SF Millenium Tower -- could it happen here? (condo, earthquake)

[tdatl]

If you haven't read about the Millenium Tower building in San Francisco, it's a fascinating story -- in order to save money, the developers didn't drill down into the bedrock, and now the tower has already sunk 16" in less than a decade & is now tilting -- someone even posted a video of himself putting a marble on the floor, and it always rolls in the same direction. They also used concrete for a building of that size in an earthquake zone and seemingly made other poor design decisions. It seems like things just keep getting worse for the building and its condo owners. I won't be surprised if within a couple of decades or less that they end up dismantling that building floor by floor.

obviously, since we're not coastal & ATL isn't partially on infill (that I know of), we don't have many of the issues they do in SF when it comes to building high-rises. But are there other issues here? What are requirements for building them in ATL -- e.g., you must drill into bedrock if over XX stories or similar? How deep do you have to go around here to get into the bedrock? Is there porous limestone beneath areas around town? Do we have some that are using friction piles like the Millenium Tower, maybe going into this thick Georgia clay that seems so common here? I've Googled some on building standards in ATL and didn't really find much...

Thanks

[Pemgin]

Well, a decade or so ago, 999 Peachtree St. was found to be shifting, or something. It's happened here before.

[LTCM]

This is going to blow your mind...but our soils aren't clay based and have less than 15% clay. Yes they have some clay but they are 65ish% sand. Rest is a mix of silt and clay. As such our soils are considered light - a sandy loam.

Bedrock in our area should be granite. Codes govern building requirements but all the design work rests on the shoulder's of engineers. The government does little to calculate engineering loads, etc etc. Unless there is something obviously off, they will almost always trust the engineering stamp of a private firm.