Olden Time Structural Bepuzzlement

So here’s a good one I think… Southwest Ohio: 1968 house. Cistern(?) below concrete garage floor that is basically as big as the garage itself. There is a crack in the floor that runs across middle of garage to the manhole… No other signs of deterioration & I really didn’t make a big deal out of it with the client. Now that I’m writing the report, though I see the potential for catastrophic failure some time in the future… So is the install on something like this such that it can withstand cracking without being a safety issue? Is it rebar re-enforced generally?Structural engineers, sound off!

I am not an SE but not knowing how they built it its hard to say. I would call it out as need in someone to look at it. I had one 3 weeks ago but there was a 2 inch deflection in the floor in 4 feet. You could see many cracks below, winter salt and moisture deteriorated the re-bar, and when the SE came out well the seller wasn’t going to pay to fix it so it got filled to the tune of $16,000. By the way that floor was 35 yrs old I believe.

Craig,

If it wasn’t reinforced the first 1968 Buick that parked in the garage would be at the bottom of the cistern. My question would be what’s the condition of the concrete and steel? Testing by SE would be needed to determine load capacity.