10,000-Pound Beams Collapse At ‘96 Olympics Aquatic Center

Two 10,000-pound steel beams, designed to support a temporary roof being constructed over the Olympic swimming and diving complex, collapsed on Monday night and fell 130 feet before crashing into a student athletic center on the Georgia Tech campus.

No one was injured in the accident, which was being investigated Tuesday by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and its engineering and construction contractors.

Coming only four months before the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Games, the incident raised new safety concerns about an Olympiad that has been bedeviled by engineering problems.

Stephen B. Jones, the business manager for Ironworkers Local 387, said eight of the 10 union members who worked on the construction site on Monday told him Tuesday they were scared to return.

“They’re very, very nervous,” Jones said. “Some of them are not going to go back.”

Jones said memories are still fresh of an accident a year ago that killed one ironworker and injured two others at the Olympic Stadium when a steel light tower collapsed.

Federal investigators concluded last year’s accident was caused by an engineer’s mathematical miscalculations about how much weight the tower could hold, prompting Olympics officials to order reinforcements.

Also last year, it was learned that another design flaw had caused two Olympic Village dormitories to settle unexpectedly on their foundations by as much as 9 inches.

Olympic officials halted construction on the $23 million Georgia Tech Aquatic Center Tuesday and said they expect to determine the cause of the collapse by the end of the week.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Bill Moss, managing director of construction for the Olympic committee.

“We have more than $500 million worth of work. You’re bound to run into a couple of problems from time to time.”