Cabinet calls for investigation into possible collapse of school floor

Hugo de Yongje, Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning, has asked all municipalities to check nearby schools for potentially crumbling floors. In such cases, the school will be asked to investigate.

In May, a piece of concrete above a classroom in Rotterdam detached and fell onto a table. No one was there then. He suspects hundreds of schools are using the same floor system that was in use from 1951 to 1973.

Municipalities should first check the archives to see if there are schools with such floors in the area. Then you should ask the school board to investigate where this falls. De Yongji hopes this will be done before summer vacation ends. The Minister then wishes to inform Tweed Comer of the outcome.

The floor is from the so-called MuWi system, with filler elements of the same material sandwiched between concrete beams.

After the incident at a Rotterdam school, parts of the floor were found to be loose in several places. An investigation by the research firm TNO found that two other schools in the city had suffered similar damage. Investigators also found that the damage to the floor did not affect the structure. Overall, there is no serious danger from further concrete block falls at his three schools studied.