News

The Chronicle Herald

Downtown Halifax may look very different now than it did in 1917, but the general consensus from experts is it wouldn’t fare much better if the Halifax Explosion happened today.

John Newhook, a civil engineering professor at Dalhousie University and director of the school’s Centre for Innovation in Infrastructure, said his gut feeling is nothing downtown is designed to a particular blast standard.

Whether a building remained standing would depend on its proximity to the blast wave, Newhook said. If only the top is impacted, it might hold up, whereas damage to the lower levels may take down the entire building.

Partial failure could also bring down the lower stories and there’s also the possibility of twisting, which would also likely take out the building, he said.

“Most of the buildings downtown, I’m pretty sure, the facade, cladding, whatever you want to call it, would be gone; it’s on the ground,” Newhook said. “How far it goes in addition to that depends on the nature of the wave. The impact on the structural skeleton itself could be varied.”

The harbour bridges would also be susceptible to the explosion, he said.

“Damage that compromised one of the towers would lead to collapse as would damage that compromised one of the main cables. Given the magnitude of the explosion both scenarios are highly probable.”

Read the rest of the article online