From what I can tell the inspection was on going when this occurred. Knowing Florida county inspectors they can take “forever” to do an inspection and Dade County which along with Monroe County (Key West) is hurricane central so inspection on a building like this could take a long time, especially if the issues that have been reported were happening. Plus am not familiar with the county process, does the county wait until the inspection is finished to notify the owners of its findings or does it notify owners as it finds problems. With foreign owners and LLCs involved this process would be be more complicated.
As for the homeowners can they really do an effective “home inspection” of a condo. I’ve never been a fan of ocean front property but these condos were selling in the 600,000 to 1.4 million range, which is cheap for the views they had in Miami Beach/Surfside. So if someone inspected the particular unit they were interested in would they find the structural issues that caused the collapse anywhere since the building was built in 1981 or would they be knowledgeable enough to look for these issues or hire someone who would? Plus since each condo has an owner one wouldn’t be able to inspect other condos for structural issues that might effect the unit they were looking at.
It is sad that this happened, but one thing that will come out of this is more regulations promulgated by the local government.
There were before photo’s that showed spalled concrete off of rebar. As a certified Reinforced Concrete Special Inspector I can tell you that the primary hazard to reinforcing steel there is going to be access to the reinforcing steel for salt water. That exposure allows for oxidizing corrosion, hydrogen embrittlement (going off bay bridge issue) and penetration into concrete body of chloride.
Given the placement environment, they probably placed concrete back in 81 to a higher standard than elsewhere, but lacking 40 years of additional experience.
Per American Concrete Institute (ACI) standards reinforcing steel in concrete exposed to earth needs 3 inch minimum tolerance (coverage) of concrete. I’ve noted myself on jobs that that is effectively neutralized if all the bar is separated at or better than that from earth only to have tie wires or wired dobies (spacers) extend their wires out of the concrete.
Even then speed of corrosion will be affected by a lot of stuff.