Cancelled - Hard Rock Hotel Collapse New Orleans
Get Nebula using my link for 40% off an annual subscription! go.nebula.tv/brightsunfilms
In October of 2019, the nearly completed Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans suffered a catastrophic failure. The massive collapse injured 30 people, killed 3 workers and became the worst American engineering failure in years. Today I'm going to investigate what happened, look at the history behind this controversial tower and find out why this major disaster happened.
Merch - shopbrightsunfilms.com
Instagram - / brightsunfilms
Twitter/X - / brightsunfilms
Travel Channel - @BrightSunTravels
Closed For Storm - www.closedforstorm.com/
Other Reporting on the New Orleans Collapse -
WWLTV Full Collapse Video - • Never before seen vide...
Engineers Discussing Faults - • Engineer says several ...
Rare Photos From Inside - • Photos: Inside the dam...
Drone Footage - • Hard Rock Hotel Collap...
--------------
Bright Sun Films 2023
Presented in 4K
I don't know if maybe I missed you mentioning it, but the really screwed up part was that the body of one of the construction workers was visible from street level for months. It was right on a really unstable part, so no one could get to it. Somehow they got a tarp over him, but it blew off sometime later. The community was livid that there's a victims body just sitting there while everyone argued what to do.
The prosecutor being dismissed was most likely because of corruption on the part of the city. You described the shortcomings of city oversight, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were some bribes that led to those oversights. Investigation would have implicated city officials, so they derailed the investigation. I’m not saying that’s what happened, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the case. New Orleans is not known for its square-dealing ways and forthright morality, after all
Anyone from New Orleans could tell you how shockingly textbook this level of mismanagement and insanity is when it comes to infrastructure in the city. Seriously, the number of calamities and truly bizarre urban planning/development projects where everything goes wrong, nothing gets done, and everyone gets shafted (or worse) and no one is held accountable is staggering. It's a whole rabbit hole you can go down. From miles of highway exits to nowhere in places that never should have been approved that have sat for 50 years, the fall of Pontchartrain Beach, 8000 insane projects with the airport(s) & of course the city being left holding the bag with Six Flags amongst so many others you could literally do a whole series of full length documentaries on it.
As a retired Design build Engineering and General Contractor, I'm disgusted at all the incompetence and failure to prosecute
'Our project was an objective failure in every way'
It's disgusting that no criminal charges were brought up when it's clear so many people were at fault. Part of me wonders who paid of the grand jury.
I'm from New Orleans and I'm so glad you covered this! The fact a MAN'S BODY lay exposed in the rubble for weeks, is just so disrespectful and greusome to him, his family and the city.
22 gauge steel for the floor pan is absolutely insane. If I were working on that job site and saw that I’d quit immediately
I worked a few blocks away from this tragedy. It still haunts me. There was no justice for the families of the lives lost.
Soon as I saw "Hard Rock Hotel New Orleans" I just thought "Oh no..." because literally the only thing I knew about this project is the collapse and how they left the remains in public view for months. It's terrible.
Thank you for this documentary. Sadly, none of this is a surprise to me. As a former resident of New Orleans, I know firsthand that the corruption there is staggering.
I was going to engineering school in New Orleans at the time of the collapse and the cleanup effort. Me and my peers all knew that the city would screw up every step of the process from the day of the collapse. We all gathered on our balconies to see how badly they would screw up the crane demolition and unfortunately we were right. The demo was rushed and given to the lowest bidder, so the outcome was in now way a shock. New Orleans is incredibly corrupt and sadly we all knew that nothing meaningful would come from the investigation and no justice would take place. It was very obvious throughout the whole process that the mayor and the city were trying to get rid of the evidence as fast as possible to cover up how bad they screwed up because they knew they didn’t do their jobs. Very sad and frustrating.
as a metal worker, 16 gauge sheet metal is a little tough to bend by hand. pretty strong. 20 gauge is stuff you can bend with your fingers.
As a New Orleans native, I’m not surprised the ball was dropped that many times with no accountability. It’s like that there.
There is one other shameful note to this story. One worker was very concerned with the conditions on site and brought the structural integrity issues to his foreman before the collapse. They didn't acknowledge his concerns and because he was an illegal worker, they actually had him deported. Thats what he got for trying to do the right thing. Disgusting.
The
So shameful that no one has been held accountable. RIP to the 3 men that lost their lives.
The floors are noticeably sagging even in your documentary footage of the hard rock job site. that's horrifying.
I know you’ve intentionally left it out of this video out of respect (and the photos have been removed from the internet, anyone with an ounce of respect for human life wouldn’t look it up anyway) but I think it’s important to acknowledge how THOROUGHLY disrespected the body of one of the men who died was. He was left exposed for people on the street to observe and then covered with a tarp. I saw it by accident at the time and how bleak and disrespectful it was is one of the things that keeps me awake at night. Shame on those corrupt developers and the city for allowing any of this to happen. SHAME. That poor man and his poor family.
... this was a highrise being built after 9/11 in a city that has dealt with major hurricanes. Being a native New Yorker who now lives in a historic city in the South that also has to deal with severe tropical weather, the fact that so much was wrong about the design and construction of that building, including lack of proper trained code inspectors/enforcers, is appalling. I can only pray that somehow everyone involved does finally get punished for this...