Posted on 06/26/2021 5:56:00 AM PDT by dynachrome
The partially collapsed Florida condo building, which has left at least four dead and 159 people missing, was flagged as having “major structural damage” in 2018, according to reports.
A lack of proper drainage on the pool deck of Champlain Towers South condo, which sits above the building’s parking garage, was the source of the “main issue,” wrote engineer Frank Morabito, according to the Miami Herald.
Years of standing water had seriously damaged the concrete structural slabs below the deck, a problem Morabito warned would be “extremely expensive” to fix.
“Failure to replace waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” Morabito said in his “Structural Field Survey Report,” which was produced for the Condominium Association.
Officials in Surfside, Fla., released the report late Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Thank you for that link.
If they are blaming the pool, they are hiding something.
Terrorism cannot be ruled out. The door is wise to be left open to any number of things, structural or terrorism and failures could have cause this horrible. There were a large number of Jewish folks that resided in this building. With the Biden/Harris/Democrat Party, ultra, Left Wing, Open Border, only God knows who is in this country to kill and slaughter Americans. I hope this biased USA Media turns over every stone to find the true cause of this horror!!! We shall see as time rolls along!!!
It wasn’t from a building inspector. It was from an engineering consultant hired by the board.
And yes, there presumably was a failure on the part of the engineer to communicate due urgency.
Another analysis of the damage/collapse:
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Thanks for posting that link... The explanation in it was a bit more specific than what I posted yesterday on post 48 but along the same lines...
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3970766/posts
Here is the one thing that I’d caution folks on..... As an outcome of failure analysis, it would be great to clearly identify a specific cause since it closes the book on the matter (and one can just set about coming up with solutions to make sure ‘that doesn’t happen again’). However, the reality might be that what you are looking at is a gradual deterioration over time that very little could have stopped and/or only partially slowed it down..... and in the end, ‘solutions’ may exist but are often deemed to be unacceptable or impractical, with cost being the big issue. It is very easy to vaguely point the finger at ‘doing proper inspections’ and ‘maintenance’ as if these are a be all and end all solution to all problems. Don’t get me wrong... regular and thorough inspections and maintenance are very important, particularly if they identify something that is going wrong that is (or potentially can be) compromising structural integrity. However, the reality is that inspections only reveal information that is accessible and much of the information that is really needed can’t be obtained without destroying what is being examined....if for example, the cause of this building failure was related to something like say rebar corrosion due to ‘salt migration into the concrete’, that degradation can be going on without detection (with some exceptions) and inspections and maintenance are of almost no help. Sure... if the conditions are bad enough that concrete spalling is going on, what is supposed to be done? Just patch over the spalled section and call it “maintenance that was done and now everything looks wonderful and is still just as good as ever?” If one was to do that, they didn’t accomplish much other than to hide that problem where it became evident and the rest of the problems remain hidden and continue to look just fine.
Foundation integrity should be viewed similar to the potential for metal fatigue of the fans in jet aircraft engines... one doesn’t know that a problem exists until essentially it fails. Yes there can be some warning signs ahead of time but the time between those signs and imminent failure can be very little... once one part fails, the rest becomes overloaded and it fails catastrophically almost immediately. This means that there are really only two solutions... a) a much higher margin of safety at the design stage in combination with b) a planned replacement schedule....perhaps in combination with a third possibility c), a sophisticated group of embedded instruments that can provide the data as far as monitoring what is going on beyond what visual inspections can reveal and can then used to establish when a critical component like the foundation has degraded to the point where it needs to be replaced. And how does one go about replacing the foundation on a building like this on a shore with salt coming at it? Yup... one needs to accept the fact that the buildings have finite life and after X years, it has to come down and be rebuilt.
The engineering report cited in this article is only nine pages long and includes no assessment of the structural integrity of any part of the building. It was basically a visual inspection where the engineer highlighted a number of problems and recommended some general solutions. The main focus appears to be water infiltration into individual condo units during storms. Interestingly, the report noted a poor feature in the original design that caused water to pool instead of draining properly, and noted some cases of poor workmanship in some repairs that had been done over the years.
On March 2, 1973, the 26-story Skyline Plaza condominium building, under construction in Bailey's Crossroads in Fairfax County, Virginia, collapsed, killing 14 construction workers and injuring 35 others.
At the time of this post, it’s unclear whether they have decided to evacuate the north tower or are only considering it. Though it is a separate building a block north it was built the same time with the same design by the same builder. If I was living there I would make plans to move out.
“You own everything else in common and equally with all the other owners”
the very definition of communism ... and of course, property owned by everyone is essentially owned by no one, and communism always fails because everyone wants to contribute the least personally and wants everyone else to contribute the maximum ... probably why ALL condominiums and their associations are bad ideas: because they’re communism personified ...
I have a relative who bought a house some years ago. One of the basement walls was bad. It ended up costing close to 6 figures to fix it. My take is the home appraiser was a total hack.
Thanks. I went nuts trying to figure that out. Also Champlain east which no one mentions
Boy you are some kinda jack hole
Right after this happened a freeper (can’t recall who) posted about a friend. The friend was an engineer who owned a condo in the building. The engineer had sold his condo 1 month before the collapse because he felt the building was unsafe. The engineer claimed the columns that were surround by the pool deck planters were compromised by the planters and were not safe.
As I looked at the videos I saw the area being discussed. For those interested look at the columns surrounded by the planters. The columns are sheared cleanly off at the grade level of the planting beds. What is odd about this is there is no protruding rebar, literally none the columns are sheared clean. This leads me to the conclusion many here are correct. The salt environment acted upon the rebar in the columns and was allowed to do so because that concrete was compromised by the soil in the planters.
IKR
LOL. Why?
No reason to get snotty just because your first snotty post to me was completely off base.
Have a good day.
You already exist in that situation. I have served on many municipal boards. Virtually no one on these boards or elected officials from your local zoning board to the Congress of the United States has even a passing recognition of the term “Fiduciary Responsibility”. If I had a dollar for every time I reminded board members I sat with of their fiduciary responsibility I’d be fairly well off.
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