What omission are you talking about?
My point is that _if_ the engineer believed the building was at risk of catastrophic failure they would have stated as much.
It seems like maybe the report author(s) did state as much when they said “major structural damage”. I don’t know anything about architecture but, for example, when an accounting firm issues an adverse audit opinion they don’t say “this company is totally screwed!” they say “these financial statements contain material and pervasive misstatements.” It sounds boring and benign to most people but it’s the CPA equivalent of a red alert.
Exactly. Joe Blow building manager is not a structural engineer. The comment about "major structural damage" at the end of report was probably not even read. The beginning of the document is about paint bubbles and 'the tile makes the rail too short'. That sets the context.
The article casts a building department administrator as having some dire knowledge of the building condition and simultaneously telling residents everything is fine. But a close examining of the situation leads me to believe the building department administrator had no such indication.
Are you for real?
Put yourself in the shoes of a building administrator responsible for oversight of hundreds to thousands of properties. You get a report like this, on a relatively young building and it looks very ho-hum.
But NPR is presenting it with hindsight bias and acting as if there was something ominous in the report. There simply wasn't... and the story is just gotcha journalism.