and the tower.

[Pete]

The public sidewalk along Sheridan in front of Devon Tower is still barricaded.

[SEMIweather]

They sure are taking long enough to replace all of the windows that were broken.

[TheTravellers]

They sure are taking long enough to replace all of the windows that were broken.

Since they used "Budget Glass Cleaning" (https://www.thelostogle.com/2019/07/...tower-windows/) for their window-washing, they're probably using "Joe's Window Fixing Shop" to replace them.

[Pete]

I'm sure they had to have them custom made.