Posted on 06/27/2021 7:24:14 PM PDT by Kartographer
The Miami-area apartment building that crashed to the ground in a horrifying early-morning collapse Thursday had been experiencing “issues” for years, and it was even the subject of a scientific study last year that warned of it sinking into the earth.
The Champlain Towers complex in Surfside, Florida, was the subject of at least one lawsuit over the maintenance of the structure’s outer walls. In addition, the building attracted the attention of scientists alarmed over flooding and land erosion.
According to a Florida International University professor who co-authored a study focused on the issue last year, the complex had been sinking into the earth bit by bit since the 1990s, at one point at a rate of about 2 millimeters per year.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Global warming caused it to collapse!
Anything to take the blame off of city and county Inspectors and the owners/operators if the building.
FIU.
Snort.
Are you sure? I believe it was white supremacy and the legacy of slavery.
Wonder if it was a bomb.
C’mon man, only half of it fell down.
Old non-news
You mean the same FIU outfit that oversaw the construction of the FIU Sweet water pedestrian bridge that collapsed and killed 6 people. Yeah there’s an expert.
2mm?
There are skyscrapers in SF that beat that by an order or two of magnitude.
Systemic hegemony and oppressive patriarchal flaws
or something like that
The building was owned and operated by the residents, who owned the apartments. It needed $9 million in repairs, so the board probably thought that if they assessed each apartment $100K, the residents wouldn’t like it and would vote them out.
That’s brutal. I love it.
Too early to really tell.....but if the building began collapsing in the area of the pool as some are saying, that that area went first, the others collapsed then, they’ll certainly now that soon enough.
2 mm per year for 40 years = 80mm. The typical American cigarette is 100mm. So in 40 years it settled less than 3 1/4 inches.
Settlement in and of itself is not overly concerning structurally. Differential settlement can be - but even that would likely not cause this kind of failure.
I lived in a house (brick) with a kitchen that settled over 5 inches from one corner to the opposite corner, so 5 inches in about a 18’ diagonal distance.
Granted, a reinforced concrete structure behaves differently than a masonry structure but settlement, while concerning does not normally lead to this kind of catastrophic failure.
(retired licensed civil engineer - inactive)
I doubt there’s that many missing either......the building was full of people from other nations and cultures so how many of them don’t want too be found out?..nor will their families disclose them.
You are probably correct in the amount of $9-mil and serious criticism by the various owners....but the other part to this story....even if they started the project, there could have been a dozen major issues pop up in the renovation project and this easily could have escalated to $15-mil. Put yourself in the shoes of a owner, this property was not something of value.
If you stroll around Miami, there’s probably fifty properties like this...waiting to collapse.
The condominium had lived its useful life and needed to be torn down. The water table from the ocean was flooding the lower parking lot during high tide. It doesn’t take a genius to know that was causing severe structural damage. The rest of those ocean side buildings should get a close look. They may be coming down next.
me too
You have the correct answer. I financed a lot of condo associations in my day and the first thing I looked at was their most recent facilities audit and their cash reserves. If inadequate I walked away.
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