Florida building collapse

[displacedinMN]

DC it if needed

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Horrifying video of this morning&#39;s condo collapse in Florida <a href="https://t.co/yBPaoeUNid">https://t.co/yBPaoeUNid</a></p>&mdash; Aarik Woods (@aarikwoods) <a href="https://twitter.com/aarikwoods/status/1408061142107267076?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[Frazod]

I was just watching this. Absolutely horrific. Hopefully most of the dead never knew what hit them.

[Coogs]

Good lord!!! I saw a report of 1 dead, and thought this must be a minor collapse. That's the whole damn building!!!

[ChiliConCarnage]

That would be terrifying to be in. I saw one video from inside
That tweet says 35 pulled out. That's good news. Watching the collapse, I'd have thought hardly anybody would have survived.

[displacedinMN]

once in a while, something hits you and shocks you. This was it. Especially after seeing the building fall. Awful.

[Mennonite]

A surveillance cam recorded footage of someone local police are calling "a person of interest"

https://i.imgur.com/t3sLbO3.png

[Frazod]

That would be terrifying to be in. I saw one video from inside
That tweet says 35 pulled out. That's good news. Watching the collapse, I'd have thought hardly anybody would have survived.

Most of those were rescued from the damaged part that is still standing. Only a couple pulled alive from the rubble pile so far.

[Marco Polo]

This isn't necessarily reassuring now that I have a high rise condo under contract in Chicago

[Frazod]

This isn't necessarily reassuring now that I have a high rise condo under contract in Chicago

Chances are your Chicago building isn't standing on a giant sandbar.

[Donger]

One death confirmed and 51 unaccounted for. Just terrible.

[DaFace]

Someone's ass is toast for this.

Hoping for the best news for those missing.

[louie aguiar]

How does this happen? There was no earthquake or natural disaster. Was this just a giant engineering/construction failure? So tragic…

[DaFace]

How does this happen? There was no earthquake or natural disaster. Was this just a giant engineering/construction failure? So tragic…My money is on subpar materials that have degraded over time. Inspections should have caught it, but I'm sure that's easier said than done.

[loochy]

How does this happen? There was no earthquake or natural disaster. Was this just a giant engineering/construction failure? So tragic…


Hell, according to many, even a direct strikes from commercial airliners can't even cause a building to collapse. There had to have been thermite or explosives. Buildings don't just crash down on top of themselves, right?

[Donger]

Hell, according to many, even a direct strikes from commercial airliners can't even cause a building to collapse. There had to have been thermite or explosives. Buildings don't just crash down on top of themselves, right?

Knew that was coming...

[ModSocks]

From initial images i thought it was just like, the side of a building or something. But no, if im looking at this right, more than half this building collapsed.

[DaFace]

Hell, according to many, even a direct strikes from commercial airliners can't even cause a building to collapse. There had to have been thermite or explosives. Buildings don't just crash down on top of themselves, right?Buildings sometimes get pulled down due to structural issues. While terrorism isn't out of the question, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion yet. To my knowledge no one has reported hearing any sort of explosion.

[ModSocks]

Buildings sometimes get pulled down due to structural issues. While terrorism isn't out of the question, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion yet. To my knowledge no one has reported hearing any sort of explosion.

He's mocking the crazies because you KNOW there are experts sitting on their couch right now who've realized this is a government operation to test a new material that can bring buildings down silently...

[kcpasco]

You would think there would be signs of structural failure. I can’t imagine a design flaw or construction failure that would collapse an entire building would go unnoticed.

[scho63]

Yesterday in DC a pedestrian bridge over 295 collapsed.

We got some good old infrastructure in this country.

[displacedinMN]

From initial images i thought it was just like, the side of a building or something. But no, if im looking at this right, more than half this building collapsed.

https://s.abcnews.com/images/US/sufside-before-after-gty-ps-210624_1624544687715_hpEmbed_41x14_992.jpg

holy shit

[AdolfOliverBush]

My unprofessional guess is that a sinkhole is the culprit.

[displacedinMN]

My unprofessional guess is that a sinkhole is the culprit.

thinking that too.

[ModSocks]

My unprofessional guess is that a sinkhole is the culprit.

thinking that too.

Same.

When it comes to natural disasters, nothing irks me more than sinkholes.

[srvy]

My guess in Florida like many places they drilled pilasters to stabilize the ground under a multi story building in Florida known to be unstable soil prone to sinkholes.

[srvy]

This is a crack monitor standard method for monitoring subsurface concrete columns and walls. Used by structural engineers all over the world.

https://www.globalgilson.com/content/images/thumbs/0009841_standard-crack-monitor.jpeg

My guess is failure in a concrete column or beam many things could probably cause this.

[ping2000]

Yesterday in DC a pedestrian bridge over 295 collapsed.

We got some good old infrastructure in this country.It was hit by a truck.

[Rain Man]

Same.

When it comes to natural disasters, nothing irks me more than sinkholes.

I don't even like to think about sinkholes. Sinkholes and spontaneously appearing black holes are two ways to die that seem particularly cruel.

[KCUnited]

I hate big sinkhole

[notorious]

Feast your horrified eyes: (not Florida)

https://i.stack.imgur.com/QGRkK.jpg

[loochy]

Sinkholes: the silent killer

[tooge]

How does this happen? There was no earthquake or natural disaster. Was this just a giant engineering/construction failure? So tragic…

Someone in there knew something about Hillary clearly. Duh

[Rain Man]

Feast your horrified eyes: (not Florida)

https://i.stack.imgur.com/QGRkK.jpg


Oh, that's just not right.

I'm going to start doing pushups now so I can climb out if this ever happens to me.

[FloridaMan88]

How does this happen? There was no earthquake or natural disaster. Was this just a giant engineering/construction failure? So tragic…

Poor construction/engineering quality.

Perhaps that isn't the cause with this building since it is a relatively older building (40 years old), but many of the condo buildings/towers that were built in South Florida during the housing bubble in the 2000's and even in today's hot real estate market are built very quickly with safety/quality corners cut.

I owned a condo property in a condo tower in Kendall/Pinecrest that was built in the mid 2000's and it was a nightmare of post-construction engineering defects that had to be corrected.

Post-tension cable repairs, cracks throughout the structure of the building, the pool, which is situated between the two condo towers essentially sinking into the parking garage below, etc.

[IowaHawkeyeChief]

Heard they recently built a high rise next to this and that it created cracks in the pool, etc... Sinkhole wouldn't surprise me either.

[displacedinMN]

Not a well timed tweet from Onion

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Infrastructure Talks Come To Halt After Giant Sinkhole Swallows Capitol Building <a href="https://t.co/CYmnc348A9">https://t.co/CYmnc348A9</a> <a href="https://t.co/vnKGNZROK4">pic.twitter.com/vnKGNZROK4</a></p>&mdash; The Onion (@TheOnion) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1408104192749838339?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 24, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[Bearcat]

Oh, that's just not right.

I'm going to start doing pushups now so I can climb out if this ever happens to me.

That's probably a market segment that doesn't currently know they have an underlying motivated to exercise.... afraid of being trapped in a sinkhole; have you watched Silence of the Lambs one too many times...

[gblowfish]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.

[Mennonite]

Feast your horrified eyes: (not Florida)

https://i.stack.imgur.com/QGRkK.jpg


Hmm...very suspicious. I bet if we looked deep enough we'd find that China is at the bottom of this.





That's probably a market segment that doesn't currently know they have an underlying motivated to exercise.... afraid of being trapped in a sinkhole; have you watched Silence of the Lambs one too many times...



Could you imagine the size of the poodle you'd need to bluff your way out of that thing?

[Bwana]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.


Ouch

[oldman]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.

The inspections were underway but hadn't been completed. But researchers have known, since the 90s, the building has been sinking.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/collapsed-miami-condo-had-been-sinking-into-earth-as-early-as-the-1990s-researchers-say/ar-AALoUP0?li=BBnb7Kz

[loochy]

Not a well timed tweet from Onion

Infrastructure Talks Come To Halt After Giant Sinkhole Swallows Capitol Building https://t.co/CYmnc348A9 pic.twitter.com/vnKGNZROK4 (https://t.co/vnKGNZROK4)
— The Onion (@TheOnion) June 24, 2021 (https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1408104192749838339?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) <script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


And everyone cheered

[louie aguiar]

Up to 99 missing now

[Rain Man]

Up to 99 missing now

That's no good.

I bet some of the missing will turn out to be people who were elsewhere on vacation or something, but the fact that this happened at 1:30 am doesn't bode well. That's probably a time of maximum occupancy.

[WhawhaWhat]

Video from moments before the collapse:

https://10mfh.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Rampage-gameplay-GIF.gif

[Pitt Gorilla]

The inspections were underway but hadn't been completed. But researchers have known, since the 90s, the building has been sinking.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/collapsed-miami-condo-had-been-sinking-into-earth-as-early-as-the-1990s-researchers-say/ar-AALoUP0?li=BBnb7Kz

This. The building has been sinking for over 20 years. Not sure this is surprising at all.

[FloridaMan88]

That's no good.

I bet some of the missing will turn out to be people who were elsewhere on vacation or something, but the fact that this happened at 1:30 am doesn't bode well. That's probably a time of maximum occupancy.

Some of the residents are probably seasonal/snowbirds who likely would not be there this time of year so that might be a positive.

[srvy]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.

Also major work to the roof was being done was reported. So some poor tar roofers are going to be blamed.

[Hog's Gone Fishin]

Happens to me all the time!

[Mama Hip Rockets]

Watching on the news now. This is horrible.

[srvy]

Hmm...very suspicious. I bet if we looked deep enough we'd find that China is at the bottom of this.









Could you imagine the size of the poodle you'd need to bluff your way out of that thing?

I think this is in India. Its such a perfect opening that looks man-made. Like a Jules Vern center of the earth novel.

[Easy 6]

The inspections were underway but hadn't been completed. But researchers have known, since the 90s, the building has been sinking.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/collapsed-miami-condo-had-been-sinking-into-earth-as-early-as-the-1990s-researchers-say/ar-AALoUP0?li=BBnb7Kz

Wow, unthinkable that people were still allowed to live there

Some people are gonna be sued into oblivion

[srvy]

Wow, unthinkable that people were still allowed to live there

Some people are gonna be sued into oblivion

They all move and crack to some degree in a sandy loamy soil. That they are monitoring it means it's being investigated by a structural engineer who should be able to advise if it's dangerous. We do these monitors on condo towers and highrise hotels on the plaza. Run in baselines to make a measurement to structural columns to check plumb in the basement levels also check walls for plumb. Grid out basement floors every 5 feet and get elevations. Its routine maintenance for towers. There are also settlement plates in lock boxes around the properties with a stainless steel rod driven to the bedrock elevations are routinely monitored. This is not out of the ordinary the news see's something in the maintenance inspections and reports not knowing anything about what they are seeing.

This building has been settling 2 mm a year for quite some time according to news reports. I'm not a structural engineer I don't think its abnormal as it passed inspection from a structural engineer.

[srvy]

We are going to have to wait for the report from federal investigators they will get to the bottom of this. They always do.

[eDave]

Footage of rescue workers under the building is unnerving.

[Easy 6]

They all move and crack to some degree in a sandy loamy soil. That they are monitoring it means it's being investigated by a structural engineer who should be able to advise if it's dangerous. We do these monitors on condo towers and highrise hotels on the plaza. Run in baselines to make a measurement to structural columns to check plumb in the basement levels also check walls for plumb. Grid out basement floors every 5 feet and get elevations. Its routine maintenance for towers. There are also settlement plates in lock boxes around the properties with a stainless steel rod driven to the bedrock elevations are routinely monitored. This is not out of the ordinary the news see's something in the maintenance inspections and reports not knowing anything about what they are seeing.

This building has been settling 2 mm a year for quite some time according to news reports. I'm not a structural engineer I don't think its abnormal as it passed inspection from a structural engineer.

Good info from someone who clearly knows a thing or two about it

[Chief Roundup]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/navy-detonates-huge-40000lb-bomb-24361557

The explosion caused a 3.9 magnitude earthquake about 100 miles away in Daytona Beach, Florida, a phenomenon which is not unusual during similar trials.

Probably too far but :hmmm:

[Rausch]

They always do.


:spock:

The final ruling by congressional hearing will be that the building killed itself...

[Marcellus]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.

Great example of why people are insane to want any level of government to have more power and control in their lives.

[MAHOMO 4 LIFE!]

So there were cracks in swimming pools and other parts of the buildings during inspections dating back 20 years but they never did anything about it…… THATS negligence homicide. People are going to jail and this will be the biggest lawsuit in Florida history.

[Bearcat]

Good info from someone who clearly knows a thing or two about it

News outlets are so fast for breaking news and so slow to get it right, it's aggravating.

Day one it's "ERMERGERD THE BUILDING WAS SINKING 2mm FOR YEARS AND NO ONE DID ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!"

...and day three we'll learn "Experts say it's common for buildings on similar soil to sink up to 4mm per year for decades with no issues"

It's sad, but also nice to jump on a football forum or other places on the internet and hear it from experts while the media gets their shit together.

[Jewish Rabbi]

So there were cracks in swimming pools and other parts of the buildings during inspections dating back 20 years but they never did anything about it…… THATS negligence homicide. People are going to jail and this will be the biggest lawsuit in Florida history.

Too bad you weren’t in the building

[notorious]

This reminds me of the building in San Fran that has sunk and is leaning a ridiculous amount.

If that one goes, holy shit.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxS71614E_0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[displacedinMN]

This reminds me of the building in San Fran that has sunk and is leaning a ridiculous amount.

If that one goes, holy shit.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zxS71614E_0" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I always think of that. One wrong move it is gone. I knew Montana had purchased a place there. But is that even occupied?

[Chief Pagan]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.

Great example of why people are insane to want any level of government to have more power and control in their lives.

So not having any inspections wound improve the situation how?

:hmmm:

[Marcellus]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.



So not having any inspections wound improve the situation how?

:hmmm:

No not what I said. Keep thinking and it will come to you.

[ChiTown]

Feast your horrified eyes: (not Florida)

https://i.stack.imgur.com/QGRkK.jpg

That’s the overhead shot of the Hope Solo playground….

[Jewish Rabbi]

That’s the overhead shot of the Hope Solo playground….

Looks like Big Bill’s asshole after Rocco gets done with him

[RedRaider56]

Footage of rescue workers under the building is unnerving.

yeah...those rescue workers are fearless. Scary, scary, situation.

[eDave]

With 159 still unaccounted for, I assume 159 more dead. Fuck.

[MIAdragon]

I heard on the news over lunch that the building had undergone a routine city building inspection YESTERDAY and passed.



So not having any inspections wound improve the situation how?

:hmmm:

It’s Miami, “passed” is typically just the right amount of $$$$.

[ptlyon]

Get big John there ASAP.

[carlos3652]

Im on a plane headed back to KCI today. I had family (from Argentina) who were staying in North Miami Beach (who walked by that building a couple days prior to the collapse)

They came to stay with us in Ft Lauderdale (we vrbo'd) about 23 miles away.

Crazy. Thats a very popular Latin American area. Sad.

[displacedinMN]

up to 159 missing. Not a surprise, but yuck.....

[FloridaMan88]

It’s Miami, “passed” is typically just the right amount of $$$$.

Yep, the condo culture is ridiculously corrupt down here.

[displacedinMN]

People had been warned about this potentially happening.

[eDave]

Daughter of missing woman: Crying
Reporter: Can you tell us why you are crying?

[Deberg_1990]

Daughter of missing woman: Crying
Reporter: Can you tell us why you are crying?

I truly hate this sort of simple minded reporting.

Exploiting victims for ratings.

[Dartgod]

Daughter of missing woman: Crying
Reporter: Can you tell us why you are crying?

Riveting journalism.

[FlaChief58]

How does this happen? There was no earthquake or natural disaster. Was this just a giant engineering/construction failure? So tragic…

It's Florida. We live on a sandbar. Apparently they knew the building had structural problems a few years ago.

[gblowfish]

I truly hate this sort of simple minded reporting.

Exploiting victims for ratings.

Yeah, this is awful. Back when I did news gathering in the early 1980s in Columbia, these frat boys went down to Jacks Fork on a float trip. There was a big storm, they got caught in it on the river, huge flash flood and a couple of them drowned. The news director wanted to send a crew to wait for these guys to get back home to their frat house, camp out in front of it, then ask them how they felt about their frat brothers drowning. I refused to go. They sent a different cameraman, and I got out of the news biz about a week after that. The song "Dirty Laundry" sums it up well. "It's interesting when people die..."

[JD10367]

Yeah, this is awful. Back when I did news gathering in the early 1980s in Columbia, these frat boys went down to Jacks Fork on a float trip. There was a big storm, they got caught in it on the river, huge flash flood and a couple of them drowned. The news director wanted to send a crew to wait for these guys to get back home to their frat house, camp out in front of it, then ask them how they felt about their frat brothers drowning. I refused to go. They sent a different cameraman, and I got out of the news biz about a week after that. The song "Dirty Laundry" sums it up well. "It's interesting when people die..."

When I was a teenager, my house burned down. As I was standing outside watching it burn, a reporter asked me, "What are you feeling right now?" I just looked at him like he was a fucking idiot.

[Frazod]

It's not just reporters. Sure, some of the ones who cover disasters are scumbags, but at least they're on the job.

An EF-3 tornado hit in my area earlier in the week. Tornados are fairly rare this far north (suburban Chicago), especially strong ones that damage heavily populated areas. Luckily there were no fatalities, but there was a good amount of damage. In addition to the reporters, there were a bunch of rubberneckers touring the area. One woman drove in from outside the immediate area, parked her car, hauled out a double stroller and pushed her kids around with one hand while filming the damage on her phone with the other, like it was some sort of tourist attraction. Jesus. Eventually the cops had to set up road blocks to keep them out.

Ruined homes and lives aren't the fucking Pirates of the Caribbean.

:shake:

[Baby Lee]

When I was a teenager, my house burned down. As I was standing outside watching it burn, a reporter asked me, "What are you feeling right now?" I just looked at him like he was a fucking idiot.

I'd have asked him if by 'right now' he meant before or after he asked that dumb fucking question.

[eDave]

Current reporting shows this to be one huge case of gross negligence that got 160 dead. Ugly.

[Easy 6]

Florida couple gets 16 phone calls from grandparents trapped in the rubble... sheeesh what a nightmare, hopefully rescuers get to them in time

https://www.foxnews.com/us/surfside-16-calls-missing-grandparents-condo-collapse-champlain-towers

[srvy]

The article say's from a landline phone? It would be hard for me to believe telephone lines would be intact. Very strange!

[Easy 6]

The article say's from a landline phone? It would be hard for me to believe telephone lines would be intact. Very strange!

Seems a little improbable for a line to survive, but stranger things have probably happened

Either that, or its gonna make a riveting ghost show episode on Travel channel...

[srvy]

Seems a little improbable for a line to survive, but stranger things have probably happened

Either that, or its gonna make a riveting ghost show episode on Travel channel...

Yeah or maybe the reporter thinks a cell phone is the new landline.

Or loved ones still holding out hope and saying whatever to keep the search and rescue going. At some point, they will have to rule no possible hope anyone is still alive. That's when they pull out the rescue teams and bring in the heavy gear. Pull off a layer stop listen and so on. After the fires and rains, it doesn't look good for rescues just recovery.

[Brody Wa]

My money is on subpar materials that have degraded over time. Inspections should have caught it, but I'm sure that's easier said than done.

Hopefully both the inspectors and the contractors will be thoroughly investigated by uncorrupted officials.

[Donger]

FWIW:

Those findings seem to be supported by a report that Michael Stratton was on the phone with his wife, Cassondra, who told him their building was shaking just before the collapse. She was looking out from a condo at Champlain Towers South when she told him she saw "a sinkhole where the pool out her window used to be," he told the Miami Herald.

The phone call then cut off. Stratton is among the scores of people who remain unaccounted for days after the collapse. The death toll stands at 10.

[Dartgod]

FWIW:

Those findings seem to be supported by a report that Michael Stratton was on the phone with his wife, Cassondra, who told him their building was shaking just before the collapse. She was looking out from a condo at Champlain Towers South when she told him she saw "a sinkhole where the pool out her window used to be," he told the Miami Herald.

The phone call then cut off. Stratton is among the scores of people who remain unaccounted for days after the collapse. The death toll stands at 10.

The pool in the lower left of this photo? Is that where she saw the sinkhole?

https://www.reuters.com/resizer/6-gU1tlaoVCi69U-fjzsjItdwao=/960x0/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/PMDWCY55QJOYHBOHHABBGVXKAM.jpg

[suzzer99]

Yeah, this is awful. Back when I did news gathering in the early 1980s in Columbia, these frat boys went down to Jacks Fork on a float trip. There was a big storm, they got caught in it on the river, huge flash flood and a couple of them drowned. The news director wanted to send a crew to wait for these guys to get back home to their frat house, camp out in front of it, then ask them how they felt about their frat brothers drowning. I refused to go. They sent a different cameraman, and I got out of the news biz about a week after that. The song "Dirty Laundry" sums it up well. "It's interesting when people die..."

My Dad was a cub reporter for the KC star in the 70s. A family had just lost their son. My Dad asked if they wanted to talk about it and they said no. The dispatcher told him to get back in there and get a quote. My Dad refused and got fired for it.

[suzzer99]

FWIW:

Those findings seem to be supported by a report that Michael Stratton was on the phone with his wife, Cassondra, who told him their building was shaking just before the collapse. She was looking out from a condo at Champlain Towers South when she told him she saw "a sinkhole where the pool out her window used to be," he told the Miami Herald.

The phone call then cut off. Stratton is among the scores of people who remain unaccounted for days after the collapse. The death toll stands at 10.

Maybe she was in that part of the tower that remained standing for a few seconds, then collapsed.

[Donger]

The pool in the lower left of this photo? Is that where she saw the sinkhole?

https://www.reuters.com/resizer/6-gU1tlaoVCi69U-fjzsjItdwao=/960x0/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/PMDWCY55QJOYHBOHHABBGVXKAM.jpg

Well, there goes that anecdote.

[Pitt Gorilla]

It's not just reporters. Sure, some of the ones who cover disasters are scumbags, but at least they're on the job.

An EF-3 tornado hit in my area earlier in the week. Tornados are fairly rare this far north (suburban Chicago), especially strong ones that damage heavily populated areas. Luckily there were no fatalities, but there was a good amount of damage. In addition to the reporters, there were a bunch of rubberneckers touring the area. One woman drove in from outside the immediate area, parked her car, hauled out a double stroller and pushed her kids around with one hand while filming the damage on her phone with the other, like it was some sort of tourist attraction. Jesus. Eventually the cops had to set up road blocks to keep them out.

Ruined homes and lives aren't the ****ing Pirates of the Caribbean.

:shake:That's really terrible. WTF is wrong with people?

[RunKC]

The pool in the lower left of this photo? Is that where she saw the sinkhole?

https://www.reuters.com/resizer/6-gU1tlaoVCi69U-fjzsjItdwao=/960x0/filters:quality(80)/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/PMDWCY55QJOYHBOHHABBGVXKAM.jpg

Was there a confirmed sinkhole?

Not sure if it’s been mentioned but Florida is the worst state for sinkholes bc the ground is comprised mostly of limestone which erodes far quicker than other material.

But the worst of it is documented in central Florida

[displacedinMN]

A top Miami-Dade fire official on Saturday told family members of people missing in the rubble of a collapsed condo building that demolition workers planned to bring down the remainder of the building on Sunday.

Worries have intensified over the past week that the damaged structure could come tumbling down on its own, endangering the crews below and complicating the search for victims.

Fire Rescue Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members during a morning briefing that the building would be brought down "as soon as possible. First thing tomorrow."

But he cautioned that there "may be some hiccups." A follow-up meeting will be held in the afternoon to finalize details of the demolition, which could be a precarious operation as experts enter the building to bore into the structure to install explosives.

Concerns that the still-standing portion could tumble have curtailed the search in areas close to that section, and shifts detected by monitors early Thursday prompted a 15-hour suspension of the entire search until engineers determined the site was safe to restart.

Jadallah said the remnants of the demolished building would be removed immediately after with the intent of giving rescuers access for the first time to parts of the garage area that is a focus of the search. Such access could give officials a clearer picture of the voids that might exist in the rubble and could possibly harbor survivors.

No one has been rescued since the first hours after the June 24 collapse. The approach of Hurricane Elsa from the Caribbean Sea also raises concerns that strong winds possible in South Florida by late Sunday or early Monday could further destabilize the standing portion of the towers.

The confirmed death toll from the collapse of the condominium building on June 24 stood at 22 early Saturday. Officials reduced the number of missing from 145 to 126 after duplicate names were eliminated and some residents reported missing turned up safe.

The demolition of the building would temporarily suspend search operations, but officials hope not for long. Some families asked to be able to return to the building to retrieve personal belongings, but will not be allowed to do so.

[Frazod]

They really should change words at this point - it's not rescue; it's recovery.

[Deberg_1990]

Wow. But I understand. Extremely doubtful there is anyone left alive in there.

[Titty Meat]

You must have been walking around the building at the time Fatzod

[BigRedChief]

Current reporting shows this to be one huge case of gross negligence that got 160 dead. Ugly.Condos around here built after the mid-90's and Hurricane Andrew are the safest places to be in a hurricane.

These older ones are vulnerable to shoddy work and corruption. And as in this case, if its a big repair bill that the current owners have to fix, they keep putting it off because of the cost.

I'd see some new regulations coming out of this that the structural concerns/repairs/ must be resolved within "X" amount of time or they must vacate the building.

[Bugeater]

They really should change words at this point - it's not rescue; it's recovery.Yep, can't imagine there's anyone still alive. And how shitty would it be for the remaining residents watching the rest of the building come down with all their stuff still in it. But I suppose they should just be thankful to be alive. Horrible deal all around for everyone involved.

[Chief Pagan]

Condos around here built after the mid-90's and Hurricane Andrew are the safest places to be in a hurricane.

These older ones are vulnerable to shoddy work and corruption. And as in this case, if its a big repair bill that the current owners have to fix, they keep putting it off because of the cost.

I'd see some new regulations coming out of this that the structural concerns/repairs/ must be resolved within "X" amount of time or they must vacate the building.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/us/miami-florida-surfside-collapse.html

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Elena Blasser kept her two-bedroom, two-bath condo in the Champlain Towers South as a beachside gathering place for family reunions. She adored the ocean and the small town of Surfside, Fla., because they reminded her of homes in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

She sank at least $100,000 into renovations when she bought Penthouse 11 a little more than a decade ago. Then the complex’s problems began. Hairline cracks in the pool deck. Newly painted walls that chipped easily. Water pooling in the garage. To pay for it all, the monthly maintenance fees and special assessments grew.

“We’re paying those fees and where are they going?” Ms. Blasser, a 64-year-old former schoolteacher, kept telling her family and neighbors, according to her son Pablo Rodriguez.

Little did she know that the problems identified in the building were about to get much worse. A consultant’s report commissioned in 2018 had identified serious problems of crumbling concrete and corroded rebar — problems that engineers warned had already led to “major structural damage.”

Fixing it, the condo board eventually concluded, would cost an estimated $15 million. Ms. Blasser would have to come up with another $120,000 to pay her share.

Long before half of the Champlain Towers South crumpled to the ground on June 24, killing at least 24 people and leaving up to 121 unaccounted for — including Ms. Blasser and her mother, Elena Chavez, 88 — the rancor over how the building was run by its condominium association was an open secret known to the relatives and friends of the people who lived there, and even to residents of other nearby buildings.


Pablo Rodriguez said his mother, Elena Blasser, broke into tears when she was asked to pay another special assessment.

It coexisted with the joys of the otherwise congenial community of condo dwellers who had been sold on the Florida dream of waterfront bliss. Emma Guara, 4, would stop John Turis, 76, by the pool to play with Leela, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, when he was in town from Brooklyn. Ana and Juan Mora would swing by a neighbor’s unit on the 10th floor to see if she needed anything. Younger residents would look out for older ones when they waded into the ocean.

By the time the board members entrusted by their neighbors with overseeing the building hired an engineer to tell them what they had long suspected — that their aging condo was in dire need of top-to-bottom repairs — the meetings at the 13-story complex had developed a toxic reputation.

“People said, ‘Oh my God, thank God you’re not at the board meeting,’” Sharon Schechter recalled. “‘There’s screaming and yelling.’”

Tense stalemates delayed any decisions as the board became a hothouse of grievance over who was to blame, according to interviews with survivors of the collapse, former residents, relatives of the missing, lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Blasser’s frustration grew each year, Mr. Rodriguez said. In 2017, she paid $60,000 for a special assessment to help make repairs. Then came the latest one, Mr. Rodriguez said, breaking into tears.

“She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe we have to do this again,’” he said.

In April, fed up, Ms. Blasser reached out to a real estate agent about selling her condo and was told it would sell quickly for close to a million dollars.


The 2018 engineering report from Frank P. Morabito, the consulting engineer, was deeply troubling. He gave no indication that the structure was at risk of failing, but he estimated that repairs would cost more than $9 million.



“Sadly a few of our residents have undermined our progress with petty challenges, discrediting the board members and management,” they said.

Mr. Turis, a real estate and mortgage broker in New York who bought Unit 409 in 2005 so his daughter could live in it while she attended college, said the building had been mired in turnover of board members and property managers.

“It was like nobody wanted the job,” he said. “It seemed like nobody ever lasted more than two years.”

On Sept. 13, 2019, Graciela M. Escalante, who chaired the committee in charge of the 40-year recertification project, recommended hiring Mr. Morabito’s firm to carry out the work, even though his bid was the most expensive and initially led to what the selection committee admitted was “sticker shock.”

The next day, Anette Goldstein, the board president, and Nancy K. Levin, the vice president, both resigned, saying they were frustrated by last-minute objections that kept derailing progress on repairs.

“This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths,” Ms. Goldstein wrote. “I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set to accomplish.”

In all, six of seven board members resigned, five of them in the two weeks leading up to Oct. 3, 2019. At a board meeting that day, Ms. Escalante and others laid out a slew of concerns. She was elected the new president and, as the building official for the neighboring village of Bal Harbour, she had real expertise for the job.



“The building is falling apart,” he wrote to the board the following month, accusing the previous members of prioritizing renovations to common-area bathrooms over structural repairs.

“Somebody can seriously be injured or killed with the state of the concrete,” he wrote.

Ms. Escalante did not last long. She resigned on Dec. 15, 2019, citing health concerns, and sold her condo nine months later.

‘We should have started saving at least five years ago’
New board members took over in 2020 and managed to do what none of their predecessors had: They secured a $15 million line of credit to pay for the repairs identified by Mr. Morabito in 2018. The project’s cost had grown upon closer inspection and as time passed.

In a series of slide show presentations, the board bluntly laid out the reality. “We should have started saving at least five years ago,” said one from May 28, 2020. An October 2020 presentation said further inspections had shown that the waterproofing problems over the garage were far more widespread than initially thought: “This has exposed the garage to water intrusion for 40 years.”

Despite its financial challenges, the building, with its close-up view of the South Florida surf, was desirable in the booming market, according to Andres Paredes, a real estate agent involved in a 2020 unit sale.

The condo management openly released details of the planned multimillion-dollar restoration to prospective buyers, he said. Even with the assessments that would surely be needed to cover the cost of repairs, Unit 202 seemed like a good investment to a New York couple. The price was $460,000.

Longtime residents, like Ms. Blasser, had already borne the brunt of repeated special assessments for other repairs. One of them, which had been intended for hallway renovations in 2016, had instead been repurposed to address budget shortfalls and help finance the big 40-year repairs.

They would have to dig deep for more money: Each unit would have to pay between $80,000 and about $200,000, either up front or in monthly installments.

No one was happy about it.

“It’s an upscale building, but it’s not the Ritz or the Four Seasons,” he said. “The people that live there aren’t Rockefellers or Rothschilds. We’re upper middle class, I guess, and a lot of us are retired.”

When a neighbor knocked on his door, 705, with a petition against the assessment, Mr. Rosenthal signed it. The first payment was due on July 1.




Interesting NYT article about their struggle to agree to agree to all the special assessment charges to pay for repairs. It's paywall. I'm not sure but maybe NYT's still allows a few free articles a month?

Edited: It's looks like you have to register to get your free articles. I put part of the article in behind a spoiler.

But unless the state\city\county gets more active, who is going to force the association to set aside the money and do timely repairs?

Floridians aren't really in love with having the government telling them what they have to do.

[BigRedChief]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/us/miami-florida-surfside-collapse.html

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Elena Blasser kept her two-bedroom, two-bath condo in the Champlain Towers South as a beachside gathering place for family reunions. She adored the ocean and the small town of Surfside, Fla., because they reminded her of homes in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

She sank at least $100,000 into renovations when she bought Penthouse 11 a little more than a decade ago. Then the complex’s problems began. Hairline cracks in the pool deck. Newly painted walls that chipped easily. Water pooling in the garage. To pay for it all, the monthly maintenance fees and special assessments grew.

“We’re paying those fees and where are they going?” Ms. Blasser, a 64-year-old former schoolteacher, kept telling her family and neighbors, according to her son Pablo Rodriguez.

Little did she know that the problems identified in the building were about to get much worse. A consultant’s report commissioned in 2018 had identified serious problems of crumbling concrete and corroded rebar — problems that engineers warned had already led to “major structural damage.”

Fixing it, the condo board eventually concluded, would cost an estimated $15 million. Ms. Blasser would have to come up with another $120,000 to pay her share.

Long before half of the Champlain Towers South crumpled to the ground on June 24, killing at least 24 people and leaving up to 121 unaccounted for — including Ms. Blasser and her mother, Elena Chavez, 88 — the rancor over how the building was run by its condominium association was an open secret known to the relatives and friends of the people who lived there, and even to residents of other nearby buildings.


Pablo Rodriguez said his mother, Elena Blasser, broke into tears when she was asked to pay another special assessment.

It coexisted with the joys of the otherwise congenial community of condo dwellers who had been sold on the Florida dream of waterfront bliss. Emma Guara, 4, would stop John Turis, 76, by the pool to play with Leela, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, when he was in town from Brooklyn. Ana and Juan Mora would swing by a neighbor’s unit on the 10th floor to see if she needed anything. Younger residents would look out for older ones when they waded into the ocean.

By the time the board members entrusted by their neighbors with overseeing the building hired an engineer to tell them what they had long suspected — that their aging condo was in dire need of top-to-bottom repairs — the meetings at the 13-story complex had developed a toxic reputation.

“People said, ‘Oh my God, thank God you’re not at the board meeting,’” Sharon Schechter recalled. “‘There’s screaming and yelling.’”

Tense stalemates delayed any decisions as the board became a hothouse of grievance over who was to blame, according to interviews with survivors of the collapse, former residents, relatives of the missing, lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Blasser’s frustration grew each year, Mr. Rodriguez said. In 2017, she paid $60,000 for a special assessment to help make repairs. Then came the latest one, Mr. Rodriguez said, breaking into tears.

“She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe we have to do this again,’” he said.

In April, fed up, Ms. Blasser reached out to a real estate agent about selling her condo and was told it would sell quickly for close to a million dollars.


The 2018 engineering report from Frank P. Morabito, the consulting engineer, was deeply troubling. He gave no indication that the structure was at risk of failing, but he estimated that repairs would cost more than $9 million.



“Sadly a few of our residents have undermined our progress with petty challenges, discrediting the board members and management,” they said.

Mr. Turis, a real estate and mortgage broker in New York who bought Unit 409 in 2005 so his daughter could live in it while she attended college, said the building had been mired in turnover of board members and property managers.

“It was like nobody wanted the job,” he said. “It seemed like nobody ever lasted more than two years.”

On Sept. 13, 2019, Graciela M. Escalante, who chaired the committee in charge of the 40-year recertification project, recommended hiring Mr. Morabito’s firm to carry out the work, even though his bid was the most expensive and initially led to what the selection committee admitted was “sticker shock.”

The next day, Anette Goldstein, the board president, and Nancy K. Levin, the vice president, both resigned, saying they were frustrated by last-minute objections that kept derailing progress on repairs.

“This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths,” Ms. Goldstein wrote. “I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set to accomplish.”

In all, six of seven board members resigned, five of them in the two weeks leading up to Oct. 3, 2019. At a board meeting that day, Ms. Escalante and others laid out a slew of concerns. She was elected the new president and, as the building official for the neighboring village of Bal Harbour, she had real expertise for the job.



“The building is falling apart,” he wrote to the board the following month, accusing the previous members of prioritizing renovations to common-area bathrooms over structural repairs.

“Somebody can seriously be injured or killed with the state of the concrete,” he wrote.

Ms. Escalante did not last long. She resigned on Dec. 15, 2019, citing health concerns, and sold her condo nine months later.

‘We should have started saving at least five years ago’
New board members took over in 2020 and managed to do what none of their predecessors had: They secured a $15 million line of credit to pay for the repairs identified by Mr. Morabito in 2018. The project’s cost had grown upon closer inspection and as time passed.

In a series of slide show presentations, the board bluntly laid out the reality. “We should have started saving at least five years ago,” said one from May 28, 2020. An October 2020 presentation said further inspections had shown that the waterproofing problems over the garage were far more widespread than initially thought: “This has exposed the garage to water intrusion for 40 years.”

Despite its financial challenges, the building, with its close-up view of the South Florida surf, was desirable in the booming market, according to Andres Paredes, a real estate agent involved in a 2020 unit sale.

The condo management openly released details of the planned multimillion-dollar restoration to prospective buyers, he said. Even with the assessments that would surely be needed to cover the cost of repairs, Unit 202 seemed like a good investment to a New York couple. The price was $460,000.

Longtime residents, like Ms. Blasser, had already borne the brunt of repeated special assessments for other repairs. One of them, which had been intended for hallway renovations in 2016, had instead been repurposed to address budget shortfalls and help finance the big 40-year repairs.

They would have to dig deep for more money: Each unit would have to pay between $80,000 and about $200,000, either up front or in monthly installments.

No one was happy about it.

“It’s an upscale building, but it’s not the Ritz or the Four Seasons,” he said. “The people that live there aren’t Rockefellers or Rothschilds. We’re upper middle class, I guess, and a lot of us are retired.”

When a neighbor knocked on his door, 705, with a petition against the assessment, Mr. Rosenthal signed it. The first payment was due on July 1.




Interesting NYT article about their struggle to agree to agree to all the special assessment charges to pay for repairs. It's paywall. I'm not sure but maybe NYT's still allows a few free articles a month?

Edited: It's looks like you have to register to get your free articles. I put part of the article in behind a spoiler.

But unless the state\city\county gets more active, who is going to force the association to set aside the money and do timely repairs?

Floridians aren't really in love with having the government telling them what they have to do.Florida, like every other state\city\county, is already regulating the standards and sets building codes levels. Already telling their citizens and businesses you must ensure that “X” is up to snuff or you can’t sell or habitat that dwelling.

[Bugeater]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/us/miami-florida-surfside-collapse.html

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Elena Blasser kept her two-bedroom, two-bath condo in the Champlain Towers South as a beachside gathering place for family reunions. She adored the ocean and the small town of Surfside, Fla., because they reminded her of homes in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

She sank at least $100,000 into renovations when she bought Penthouse 11 a little more than a decade ago. Then the complex’s problems began. Hairline cracks in the pool deck. Newly painted walls that chipped easily. Water pooling in the garage. To pay for it all, the monthly maintenance fees and special assessments grew.

“We’re paying those fees and where are they going?” Ms. Blasser, a 64-year-old former schoolteacher, kept telling her family and neighbors, according to her son Pablo Rodriguez.

Little did she know that the problems identified in the building were about to get much worse. A consultant’s report commissioned in 2018 had identified serious problems of crumbling concrete and corroded rebar — problems that engineers warned had already led to “major structural damage.”

Fixing it, the condo board eventually concluded, would cost an estimated $15 million. Ms. Blasser would have to come up with another $120,000 to pay her share.

Long before half of the Champlain Towers South crumpled to the ground on June 24, killing at least 24 people and leaving up to 121 unaccounted for — including Ms. Blasser and her mother, Elena Chavez, 88 — the rancor over how the building was run by its condominium association was an open secret known to the relatives and friends of the people who lived there, and even to residents of other nearby buildings.


Pablo Rodriguez said his mother, Elena Blasser, broke into tears when she was asked to pay another special assessment.

It coexisted with the joys of the otherwise congenial community of condo dwellers who had been sold on the Florida dream of waterfront bliss. Emma Guara, 4, would stop John Turis, 76, by the pool to play with Leela, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, when he was in town from Brooklyn. Ana and Juan Mora would swing by a neighbor’s unit on the 10th floor to see if she needed anything. Younger residents would look out for older ones when they waded into the ocean.

By the time the board members entrusted by their neighbors with overseeing the building hired an engineer to tell them what they had long suspected — that their aging condo was in dire need of top-to-bottom repairs — the meetings at the 13-story complex had developed a toxic reputation.

“People said, ‘Oh my God, thank God you’re not at the board meeting,’” Sharon Schechter recalled. “‘There’s screaming and yelling.’”

Tense stalemates delayed any decisions as the board became a hothouse of grievance over who was to blame, according to interviews with survivors of the collapse, former residents, relatives of the missing, lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Blasser’s frustration grew each year, Mr. Rodriguez said. In 2017, she paid $60,000 for a special assessment to help make repairs. Then came the latest one, Mr. Rodriguez said, breaking into tears.

“She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe we have to do this again,’” he said.

In April, fed up, Ms. Blasser reached out to a real estate agent about selling her condo and was told it would sell quickly for close to a million dollars.


The 2018 engineering report from Frank P. Morabito, the consulting engineer, was deeply troubling. He gave no indication that the structure was at risk of failing, but he estimated that repairs would cost more than $9 million.



“Sadly a few of our residents have undermined our progress with petty challenges, discrediting the board members and management,” they said.

Mr. Turis, a real estate and mortgage broker in New York who bought Unit 409 in 2005 so his daughter could live in it while she attended college, said the building had been mired in turnover of board members and property managers.

“It was like nobody wanted the job,” he said. “It seemed like nobody ever lasted more than two years.”

On Sept. 13, 2019, Graciela M. Escalante, who chaired the committee in charge of the 40-year recertification project, recommended hiring Mr. Morabito’s firm to carry out the work, even though his bid was the most expensive and initially led to what the selection committee admitted was “sticker shock.”

The next day, Anette Goldstein, the board president, and Nancy K. Levin, the vice president, both resigned, saying they were frustrated by last-minute objections that kept derailing progress on repairs.

“This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths,” Ms. Goldstein wrote. “I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set to accomplish.”

In all, six of seven board members resigned, five of them in the two weeks leading up to Oct. 3, 2019. At a board meeting that day, Ms. Escalante and others laid out a slew of concerns. She was elected the new president and, as the building official for the neighboring village of Bal Harbour, she had real expertise for the job.



“The building is falling apart,” he wrote to the board the following month, accusing the previous members of prioritizing renovations to common-area bathrooms over structural repairs.

“Somebody can seriously be injured or killed with the state of the concrete,” he wrote.

Ms. Escalante did not last long. She resigned on Dec. 15, 2019, citing health concerns, and sold her condo nine months later.

‘We should have started saving at least five years ago’
New board members took over in 2020 and managed to do what none of their predecessors had: They secured a $15 million line of credit to pay for the repairs identified by Mr. Morabito in 2018. The project’s cost had grown upon closer inspection and as time passed.

In a series of slide show presentations, the board bluntly laid out the reality. “We should have started saving at least five years ago,” said one from May 28, 2020. An October 2020 presentation said further inspections had shown that the waterproofing problems over the garage were far more widespread than initially thought: “This has exposed the garage to water intrusion for 40 years.”

Despite its financial challenges, the building, with its close-up view of the South Florida surf, was desirable in the booming market, according to Andres Paredes, a real estate agent involved in a 2020 unit sale.

The condo management openly released details of the planned multimillion-dollar restoration to prospective buyers, he said. Even with the assessments that would surely be needed to cover the cost of repairs, Unit 202 seemed like a good investment to a New York couple. The price was $460,000.

Longtime residents, like Ms. Blasser, had already borne the brunt of repeated special assessments for other repairs. One of them, which had been intended for hallway renovations in 2016, had instead been repurposed to address budget shortfalls and help finance the big 40-year repairs.

They would have to dig deep for more money: Each unit would have to pay between $80,000 and about $200,000, either up front or in monthly installments.

No one was happy about it.

“It’s an upscale building, but it’s not the Ritz or the Four Seasons,” he said. “The people that live there aren’t Rockefellers or Rothschilds. We’re upper middle class, I guess, and a lot of us are retired.”

When a neighbor knocked on his door, 705, with a petition against the assessment, Mr. Rosenthal signed it. The first payment was due on July 1.




Interesting NYT article about their struggle to agree to agree to all the special assessment charges to pay for repairs. It's paywall. I'm not sure but maybe NYT's still allows a few free articles a month?

Edited: It's looks like you have to register to get your free articles. I put part of the article in behind a spoiler.

But unless the state\city\county gets more active, who is going to force the association to set aside the money and do timely repairs?

Floridians aren't really in love with having the government telling them what they have to do.Seems like no one at any point was realistic about maintenance costs for such a building. Makes one wonder how many other ticking time bombs are sitting around the state....

[srvy]

They haven't come out and said it but the race to drop the still-standing building portion pretty much makes this a recovery.

[Rain Man]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/us/miami-florida-surfside-collapse.html

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Elena Blasser kept her two-bedroom, two-bath condo in the Champlain Towers South as a beachside gathering place for family reunions. She adored the ocean and the small town of Surfside, Fla., because they reminded her of homes in Cuba and Puerto Rico.

She sank at least $100,000 into renovations when she bought Penthouse 11 a little more than a decade ago. Then the complex’s problems began. Hairline cracks in the pool deck. Newly painted walls that chipped easily. Water pooling in the garage. To pay for it all, the monthly maintenance fees and special assessments grew.

“We’re paying those fees and where are they going?” Ms. Blasser, a 64-year-old former schoolteacher, kept telling her family and neighbors, according to her son Pablo Rodriguez.

Little did she know that the problems identified in the building were about to get much worse. A consultant’s report commissioned in 2018 had identified serious problems of crumbling concrete and corroded rebar — problems that engineers warned had already led to “major structural damage.”

Fixing it, the condo board eventually concluded, would cost an estimated $15 million. Ms. Blasser would have to come up with another $120,000 to pay her share.

Long before half of the Champlain Towers South crumpled to the ground on June 24, killing at least 24 people and leaving up to 121 unaccounted for — including Ms. Blasser and her mother, Elena Chavez, 88 — the rancor over how the building was run by its condominium association was an open secret known to the relatives and friends of the people who lived there, and even to residents of other nearby buildings.


Pablo Rodriguez said his mother, Elena Blasser, broke into tears when she was asked to pay another special assessment.

It coexisted with the joys of the otherwise congenial community of condo dwellers who had been sold on the Florida dream of waterfront bliss. Emma Guara, 4, would stop John Turis, 76, by the pool to play with Leela, his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, when he was in town from Brooklyn. Ana and Juan Mora would swing by a neighbor’s unit on the 10th floor to see if she needed anything. Younger residents would look out for older ones when they waded into the ocean.

By the time the board members entrusted by their neighbors with overseeing the building hired an engineer to tell them what they had long suspected — that their aging condo was in dire need of top-to-bottom repairs — the meetings at the 13-story complex had developed a toxic reputation.

“People said, ‘Oh my God, thank God you’re not at the board meeting,’” Sharon Schechter recalled. “‘There’s screaming and yelling.’”

Tense stalemates delayed any decisions as the board became a hothouse of grievance over who was to blame, according to interviews with survivors of the collapse, former residents, relatives of the missing, lawyers and internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

Ms. Blasser’s frustration grew each year, Mr. Rodriguez said. In 2017, she paid $60,000 for a special assessment to help make repairs. Then came the latest one, Mr. Rodriguez said, breaking into tears.

“She kept saying, ‘I can’t believe we have to do this again,’” he said.

In April, fed up, Ms. Blasser reached out to a real estate agent about selling her condo and was told it would sell quickly for close to a million dollars.


The 2018 engineering report from Frank P. Morabito, the consulting engineer, was deeply troubling. He gave no indication that the structure was at risk of failing, but he estimated that repairs would cost more than $9 million.



“Sadly a few of our residents have undermined our progress with petty challenges, discrediting the board members and management,” they said.

Mr. Turis, a real estate and mortgage broker in New York who bought Unit 409 in 2005 so his daughter could live in it while she attended college, said the building had been mired in turnover of board members and property managers.

“It was like nobody wanted the job,” he said. “It seemed like nobody ever lasted more than two years.”

On Sept. 13, 2019, Graciela M. Escalante, who chaired the committee in charge of the 40-year recertification project, recommended hiring Mr. Morabito’s firm to carry out the work, even though his bid was the most expensive and initially led to what the selection committee admitted was “sticker shock.”

The next day, Anette Goldstein, the board president, and Nancy K. Levin, the vice president, both resigned, saying they were frustrated by last-minute objections that kept derailing progress on repairs.

“This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths,” Ms. Goldstein wrote. “I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set to accomplish.”

In all, six of seven board members resigned, five of them in the two weeks leading up to Oct. 3, 2019. At a board meeting that day, Ms. Escalante and others laid out a slew of concerns. She was elected the new president and, as the building official for the neighboring village of Bal Harbour, she had real expertise for the job.



“The building is falling apart,” he wrote to the board the following month, accusing the previous members of prioritizing renovations to common-area bathrooms over structural repairs.

“Somebody can seriously be injured or killed with the state of the concrete,” he wrote.

Ms. Escalante did not last long. She resigned on Dec. 15, 2019, citing health concerns, and sold her condo nine months later.

‘We should have started saving at least five years ago’
New board members took over in 2020 and managed to do what none of their predecessors had: They secured a $15 million line of credit to pay for the repairs identified by Mr. Morabito in 2018. The project’s cost had grown upon closer inspection and as time passed.

In a series of slide show presentations, the board bluntly laid out the reality. “We should have started saving at least five years ago,” said one from May 28, 2020. An October 2020 presentation said further inspections had shown that the waterproofing problems over the garage were far more widespread than initially thought: “This has exposed the garage to water intrusion for 40 years.”

Despite its financial challenges, the building, with its close-up view of the South Florida surf, was desirable in the booming market, according to Andres Paredes, a real estate agent involved in a 2020 unit sale.

The condo management openly released details of the planned multimillion-dollar restoration to prospective buyers, he said. Even with the assessments that would surely be needed to cover the cost of repairs, Unit 202 seemed like a good investment to a New York couple. The price was $460,000.

Longtime residents, like Ms. Blasser, had already borne the brunt of repeated special assessments for other repairs. One of them, which had been intended for hallway renovations in 2016, had instead been repurposed to address budget shortfalls and help finance the big 40-year repairs.

They would have to dig deep for more money: Each unit would have to pay between $80,000 and about $200,000, either up front or in monthly installments.

No one was happy about it.

“It’s an upscale building, but it’s not the Ritz or the Four Seasons,” he said. “The people that live there aren’t Rockefellers or Rothschilds. We’re upper middle class, I guess, and a lot of us are retired.”

When a neighbor knocked on his door, 705, with a petition against the assessment, Mr. Rosenthal signed it. The first payment was due on July 1.




Interesting NYT article about their struggle to agree to agree to all the special assessment charges to pay for repairs. It's paywall. I'm not sure but maybe NYT's still allows a few free articles a month?

Edited: It's looks like you have to register to get your free articles. I put part of the article in behind a spoiler.

But unless the state\city\county gets more active, who is going to force the association to set aside the money and do timely repairs?

Floridians aren't really in love with having the government telling them what they have to do.


Interesting article. It shows the challenge of community management in that people will have different philosophies, and some people will never approve anything because they think they can freeload. The people who were blocking those repairs have a lot of blood on their hands if they're still alive.

I was briefly the president of a small condo association, and my wife and I bailed pretty quickly and moved. A majority of residents treated it like an apartment complex, and 20 percent of the homeowners did 95 percent of the work.

We also had to do an assessment to do a major boiler repair. We had a small reserve that was enough to fund it, but we had to rebuild the reserve. I remember having a resident who resisted it, saying, "The reason we have a reserve is to cover expenses like a boiler. Why should I have to pay just to rebuild the reserve?" Well, duh.

[displacedinMN]

Down about 1030 edt

[eDave]

Down about 1030 edt

<iframe width="420" height="320" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RTd4Ttb4zr8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Chief Pagan]

Interesting article. It shows the challenge of community management in that people will have different philosophies, and some people will never approve anything because they think they can freeload. The people who were blocking those repairs have a lot of blood on their hands if they're still alive.



The 'burst into tears woman' is missing and presumed dead.

I'm sure the survivors will have a lot of guilt. But nobody told them, as the entire article made clear several times, that the building was in any danger of collapsing.

I'm not sure a condo association is really up to the task of taking on repairs of this magnitude. You have some people on fixed incomes and others figuring they will sell their unit soon so they will oppose expensive repairs.

They aren't typically engineers or finance experts or management experts.

Sure the state/city could eventually force them to evacuate, if they have the political balls. But that screws the other owners.

You really want repairs in a timely manner when they are less costly but I don't see the government taking on that roll. By the time the structure is compromised to a safety it-might-really-fall-down, repairs are probably going to be hugely expensive.

Remind me not to buy a high rise condo in Florida. Hell, I don't even want to be part of a HOA. Just live in a decent neighborhood with a functional local government.

[DaneMcCloud]

Condos around here built after the mid-90's and Hurricane Andrew are the safest places to be in a hurricane.

Same thing happened here after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The amount of concrete and steel required to build new homes and buildings tripled.

All of the new homes since then look like bare bones skyscrapers with the all of the steel girders used for framing. One of the new 10 story hotels going up down the street is all steel girder framing.

It’s crazy to see at a distance or up close because it looks so overbuilt, especially for ten stories, but it’ll never come down on its own.

[Stewie]

Just saw a report that this was a water issue. Lack of proper drainage around the pool and parking garage caused excessive spalling in the concrete/rebar. Over time everything becomes weak and finally fails.

The parking garage and pool equipment were underground and surface water soaked all things structural. Even concrete and rebar fail when constantly exposed to water.

[Rain Man]

The 'burst into tears woman' is missing and presumed dead.

I'm sure the survivors will have a lot of guilt. But nobody told them, as the entire article made clear several times, that the building was in any danger of collapsing.

I'm not sure a condo association is really up to the task of taking on repairs of this magnitude. You have some people on fixed incomes and others figuring they will sell their unit soon so they will oppose expensive repairs.

They aren't typically engineers or finance experts or management experts.

Sure the state/city could eventually force them to evacuate, if they have the political balls. But that screws the other owners.

You really want repairs in a timely manner when they are less costly but I don't see the government taking on that roll. By the time the structure is compromised to a safety it-might-really-fall-down, repairs are probably going to be hugely expensive.

Remind me not to buy a high rise condo in Florida. Hell, I don't even want to be part of a HOA. Just live in a decent neighborhood with a functional local government.

Yeah, I'm not sure what happens if you have an assessment and someone refuses to pay or can't pay. I guess the association puts a lien on the unit, but someone still has to cover the cost up front. And some of the units in this building were facing a $300,000+ lien.

It sounds like the board was trying to get repairs and was being blocked by voting. Repairs only get more expensive over time, though.

I've briefly pondered downsizing to a condo when I retire, but this is reminding me that I don't like how condos work organizationally. I'll just stay in my house.

[Stewie]

Here's a good analysis from a structural engineers perspective.

https://youtu.be/PEPyE2h6P4k

[srvy]

Here's a good analysis from a structural engineer's perspective.

https://youtu.be/PEPyE2h6P4k

:LOL:

This dude says he is an engineer yet he is referencing the garage floor parking striping diagram. He needs to dig into the structural portion of the plans and column pier layout. Another thing I noticed is he seems to not realize the subsurface parking garage is separate from the tower. The tower would require larger load-bearing columns vs a parking garage not supporting the same load.

As for concrete piers, there are bridges setting in water exposed to rivers and seawater standing near 100 years.

If this guy is an engineer he should be ashamed to put out this video with not being there relying on pictures and videos. How about waiting for the facts from real experts looking over inspection records examining rubble and the steel reinforcement in the beams and columns. It will take some time but they will figure it out maybe he is right.

[Stewie]

:LOL:

This dude says he is an engineer yet he is referencing the garage floor parking striping diagram. He needs to dig into the structural portion of the plans and column pier layout. Another thing I noticed is he seems to not realize the subsurface parking garage is separate from the tower. The tower would require larger load-bearing columns vs a parking garage not supporting the same load.

As for concrete piers, there are bridges setting in water exposed to rivers and seawater standing near 100 years.

If this guy is an engineer he should be ashamed to put out this video with not being there relying on pictures and videos. How about waiting for the facts from real experts looking over inspection records examining rubble and the steel reinforcement in the beams and columns. It will take some time but they will figure it out maybe he is right.


I think his analysis might be right even without being there.


We know the first thing to fail was the parking garage under the pool area. The woman who called her husband in a panic thought it was a sinkhole. It took a few minutes for the rest of the structure to collapse. The parking garage extended under the main structure that failed like a bunch of dominoes from what I can see.


Who knows? It will be interesting to see the final outcome.

[srvy]

I think his analysis might be right even without being there.


We know the first thing to fail was the parking garage under the pool area. The woman who called her husband in a panic thought it was a sinkhole. It took a few minutes for the rest of the structure to collapse. The parking garage extended under the main structure that failed like a bunch of dominoes from what I can see.


Who knows? It will be interesting to see the final outcome.

The garage would be built under and around the tower but still independent structures. The structural column piers for the garage could be nearly butting up to structural column piers of the tower but never attached together. They are separate standing structures. This allows for any movement in the wind or expansion-contraction. I suppose the garage could fail kick and crack a tower column causing failure to the tower but I would think the opposite would be more likely.

Those tower columns would be larger and is why I called the tuber out showing the parking striping layout. A structural engineer would be scanning structural pier layout plans for the tower and garage. Well that's what a land surveyor would do since its guys like me who set the control and layout the piers

[displacedinMN]

Lady sued to halt the explosions until they searched for her cat.

Judge says no.

[BigRedChief]

Lady sued to halt the explosions until they searched for her cat.

Judge says no.our dogs are family to us. If it’s my condo still standing. I’d like them to check if my dog was alive in my condo before blowing up my condo. Infrared scan should do it?

[mikeyis4dcats.]

The garage would be built under and around the tower but still independent structures. The structural column piers for the garage could be nearly butting up to structural column piers of the tower but never attached together. They are separate standing structures. This allows for any movement in the wind or expansion-contraction. I suppose the garage could fail kick and crack a tower column causing failure to the tower but I would think the opposite would be more likely.

Those tower columns would be larger and is why I called the tuber out showing the parking striping layout. A structural engineer would be scanning structural pier layout plans for the tower and garage. Well that's what a land surveyor would do since its guys like me who set the control and layout the piers
Fair points, but not necessarily true. We build quite a few podium structures with integral parking structures and they are not necessarily independent structurally.

[srvy]

Fair points, but not necessarily true. We build quite a few podium structures with integral parking structures and they are not necessarily independent structurally.

With a multi-story tower?

[Frazod]

Lady sued to halt the explosions until they searched for her cat.

Judge says no.

That sucks, but under the circumstances, it's understandable.

Personally, I think people should have been able to retrieve valuables/pets/whatever (within reason) from their intact units prior to the demolition, as long as they signed waivers absolving anyone else of fault if the place happened to collapse while they were inside.

But that's generally not how government entities roll.

[eDave]

Lady sued to halt the explosions until they searched for her cat.

Judge says no.

our dogs are family to us. If it’s my condo still standing. I’d like them to check if my dog was alive in my condo before blowing up my condo. Infrared scan should do it?

That sucks, but under the circumstances, it's understandable.

Personally, I think people should have been able to retrieve valuables/pets/whatever (within reason) from their intact units prior to the demolition, as long as they signed waivers absolving anyone else of fault if the place happened to collapse while they were inside.

But that's generally not how government entities roll.

I had read that there was a search inside the remaining building for animals before the demo and none were found. Cats are hard though, sometimes.

[Frazod]

I had read that there was a search inside the remaining building for animals before the demo and none were found. Cats are hard though, sometimes.

Cats are hard most times. We've got four, and only one of them will come out if strangers show up. Throw in the added stress of the owner being gone and all the surrounding noise and chaos, and yeah, your average cat is going to hide and hide well. A survival instinct that sadly served the opposite effect in this case.

[BigRedChief]

I had read that there was a search inside the remaining building for animals before the demo and none were found. Cats are hard though, sometimes.Good to hear. Then why was she suing? She wanted to call out to her cat so it would come out?

[oldman]

Personally, I think people should have been able to retrieve valuables/pets/whatever (within reason) from their intact units prior to the demolition, as long as they signed waivers absolving anyone else of fault if the place happened to collapse while they were inside.


While that would have been the ideal solution, no sane governing entity would allow it. If the rest of the building failed while people were inside, you can bet someone would sue because Poppy or Meemaw wasn't in their right mind when they signed the waiver.