PRECAST CONCRETE BUILDINGS SURVIVE DIRECT HITS FROM HURRICANES HURRICANES LAURA AND DELTA WERE NO MATCH FOR THESE STRUCTURES, WHICH COMBINE PRECAST CONCRETE AND STEEL FOR A NEARLY IMPREGNABLE FAÇADE A pair of precast concrete projects in Louisiana with-stood the wrath of two powerful hurricanes as struc-tures around them were demolished. Bob Pool, execu-tive vice president of Alfred Miller Companies (AMC), a design-build contractor that also manufactures pre-cast concrete components, documented the afteref-fects of Hurricanes Laura and Delta on the control room, maintenance shop, and warehouse (CMW) building of Cameron LNG, a liquified natural gas facili-ty in Hackberry, La., and on the Cameron Parish School District (CPSD) Warehouses in Creole, La. BY SUSAN BADY “This year our area had direct hits from two major hurricanes, six weeks apart,” says Pool. “Cameron LNG’s CMW building in Hackberry was hit by 150-mile-per-hour sustained winds and 200-mile-per-hour gusts during Hurricane Laura. The only damage [to the CMW building], a laboratory and hazardous-waste storage facility, was to the fabric parking canopy, which was designed to tear away in a hur-ricane.” Pool says several pre-engineered metal buildings (PEMBs) in the same area sustained significant damage. The school district warehouses are located a mile from the coast, exactly where Hurricane Delta made landfall, he says. Both structures are pre-engineered metal buildings with precast concrete walls and standing-seam metal roofs. “They are literally the only buildings still stand-ing within a 10-mile radius of Creole,” Pool says. AMC shop-applied more than 2 million ft 2 of lightweight cementitious fireproofing and com-pleted field block-outs, plus equipment supports (shotcrete) totaling more than 2.4 million ft 2 . The project is the largest fireproofing job in U.S. construction history, says Pool. The company also provided four miles of precast concrete trenches for LNG and stormwater containment, and two miles of precast concrete underground electrical duct banks and manholes.
Ascent Precast Protects Life June 2024: Page 10
