CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A week ago Thursday, the residents of the 12-story condo complex Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, woke up overnight to a real life nightmare when half of the building completely collapsed leaving 149 of them unaccounted for under 13 to 16 feet of pancaked concrete and steel rods.
As of this writing, the remains of 18 residents have been recovered, including two young sisters, 4 year-old Emma Guara and 10 year-old Lucia Guara.
Further search and recovery efforts may be expedited now that a crane is being used after a ramp for it was built over debris. Hundreds of first responders, including a crew from Israel, have been removing rubble and strewn belongings by hand, placing them in orange plastic buckets, day and night, rain or shine, only stopping in lighting.
Today President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit the site.
“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search-and-rescue team and everyone who’s been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary.
The collapse recalled the twin towers fall on 9/11 and something out of movie or third-world country with lax construction standards.
It will take some time and thorough investigation before a definitive cause or causes can be determined, but already signs seem to be pointing to failure of foundation pillars made of concrete and rebar, which are steel rods meshed with the concrete. That failure could be caused by the salt water atmosphere, salt water itself, if salt beach sand was used to mix the concrete, and sink holes. Already, experts noted the side of complex that collapsed faced the sea.
A survivor witness said she had heard a big boom and saw the garage collapse, two loud booming noises followed. The pool was seen collapsing and the ground shaking and cracking by other survivors. Some were able to escape within just feet and seconds of the ocean side of building collapsing.
The condo board and residents had been given notice that the concrete pillars and slabs in key areas were in bad condition. But a crisis public relations firm from Washington D.C. hired by the board said it had never been told the building was in danger of collapse.
In 2018 a structural engineering report had found and detailed “major structural damage” in the pool decking, waterproofing and “abundant cracking” in concrete columns, beams and walls in the parking garage.
Recent photos and videos showed extensive water pooling, wall cracks and spalling in the lower level and pipe galley ways. Pillar edges, corners, could be seen with cracked, broken away concrete, exposing corroded rebar. If that can be seen on the outside surface, it is an indication it’s just as bad if not worse in the interior and that there’s a more serious problem causing it all.
I’m not writing about concrete and rebar as a novice. My family and relatives have been in the concrete and masonry trade business for 70 + years, I’ve helped pour concrete drives, steps and walks with rebar along with building brick and block walls, houses, fireplaces and garages since I was in grade school.
Just two months ago, the president of the Champlain Towers board warned the residents that the problems noted in the 2018 report had become significantly worse and the estimate to repair them had grown to $15.5 million.
To give you an idea of what a condo in the building had been listed for, I went thru the slide show of a beautiful unit listed on Zillo for over $700,000.
Unless a condo board has a structural engineer on it, they are not going to know that the kind of problems the Champlain board was alerted about could lead to a collapse, especially if combined with possible contributing factors such as the weight of a roof repair, vibrations from neighboring construction or sinking ground the building is built on.
The city of Surfside has hired a structural engineer to investigate the cause who had previously investigated the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombing. And you can bet condo boards around the country will be hiring engineers to audit their buildings if they haven’t already. Champlain Towers South is on a lovely street with a line of similar size condos in a line one after the another.
It’s tragically and sadly fitting that President Biden is visiting Surfside while trying to pass both a ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ infrastructure plans. If only repairing heartbreak infrastructure could be added.
Condolences and strength to all those affected.
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