He continued on his way just like most people do when something falls off a supermarket shelf and don't want to touch it in case they get blamed. Though how anyone would blame him for that...
Would you not have gone and checked the car - even from a distance? Or called the police due to the potential hazard?
I'll have some of whatever that bloke has had. Weed probably. I saw the video from a wider shot earlier and there's at least another house of that design to the right of that one, might be another gable coming down soon.....
Incorrect wall ties used or no lateral restraint straps fitted or fixings in any ones that were there is my guess. Wonder if the NHBC will manage to wriggle out of this one?
One of the problems you get with parapet walls, all that holds the wall to the roof timber work is probably five lateral restraint straps that the brickies may not even have built into the wall securely, plus the actual parapet catches the wind.
Yes, however there are tens of thousands of buildings with similar details of varying ages (lots without straps) that don't spontaneously fail and nearly turn bystanders into pancakes. It'll all come out in the wash, it's just given the HSE an extension on their employment.
Back in the 1990’s I had been working for a major house builder Beazer (taken over by Persimmon) and we had done a lot of one of the particular houses with external cavity walls and 3” x 2” internal timber stud walls at 600 centres. They suddenly decided that we needed to clad one of the bathroom walls which was at right angle to the long gable wall with plywood glued and nailed to the studding to make it rigid then insert two lateral restrain straps into the cavity wall to provide additional lateral support to the gable wall. I never found out why it was decided this was required after a few hundred of these houses had been built, I assume there had been an issue somewhere with a gable wall shifting. The plasterers really were not happy about it, they used to knock a noggin out of the studding to get the boards upstairs by passing it through the wall, I heard them trying to kick the plywood off the studding in the first house they did after the change, I went to see what was going on and broke the news to them that it was glued as well as nailed, they were not chuffed. We did a deal to leave some ply loose until they got the boards upstairs. In most homes it’s the floor joists, internal walls and roof timbers that actually keep the walls in place.