[blue]The hotel was being built to be larger than what its permit allowed, according to Yun Phally, the Kep province coordinator for the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC).
Yun told RFA that the permit for the building did not allow for seven floors.
Kep Provincial Land Management Department Deputy Director Lay Vannara told RFA that the building's owner, Ek Sarun, was arrested and is being questioned by the police.
Lay said that the collapse came after the workers had just finished laying concrete and were having a party inside the structure. Shortly after the Ek left the party the collapse occurred, so he was spared.[/blue]
[blue]Kep provincial authorities said earlier that a committee had been formed to officially investigate the cause of the accident, which a provincial police official earlier said occurred when concrete was being poured on its top level.[/blue]
A plethora of factors at play:[ul]
[li]Minimal requirements on designers/architects/engineers for multi-story construction. Experienced builders(GCs) typically run the show. (Many of them are quite competent.)[/li]
[li]No standard building codes, design criteria, etc., in force. If the construction is funded by foreign money, that standard is often (but not always) used.[/li]
[li]More importantly, no requirements for plan checking, technical inspections, peer reviews, etc., on all but the largest buildings (hotels and casinos).[/li]
[li]If something is found wrong, no teeth in the law to stop work. The Sihanoukville site had been "shut down" twice before the accident for not having a building permit.[/li]
[li]Cambodia has incredibly low lateral loads from wind and seismic. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of construction with moment frame columns 200x200mm and (4)14mm bars. They stand under vertical load, but have no significant margin for incidental or lateral load.[/li]
[li]Post-style shoring, while often used successfully, does sometimes fail (wooden or metal, see 4th & Race). This creates the incidental load mentioned above, leading to progressive collapse.[/li]
[/ul]
And then the traditional practice of letting the crew live on sight just drives the death toll up if there is a problem.
