Meet the structural engineers turning what they see on the job into social media gold

It's been said that real estate is one of Southern Californians' favorite past times. But one L.A. company has made the dangers that lurk beneath SoCal buildings into a booming business, while turning what they see on the job into social content.

"Steel. Concrete. Wood. Dirt. Anything related to that, if it's an existing building or slope, that's what we do," said Kyle Tourjé, executive vice president at the structural engineering firm Alpha Structural, which specializes in foundation construction and hillside repairs.

"That includes retaining walls collapsing, retaining walls that have already collapsed and went down 200 feet down a mountain, massive landslides, houses that are sinking, houses that are built of wood construction that have pervasive termite damage, houses that have maybe pervasive termite damage that may not be that bad," said Tourjé, who is part of the third generation of Tourjés at the family-owned and run business.

A big gaping hole in a balcony floor of a home from deferred maintenance.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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The company also tackles earthquake retrofits, modifies big steel structures, builds underground rooms, bigger yards, hillside decks, and more.

A giant crack running along the entire length of a foundation.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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Skulls, secret chambers, and other oddities

That line of work has exposed Tourjé and his colleagues to some strange discoveries in the subterranean world of crawlspaces and basements. He said he's found in these darkened corners Nazi war medals, a skull (not from a missing person, as confirmed by the coroner) that was at least a thousand years old, and a secret basement accessible only through a trapdoor behind a bookcase.

"We see so many weird things," he said.

The structural posts for the deck of this home are improperly secured.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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For years, Tourjé and his team would share these finds with the rest of the staff, including the bread and butter of their business: jaw-dropping structural issues caused by everything from prolonged exposure to the elements, shoddy workmanship, deferred maintenance, to the fact that many houses and buildings in the region were constructed at a time when standards and codes simply lagged behind.

"Foundation and structural damages is not uncommon here with aging housing inventory," he said, which the company soon discovered made for popular content. "People love gaping cracks and sagging beams and landslides where the whole yard disappeared."

Making social content

Some eight years ago, Tourjé said Alpha started to share these photos of structural damage to members and clients on their email list — with respect to a client's privacy and without identifying the house.

A huge tree collapsed onto a house.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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Later, they expanded to social media in a feature called, "Things seen this week during structural assessments!"

The response has been tremendous, he said, with "tons of interactions" and engagement from viewers.

"Our content is primarily done for educational purposes to show various things, like structural distress, geotechnical damage. But it's also a form of entertainment," he said. "Different people that work here have like different fanbases now on Imgur."

Frequent visits to Rancho Palos Verdes

Tourjé said the company books more than 100 appointments a week. Of late, some of those calls have taken them to Rancho Palos Verdes, where persistent land movement has caused damage to many homes.

A house that's collapsing due to land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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"It's a very sad situation," he said. "We're the people that are known to fix the impossible.... and there are some properties in this case, in the PV Peninsula, that are impossible to salvage."

In a profound way, that's just one of the many unimaginable worlds his work has brought him face-to-face with.

The world under L.A. buildings

"It just sounds kind of like a boring technical industry," he said. But, "the intersectionality of what we do [goes] across environmentalism, Los Angeles culture and history."

One of company's latest job, Tourjé said, is to waterproof and perform structural repair to a building in downtown L.A. with something largely unseen and unknown underneath — an abandoned underground subway tunnel network that are miles and miles long.

A DIY deck built without permits.

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Courtesy Alpha Structural, Inc

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"People drive over the street and they have no idea that there's a giant subway tunnel that hasn't been seen for a hundred years, and people don't realize that there are hundreds of miles of abandoned tunnel networks under the city of L.A.," Tourjé said. "And you only know this if you do deep googling or you walk into it like we do."

And maybe, just maybe, the rest of L.A. would soon get to see photos or videos of it in our social feeds.