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Skyscraper's Rooftop Pool Spills Everywhere as Earthquake Rocks Manila (gizmodo.com) 58

The Philippines was rocked with a 6.3 earthquake this week that sent buildings swaying and people running for safety. An anonymous reader shares a report: But one of the most bizarre videos of the earthquake so far has to be this footage of water pouring out of a residential skyscraper in Manila's Binondo district. According to local reports, that water is from a penthouse swimming pool. The building, called the Anchor Skysuites, is relatively new and didn't officially open until 2015. It's one of the tallest buildings in the area and is credited as the tallest building in any Chinatown around the world outside of China. The video, credited to Michael Rivo, was just one of many videos capturing the terrifying experience.
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Skyscraper's Rooftop Pool Spills Everywhere as Earthquake Rocks Manila

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  • Let's just jump straight to posting cat pictures and get it over with.

    I could maybe understand talking about an earthquake somewhere if there were an interesting technology angle to it, but this isn't it.

    At least put this shit in Idle.
    • There is a tenuous connection, I guess, because of video technology?

    • Well, there is an interesting technology angle to it. How do we secure swimming pools against spilling in an earthquake? And how does the earthquake have to shake the tower to basically empty the pool?

  • " It's one of the tallest buildings in the area and is credited as the tallest building in any Chinatown around the world outside of China.

    I mean, who is tracking that?
  • 25 years ago, I lived in a building that used to have a rooftop pool.

    Then, one day, nearby dynamiting rocked the building enough to crack the pool, which emptied into all the apartments

    Needless to say, people living on the higher floors certainly did not expect a flood!!!

    • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @05:37PM (#58479478)

      I'll bet flood insurance would have been a deal for them though..

      • the building is at fault and the landlord needs to fix it and pay for an hotel if needed

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          Not the guy with the dynamite?

  • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @05:41PM (#58479506)

    I saw the video and the water was more of a slosh than a pour... It sure looks like a lot of water, but I'm guessing in reality it wasn't all that much, maybe a few hundred gallons or so.

    I sure hope nobody was IN the pool at the time. That would have been a bit exciting, getting sloshed around like a bobber in a bathtub, with the waves going over the edge... Body surfing anybody?

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @06:20PM (#58479732)

    This story made me think of the swimming pool scene [youtube.com] in the film Mechanic: Resurrection [wikipedia.org].

  • Obligatory - I see no swimmers?!
    • Obligatory - I see no swimmers?!

      And it's a good thing there weren't any.

      Back when the Loma Prieta quake yanked the ground sideways in the Silicon Valley area, there were reports of pools where the resulting wave (as the water DIDN'T get yanked) carried a bunch of swimmers water-sliding across the adjacent pavement. Presuming this wasn't bogus:

      Try that on a skyscraper's penthouse pool and you get to take a long involuntary dive.

  • This falls into the same category as the famed "Vdara death ray" in Las Vegas. Who at MGM International knew that a tall, concave glass building that faces south might randomly flash-cook guests who happened to be walking through the wrong spot?

    • Who at MGM International knew that a tall, concave glass building that faces south might randomly flash-cook guests who happened to be walking through the wrong spot?

      Anybody who read a lot of Arthur C. Clark, who used such tricks in several stories.

      I don't recall, though, if it was Clark, or Niven, or who that did a murder mystery where the revenge murder is committed by building a skyscraper with "energy efficient" remote-controle adjustable-for-ventilation windows, tuning them up to focus the sun on the p

    • And then there (allegedly) was the office building in the industrial area near Chicago's O'Hare International, where several people died at this one spot on the walk to the door.

      Turned out the facade was parabolic and faced the runway (through a token fence), while the walkway went right up the middle of the parabola. If you happened to be on the walk at the focus, just as a jetliner, taking off, crossed the axis with all engines at max, you got exposed to a LOT of sound pressure. B-b

    • by Chrisq ( 894406 )

      Who at MGM International knew that a tall, concave glass building that faces south might randomly flash-cook guests who happened to be walking through the wrong spot?

      Even after this happened the same architect (Rafael Viñoly) designed another death-ray building in London [wikipedia.org], meaning either he didn't learn or actually liked burning things

  • ... except in Houston, Texas.

    I was outside at the time.

    It missed us.

    So not, "everywhere."

  • by uncqual ( 836337 ) on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @07:26PM (#58480054)

    My first thought was if a baby was learning to swim in that pool in a "Mommy and Me" class, would the baby have been thrown out with the pool water?

  • There is a slight tech aspect to this - some people on Twitter asked if putting a swimming pool at the top of a building might actually damp earthquake shaking.

    That might work, if the "pool" were designed to dissipate energy by sloshing against baffles that pass through the water line. Since that only happens in the top 10-20cm of the pool, all the weight of the rest is wasted. You'd actually get more effect per ton of weight by deploying a lot of shallow pans, half-filled with water and crumpled netting.

Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem in relation to a bigger problem. -- P.D. Ouspensky

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