When two steel columns buckled on the 21st floor of the former Pfizer headquarters in Manhattan this July, the building safety industry watched a familiar sequence unfold and commercial property insurers should have watched just as closely. Investigators began examining what happened to the 37-story tower, which was being converted into more than 1,600 apartments.
Reporting from industry news sources noted that engineers were cautioned against assuming the visible damage marked the full extent of the problem because structural elements are interconnected and a failure in one area often
