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A group of friends decided to climb the fire
escape ladder to the roof of their apartment building to watch the sun
set. While ascending the latter, the first young man to climb it grabbed
one of the rungs near the top of the ladder. As he applied his body
weight to the rung, the rung broke from the ladder’s side rail and the young
man fell 44 feet to his death. We reconstructed the accident and analyzed
the cause of the failure. We were able to demonstrate that the fasteners
that attached the rung to the ladder were completely rusted on the inside of
the rung while appearing intact on the surface. We demonstrated that the
load applied by the young man could not have caused the fasteners to fail if
they were intact. And we demonstrated that the failure happened so
quickly that the young man had no time to react and prevent himself from
falling.
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