this only betrays a deep misunderstanding on your part of the challenges in construction and issues with Sub grade stability in coastal zones and how different those things are to having enough fire exits.
Your comment is not making any point but your of lack of understanding.
"deep misunderstanding on your part of the challenge"
A citizen doesn't care about challenges in construction or software or food contamination, it is our professional responsibility not to be negligent in our work.
the standard for negligence for an engineer isnt that "something bad happened", and talking about a building with foundation issues due to unstable local soil is far different than "didn't meet fire code" from the perspective of anyone who knows anything about the issues at hand.
Just an FYI it's unlikely an architect designed those foundations - there were probably engineers who tested the soil and gave its properties to a designing engineer who designed the foundation and both of those things are going to be tempered by what was common engineering practice at the time, and if the unstable soil situation was known about. My understanding is this situation is common in the area due to building practice at the time.
All a layman knows if that he should not die in his sleep because the building caved in, you can't expect a homeowner to debate you on the exact details of structural engineering.
However I can comment on the culture of negligence - and I think it's getting worse.
Of course in every job, there is constant pressure from management to cut corners, junior colleagues or peers that mess up, deadlines to meet. It is very easy to say to avoid inspecting troubled areas, to say 'I've done my job' and avoid headache. Often it is not in anyone's job description to police this. The 'client' is typically none the wiser, and when problems arise 10 years down the line, often they can't be traced to anyone personally. The fact that we've replaced entire careers with gig economy, and people stay in one job less and companies now invest less in training that ever in the past 40 years means that there is even less accountability and more opportunity for mistakes.
Cases of unpredictable 'something bad happened' are extremely rare. Soviet government was warned that reactors used in Chernobyl were dangerous, Tepco was warned that sea wall protecting Fukushima was inadequate, Robert Lund warned that Nasa should not launch Space Shuttle Challenger, residents of Grenfell Tower warned about fire safety before they burned alive, same goes goes for Bhopal disaster, subprime loans and 2008, 737 Max and every other major event. It is also extremely rare that the consequences of these decision ever catch up with the top brass. Hence we have culture of negligence.
> All a layman knows if that he should not die in his sleep because the building caved in, you can't expect a homeowner to debate you on the exact details of structural engineering.
If said homeowner is trying to 'score points' by pointing out things they don't themselves understand, then they don't deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt.
>However I can comment on the culture of negligence - and I think it's getting worse.
>If said homeowner is trying to 'score points' by pointing out things they don't themselves understand, then they don't deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt.
The hell kind of attitude is this? Someone goes through the effort of doing research to wrap their head around something with which many people don't even bother to acknowledge, and challenge you with a question that you as the professional are reasonably expected to be able to answer, and that's your response?
I hope you never work with me. We would not get along at all.
Your comment is not making any point but your of lack of understanding.