The condo building that collapsed in Surfside, Fla., five years ago had been failing for weeks, the product of a flawed design and faulty construction, federal investigators concluded in a report released Monday.
Five years after the collapse killed 98 people, the federal team investigating the cause determined that the condo’s structural design deviated from building code requirements and that the construction did not conform to the design. Those problems, along with decades of corrosion and modifications that added weight to the pool deck, left the deck compromised.
Investigators did not offer safety recommendations along with their conclusions; they are still preparing a final report with more supporting evidence.
Investigators believe that two columns that held up the pool deck at the building, Champlain Towers South, began to fail early in June 2021, with cracks spreading and loads redistributing to other parts of the pool deck. Signs of that stress included visible cracks in a planter box on the pool deck, a gate to the area that became jammed and a worsening leak that dripped into the parking garage below. Some of those issues were substantiated by photographs in the report.
The problems kept getting worse until June 24, when the pool deck fell onto the underground parking garage in the middle of the night, creating a chain reaction that took down a large portion of the building in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, while many people were asleep in their units.
“When building structures are designed and built to required codes and standards, they have margins against failure, meaning they should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” Judith Mitrani-Reiser, one of the lead investigators for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has spent years seeking answers to the collapse, said in a news release. “In the case of Champlain Towers South, however, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”
The pool deck and its flawed design quickly became a focus of concern after the collapse. A New York Times analysis of the building highlighted many of the issues, including a lack of beams under the pool deck in the area where investigators now believe the collapse began.
Three years before the collapse, a consultant had found evidence of “major structural damage” in the area of the pool deck and “abundant” problems around the columns. Residents were preparing for a multimillion-dollar repair project at the 13-story building, which was constructed in 1981.
Federal officials have described the inquiry into the condo collapse as one of the most complex investigations into a building failure ever undertaken. The federal team examined two dozen possibilities for where and why the collapse began and ruled out a number of potential factors, including sinkholes under the building, vibrations from nearby construction and extra weight from a roof construction project.
Four years ago, the families harmed by the collapse reached a $1 billion settlement with a group of defendants. The company hired to handle the building’s security paid the largest portion.
A developer has purchased the property to build a new residential tower. While there have been years of discussions about building a permanent memorial site nearby, none has yet come to fruition.
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