FLORIDA CONDO COLLAPSE

By Kavya Gurunath, Edited by Grace Yoon, Uday Lingampalli, Cindy Zhang, Layout by Alicia Guo, Art by Thejo Tattala & Blogged by Gunkriti Kaur

On June 24, 2021, a condo building in Miami collapsed, leading to many deaths and people missing. This article breaks down the tragedy and what went wrong.

A home is one’s safe place. A place one can go to and let go of any frustrations, wind down and get comfortale. It is a haven from the craziness of the outside world. However, for people living in Champlain Towers South, their home, their safe place, turned into a death trap.

Champlain Towers is a high-rise condo building in Miami, Florida. On June 24, 2021, the condo partially collapsed. At least 95 people are confirmed to have been killed, and the search continues to find everyone else missing from the collapse. Usually, the disasters we hear about are natural. However, this collapse wasn’t caused by an earthquake or a tornado. It came out of nowhere.

Residents of Champlain Towers originally thought that the loud noise they heard was thunder. A survivor of the collapse, Bruno Treptow, states that he thought the roof was caving in. He hugged his wife and thought it was the end for him. Another survivor, Alfredo Lopez, who lived about five feet away from the part of the building that collapsed, says that where the hallway was supposed to be, there was nothing. A building that was 120 feet had collapsed into rubble (Staff, 2021).

As rescue efforts continue, the discussion has turned to the cause of the collapse, which has not yet been determined. Engineer Greg Batista says that the pool deck fell into the parking area, and created a “domino effect” that caused the rest of the building to come down (Staff, 2021).

A report from a 2018 inspection of the condo building states that there was an issue with the way the building was built. The problem was that there was no slope on the pool deck, so the water stayed on the flat, waterproofed concrete until it evaporated. However, the waterproofing wasn’t effective and was causing stress on the building, resulting in structural damage. None of these concerns were addressed by the condo board. However, the condo board claimed they weren’t aware that the damage stated in the report was a safety threat (Staff, 2021). This damage has not yet been proved to be the reason the collapse occurred. The exact cause of the collapse is still uncertain.

Finding out the cause of the collapse is not the main priority right now. Getting people out of the rubble and finding all people who are still missing is the first priority, according to Mayor Charles Burkett. Rescue workers are working in shifts, day and night, pulling people out, extinguishing fires resulting from the collapse and trying to find everyone. The rescue effort had to pause as the workers started to get concerned about the remaining standing portion of the building falling. To complicate matters further, there was a possibility of Tropical Storm Elsa hitting and causing the standing part of the building to fall onto the rubble left by the collapse. The solution to all of this was a controlled demolition of the standing portion of the building. Before this building was destroyed, rescuers took every effort to make sure that there were no pets in there, including searching everywhere in the building and using thermal imaging.

As the search continues, chaos and change spread. People in condos are evacuating, as fear of a collapse in their condos makes them worry about their safety. Mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava, has ordered an inspection of all buildings 40 years or older to make sure they address all issues. In addition, a lawsuit was filed against the condo’s association by a resident of the condo, who claims that the association didn’t keep the residents safe (Staff, 2021). To ensure this doesn’t happen again, some officials want building codes to be changed. Hopefully, these changes ensure that a tragedy like this will never occur again.

References

Schuppe, J., Martinez, D., Hampton, D. J., Fieldstadt, E., & Barber, E. (2021, July 2). Florida building collapse reveals shortcomings of systems to protect residents, experts say. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-building-collapse-reveals-shortcomings-systems-protect-residents-experts-say-n1272752

Staff, I. (2021, July 13). Surfside Condo Collapse: What We Know. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/07/miami-beach-building-collapses.html

By Thejo Toattala