Обрушение жилого дома Ронан-Пойнт: причины и последствия

Tower block which partly collapsed

Ronan Point was a 22 storey tower block in Canning Town in Newham, East London, that partly collapsed on 16 May 1968, only two months after it had opened. A gas explosion blew out some load bearing walls, causing the collapse of one entire corner of the building; four people died and 17 were injured. The nature of the failure (caused by both poor design and poor construction) led to a loss of public confidence in high rise residential buildings, and major changes in British building regulations resulted.

Ronan Point, named after Deputy Mayor Harry Ronan (a former Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London Borough of Newham), was part of the wave of tower blocks built in the 1960s as cheap, affordable prefabricated housing for inhabitants of West Ham and other areas of London. The tower was built by Taylor Woodrow Anglian using a technique known as large panel system building, which involves casting large concrete prefabricated sections off site and bolting them together to construct the building. The precast system used was the Danish Larsen & Nielsen system. Construction started in 1966 and was completed on 11 March 1968.

Ronan Point was partly rebuilt after the explosion, using strengthened joints designed to deal with those issues, and the building regulations were altered to ensure that similar designs would not be permitted in the future. However, public confidence in the safety of residential tower blocks was irreparably shaken, and the public scepticism of Ronan Point was later found to be appropriate. Sam Webb, an architect who had given evidence to the Griffiths inquiry, predicted that after approximately 15 years, Ronan Point would develop structural problems and collapse. Webb's concerns eventually led the council to evacuate the building, and then to demolish it in 1986 in a piecemeal manner (rather than, for example, using explosives). When this was done, the extent of the defects found shocked even some of the activists, including Webb himself. It was discovered that most of the mechanical connections between floor slabs and flank walls had not been attached properly during construction. On the lower floors, cracks were found in the concrete where it had been point loaded, and it was alleged that the extra pressure on those points during a high wind (such as during the Great Storm of 1987, barely a year after the demolition) would soon have led to building collapse. Immediately after the publication of the report the Government brought out interim measures to ensure the safety and integrity of buildings in the event of an explosion. All new buildings of over five storeys constructed after November 1968 were required to be able to resist an explosive force of Existing buildings were allowed to resist an explosive force of , provided that the gas supply was removed and flats were refitted for electric cooking and heating. Many other jurisdictions, including the US, have since amended their building codes to require that buildings subject to explosions or other accidents will not collapse to an extent disproportionate to the cause.

In 1985, the Building Research Establishment published a report entitled "The Structure of Ronan Point and other Taylor Woodrow – Anglian buildings" to advise local councils and building owners on checking the structural stability of their blocks. Southwark Council confirmed in 2017 that strengthening work ordered after Ronan Point may not have been carried out on the Ledbury Estate, after structural weaknesses were found that led to the evacuation of four tower blocks. Within a couple of decades of the collapse of Ronan Point, the public's lack of confidence in the construction technique used at Ronan Point, together with the social problems within such developments, led to the demolition of many tower blocks. In 2018, it was reported that two tower blocks on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, Tangmere House and Northholt House, were structurally unsound and could collapse catastrophically if there is a gas explosion or if a vehicle collides with the base. Both are to be evacuated urgently. Other buildings in Broadwater Farm had less serious problems.

In May 2018, 50 years after the partial collapse, Ronan Point was the subject of an experimental documentary film, And Then We Heard Shouts and Cries, by artist Ricky Chambers. Chambers' grandparents and mother had lived in flat 87 on the 18th floor of the tower block at the time of the gas explosion.