On "The Tower"

Spoiler: The "Family Tower" in Louisiana has partially collapsed.

Below are links to some 2018 UAV videos when it was still standing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejGSR2GLaks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8jbxfcGEDE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZl453YveQ

2023 UAV video of the remnants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ir_nqAUtCE

The Story

Post-COVID 2020 Christmas week, we hitched up the "Cajun Edition" RV to head to Louisiana to visit family. We arrived at mom's house after dark, parked the RV, and mom invited us in, handed me a beer (love that woman).

She sat down with me with a serious face, and said "honey, I've got some news". OK, I'm thinking...did someone die?

"The tower fell down."

I'm shocked. "What??" I stepped outside to see for myself...of course, it's pitch-dark in her area at night and with no moon I couldn't see a damned thing. And it probably wasn't a good idea to be wandering around outside on a farm in the dark. So I went back in, finished my beer (and probably had another),  and planned to get up early to check it out.

I asked her when this happened and no one seemed to know...or even noticed it was gone! Best she can tell, the damned thing may have come down in August when Cat 4 Hurricane Laura came rolling through town...four months ago? And no one noticed?? Everybody's like "I dunno, we never look at it any more".

It just so happened that earlier that very day a neighbor was four-wheeling across her property  (approved) and noticed some guy wires laying across some trees in an open area; he followed their path toward the tower, and only right then looked up and noticed that the tower was a helluva lot shorter 'n the last time he looked at it...four months or more earlier...now, keep in mind he, too, lived in the fall zone of that tower...

Anyway, I stepped outside the next morning and looked way up to where the tower was, and saw...blue sky. Where I expected to see the tower there was nothing. Then I looked farther down to see about 150' of the tower left standing, with the lower-of-the-three guys all attached at the top and some cables hanging across it. I grabbed my boots and gloves and started walking into the wooded area where it was; here's some videos I took real-time as I was inspecting it for the first time.

Prologue Tour Videos:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbnPLmBD6lo
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSBcUw4nuyY

Executive summary, one of the guy wires that attached to the middle of the tower, which was already  identified as cooroded and at risk of failing, did so during the hurricane. Once that guy attachment failed, its turnbuckle got launched toward the tower from the tension (I later found the end of the cable with the failed turnbuckle, and it was the cable that was hanging over the top of the remnants). Once that center guy failed, the other two cables on that same anchor were over-stressed in tension and the cables failed. The top part of the tower was no longer supported properly so it bent away from that corner and the top 2/3 of the tower collapsed to the ground. The lower third, roughly 150', was still adequately supported so it remained.

The summary details of my discovery are below. Check in for updates at the end. - GA

https://youtu.be/MSBcUw4nuyY?t=1113

The Family Tower is/was a ~450' Rohn 55G. There were eight guys per corner of the triangular structure, attached to six ground-embedded concrete anchor blocks, roughly 5'x10'x20' each, per Rohn installation spec, buried 6 feet underground at their top. There were four inner/lower guys and four outer/upper guys to these anchors.

Failure of the tower was immediately above the fourth-from-bottom guy, with all debris falling toward a compass line of 300°, exactly away from the failed concrete clevis/mount at 120° from the tower. Various sections of the fallen Rohn structure were "concerntina'd" along a line, some on top of each other, within 100 or so feet of the base of the tower. Some pieces appeared to fall down while vertical, embedding into the ground adjacent to the tower base, and in one case through the trunk of a tree. There were stress failures at each major section of Rohn with obvious evidence of bending at the joints; in one section there was significant bending along its middle.

All guys were still attached to the fallen Rohn sections, with the wires laying across trees at each corner.

The lower ~150' part of the structure is still standing. Its remaining four inner/lower mounts/clevis have all guys attached to their anchors and the wires are taut. That part of the structure appears sound.

I sought and identified all three outer ground mounts with protruding clevises, mounted at compass 120°, 240°, and 360° from the tower (and made them visually indentifiable with red tape). The southwest and north mounts/clevises each have four wires still attached, with turnbuckles in good shape and safety wires still in place (edit, these were later cut away and pulled out of the trees).

The southeasterly (120° from the tower) section, however, has one turnbuckle missing from the clevis, the one closest to the ground, partially covered in dirt, with the threaded part of it still attached to the mount. This remaining piece has obvious evidence of creeping corrosion due to constant contact with wet ground and it failed across the threads of the turnbuckle. The turnbuckle safety wire shows obvious pull stress from the departing turnbuckle pulling the safety wire cable through the other turnbuckles before the safety wire failed and released the departing turnbuckle.

As I inspected the SE upper clevis, I found its upper (4th) cable pulled away from the turnbuckle (which itself remained attached to the clevis.) The cable had unwrapped and pulled away from the turnbuckle.

Following the cables from this clevis toward the tower I found another frayed cable, with evidence of necking and stress failure; it was traced to the fifth (from the ground) guy on the same turnbuckle. Farther toward the tower, I found the missing turnbuckle with its cable still attached.

I closely inspected the two outer and inner clevis at each of the other corners of the tower and found all four had wires still attached.

As I was cutting away some dangling wires in the open area between the SE clevis and the tower, I noticed there was only three wires heading off into the trees; recall the clevises each secured four wires I trekked closer to the tower with some binoculars and found that missing wire (sixth from the bottom) and followed it to see it actually laying across the top of the remaining tower! Being the total dolt that I am, I followed the cable to a section laying on the ground nearby and started to tug on it; all of a sudden some hundreds of feet of steel cable started cascading around me with frightening noise...fortunately, I was not struck, and quickly realized that that was not a smart thing to do...

Conclusion: failure of the tower was likely initiated due to the corrosion failure of the outer lower #5 (from ground) turnbuckle on the southeasterly outer mount/clevis, due to corrosion at its threads. As the opposing guys pulled the tower away from that mount, the #6 cable on the ESE side was overstressed and failed, causing additional stress and likely further bending of the tower. The tower eventually buckled, broke away from the lower ~150' and cascaded downward into a small-radius debris field, directly away from the SE mounts. The lower/inner remaining four guys retained their tension and the tower broked away above this section.

Contributing factors include decades of neglect, lack of inspection, and lack of maintenance. Exacerbating the failure was at least six major windstorm events in Louisiana in 2020.

No one seems to know when this collapse occurred. No one heard it fall or noticed it until last week. Best the family can tell, it fell sometime between late August and Christmas week (there was a hurricane through there in August). However, a lot of the debris, such as the glass light globes, showed evidence of having been in the ground for an extended period (mud inside them), so it's my expectation that this happened much earlier in that time period...yet no one noticed.

The remaining structure will be allowed to stand -- for now. I believe it is below the requirements for FCC and FAA reporting/licensing and it may provide some excellent nesting opportunities for predators and other birds.

To help with cleanup I bought some bolt cutters and went to all mounts and cut the cables that were slack, marked the points with flags, and pulled some cables through so that no one will be injured walking/four-wheeling in the area. We'll get in there soon with a dozer to drag out the pieces and the cables/ropes should slide out through the trees.

March 2021 Update: I contracted a local team with very large pieces of heavy equipment to spend a couple days clearing away brush and trees and removing the tower remnants. They are also spending more time clearing other stuff on the land, 'cause they're already there, so why not.

They also cleared around the inner mounts for the remaining 150' of the tower (or whatever you want to claim it is, Howard) so it'll be a straightforward task to drop that into the clear space and have it dragged away. Easy Peasy.

Mom had the neightbor load all the steel on a trailer and bring it to scrap; they got a nice bit of spendin' money for it.

So do I drop the rest? When's the drop party? Drop it now or wait 'til the Christmas holidays? Ground reptiles will be waking soon and rains (and mosquitos) are coming, so I'm thinking Christmas break.

Or maybe I'll just leave it.