5. The Harmon had to be torn down by hand.
The story of The Harmon is a testament to the importance of hiring a civil engineer who knows what they’re doing. In 2009, The Harmon was just one of the many buildings created in a brand new complex called CityCenter. They wanted The Harmon Hotel to be built next to a luxurious shopping center so that people could conveniently wake up and go looking for some Louis Vuitton. The full project cost $8.5 billion.
Unfortunately, when the buildings were already erected, the inspectors declared that the stores were fine, but the structure of the 26-story hotel was not safe enough to withstand an earthquake, and therefore it would be too dangerous to allow customers to stay there. The building would need to be torn down.
Normally, hotels need to come down and be blown up with dynamite, because it is a much faster process of taking a building down. However, since The Harmon is right up next to so many stores surrounding it, that would be impossible. Everything had to be torn down by hand.