By: Russ Bynum
The slow work of sifting through the remnants of a collapsed Florida condo building stretched into a sixth day Tuesday, as families desperate for progress endured a wrenching wait for answers.
“We have people waiting and waiting and waiting for news,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters. “We have them coping with the news that they might not have their loved ones come out alive and still hope against hope that they will. They’re learning that some of their loved ones will come out as body parts. This is the kind of information that is just excruciating for everyone.”
The work has been deliberate and treacherous. Thunderstorms rolled through the area Tuesday morning, and debris fell onto the search area overnight from the shattered edge of the part of the building that still stands. That forced rescuers to mark a “don’t go beyond here” line and focus their efforts parts of the debris pile that are farther from the structure, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told Miami television station WSVN.
Also Tuesday, the White House announced that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden would travel to Surfside on Thursday.
Just two additional bodies were found Monday, raising the count of confirmed dead to 11. That leaves 150 people still unaccounted for in the Surfside community just outside Miami.
Authorities meet frequently with families to explain what they’re doing and to answer questions. They have discussed how DNA matches are made to help identify the dead, how next-of-kin will be contacted and explained in “extreme detail” how they are searching the mound, the mayor said.
With that knowledge, she said, families are coming to their own conclusions.
“Some are feeling more hopeful, some less hopeful, because we do not have definitive answers. We give them the facts. We take them to the site,” she said. “They have seen the operation. They understand now how it works, and they are preparing themselves for news, one way or the other.”
Rescuers are using bucket brigades and heavy machinery as they work atop a precarious mound of pulverized concrete, twisted steel and the remnants of dozens of households. The efforts include firefighters, sniffer dogs and search experts using radar and sonar devices.
Authorities said it’s still a search-and-rescue operation, but no one has been found alive since hours after the collapse on Thursday.
The pancake collapse of the building left layer upon layer of intertwined debris, frustrating efforts to reach anyone who may have survived in a pocket of space.
“Every time there’s an action, there’s a reaction,” Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said Monday during a news conference. “It’s not an issue of we could just attach a couple of cords to a concrete boulder and lift it and call it a day.” Some of the concrete pieces are smaller, the size of basketballs or baseballs.
From outside a neighboring building on Monday, more than two dozen family members watched teams of searchers excavate the building site. Some held onto each other for support. Others hugged and prayed. Some people took photos.
Authorities insisted they are not losing hope.
Deciding to transition from search-and-rescue work to a recovery operation is agonizing, said Dr. Joseph A. Barbera, a professor at George Washington University. That decision is fraught with considerations, he said, that only those on the ground can make.
Barbera coauthored a study examining disasters where some people survived under rubble for prolonged periods of time. He has also advised teams on where to look for potential survivors and when to conclude “that the probability of continued survival is very, very small.”
“It’s an incredibly difficult decision, and I’ve never had to make that decision,” Barbera said.
The building collapsed just days before a deadline for condo owners to start making steep payments toward more than $9 million in repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier, in a report that warned of “major structural damage.”
That cost estimate, from the Morabito Consultants engineering firm in 2018, meant owners at Champlain Towers South were facing payments of anywhere from $80,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $330,000 or so for a penthouse, to be paid all at once or in installments. Their first deadline was July 1.
One resident whose apartment was spared, Adalberto Aguero, had just taken out a loan to cover his $80,000 bill.
“I figured I would pay it off after they fixed the building. I didn’t want to pay it off before because you never know,” said Aguero, adding that he pulled paperwork to make the installment payments a day after Thursday’s collapse. “I said cancel everything.”
An itemized bill sent by the condo board in April to owners of the building’s 136 units showed that much of the planned work was in the pool area and the façade. Installing new pavers and waterproofing the pool deck and building entrance would cost $1.8 million, with another $1 million going to “structural repairs” and “planter landscaping,” according to a condo board email obtained by The Associated Press. A line item of “miscellaneous repairs” that included work on the garage was estimated to cost $280,000.
Total costs assessed, including many items that appeared to be for aesthetic purpose: $15 million.
Engineers and construction experts say the Morabito documents that focused just on the structural work make clear there were several major repairs that needed to be done as soon as possible. Other than some roof repairs, that work had not begun, officials said.
The cost estimate emailed by Morabito Consultants to Surfside officials was among a series of documents released as rescue efforts continued at the site of the collapsed building, where more than 150 people remained unaccounted for. At least nine people were killed in the collapse, authorities said Sunday.
Another 2018 Morabito report submitted to the city said waterproofing under the pool deck had failed and had been improperly laid flat instead of sloped, preventing water from draining off.
“The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” the report said.
The firm recommended that the damaged slabs be replaced in what would be a major repair.
That came as news to Susana Alvarez, who lived on the 10th floor of the doomed tower and said a Surfside official assured residents in a 2018 meeting that there was no danger. It wasn’t clear who that official was.
“The Town of Surfside told us the building was not in bad shape. That is what they said,” Alvarez said on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition program. “No one ever told us that building was in such bad shape.”
A daughter of Claudio Bonnefoy, a resident from Chile who is missing, said it appears that someone ignored key signals the building was in danger.
“This is starting to make me angry because reports from years ago reporting serious structural damage to the building are little by little being known,” said the daughter, Pascale Bonnefoy. “It seems this was predictable because the technicians alerted (others about it) and nobody did anything.”
The Morabito firm said in a statement that it was hired in June 2020 by Champlain Towers South to begin the 40-year recertification process required of all buildings in Miami-Dade County that reach that age. The Champlain building was constructed in 1981.
“At the time of the building collapse, roof repairs were under way, but concrete restoration had not yet begun,” the statement said.
An attorney for the Champlain Towers South condominium association, which was in charge of the repair work, did not immediately respond Sunday to an email seeking comment. Surfside officials also did not respond to an email seeking comment.
A new batch of emails from building officials and condo board members that were made public Sunday has added to the mystery.
In one email, a Surfside official praised the building’s board for plans to start the 40-year recertification process early after attending a November 2018 meeting.
“This particular building is not due to begin their forty year until 2021 but they have decided to start the process early which I wholeheartedly endorse and wish that this trend would catch on with other properties,” said Surfside Building Official Ross Prieto.
A few months later, a board member wrote to Prieto that workers next door were digging “too close to our property, and we have concerns regarding the structure of our building.”
Prieto wrote back to monitor a nearby fence, the building’s pool and adjacent areas for damage.
Surfside has hired Allyn Kilsheimer of KCE Structural Engineers to consult on the Champlain Towers disaster. Surfside officials say Kilsheimer has worked on numerous such cases, including the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks and the collapse of a pedestrian bridge at Florida International University.
Stephanie Walkup, an engineering professor at Villanova University, said it will take time to pinpoint the cause — or series of causes — that brought down Champlain Towers South.
“The ultimate cause of the collapse may have been related to design error, construction error, deterioration or other event,” Walkup said in an email.
“We all want answers and engineers will want to learn from this collapse as we have others, but we want to make sure we have the right ones,” she added.
About a block from the Champlain Towers South sits its sister building, erected a year later by the same company, using the same materials and a similar design. It has faced the same tides and salty air.
This has made some residents of Champlain Towers North worried enough to leave, though many have remained, saying they are confident their almost 40-year-old, 12-story building is better maintained. They say their building doesn’t have the same problems with cracking in support beams and in the pool area that 2018 engineering reports show the south tower had.
The collapse of Champlain Towers South on Thursday has drawn attention to older high-rise buildings throughout South Florida and prompted Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to order a 30-day audit of whether such buildings under her jurisdiction are complying with a required recertification of structural integrity at 40 years. She said she wants any issues raised by inspections to be immediately addressed. She’s also urged municipalities within the county to follow suit. Miami, for example, has launched a 45-day audit of buildings six stories and higher that are 40 years old or older.
Inspectors performed a quick-hit examination of the north building and Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said nothing was found that indicates the tower is in danger of collapse.
That didn’t reassure everyone.
“I’m petrified of returning,” said Rebecca Weinstock, a snowbird who bought a sixth-floor condo in the north building four years ago with her husband. She is in New York, where she was when the south tower collapsed early Thursday, killing at least 11 people and leaving 150 missing.
While she agrees the north building is well maintained, she said that’s not enough to satisfy her that it’s completely safe. It was completed in 1982, one year after the south tower, and built by the same developer, Nathan Reiber, through his firm, Nattel Construction. The possibility that the collapse was caused by a design or construction flaw means she won’t be returning anytime soon.
“I am out my investment, I am out my apartment, I am out my future, but we are talking about lives here,” she said. The only way she’ll return, she said, is if two independent engineers — not from South Florida — agree it’s safe.
(Sources: Associated Press – AP writers Terry Spencer, Bernard Condon & Curt Anderson also contributed to this article)
