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Stayed for a week over the year end holiday period in 2018 in the Alexander Hotel just a little further down Miami beach. Probably about the same age. Was in the process of receiving a major update and being shifted from timeshare apartments to full time condominiums.

The thing that makes me go “hmmm...” is the coincidence of the building inspector visiting Wednesday, apparently saying nothing to anyone, and the building collapsing early Thursday morning.

Hope this wasn’t a case of 1) the inspector feeling what ever problems that were observed were not that serious or, 2) the problems were serious but the inspector felt the need to consult superiors prior to ordering an immediate evacuation or, 3) the inspector had previous dealings with building management and already knew it was going to take a lot of “persuasion” before management would act to evacuate or, 4) (feel free to insert your own speculation here).

Before dismissing these possibilities out-of-hand, remember, this is Miami where a newly completed concrete pedestrian walkway collapsed onto a major highway (with 6 fatalities and 10 injuries) in early 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse

However, it wasn’t until the final report was released with photographs that the general public got to see that the “CRACKING” the experts were referring to was much, much more severe that the ‘cracking’ most ordinary persons were probably imagining.

https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/2019-12/2019_r_03.pdf

By the day of the collapse, the problem had been identified and government, consulting engineering and construction company personnel were actually on site discussing what to do about the structure. There was no urgency expressed by the attendees. So traffic was flowing unrestricted underneath the bridge when it fell down a few hours later.