JUNE 29, 2021
TUESDAY
PROGRESSIVE OPINION AND NEWS
AS WE WHO ARE UNINJURED WATCH
THIS PAIN EMERGING DAILY IN STORIES AND VIDEOS, SOME SPECIFIC CAUSES ARE COMING TO
LIGHT, AND SOME BLAME. YET, A BUILDING ENGINEER SAYS THAT THOUGH THERE WAS
KNOWN DAMAGE THAT NEEDED REPAIR, IT DID NOT APPEAR TO SHOW AN IMMINENT DISASTER
OF THE SORT THAT HAS OCCURRED HERE. THE FACT REMAINS THAT AN ENGINEER’S REPORT
SOME THREE YEARS EARLIER WAS NOT ACTED UPON NEARLY AS SOON AS IT SHOULD HAVE
BEEN, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF ANOTHER HIGHRISE A SHORT DISTANCE AWAY HAD CAUSED
SHAKING AND CRACKS WITHIN THE APARTMENTS. IT WASN’T WITHOUT WARNING. I CAN ONLY
IMAGINE THE FEARS OF THOSE WHO LIVED THERE WHEN THOSE THINGS OCCURRED, AND HOW
NEIGHBORING RESIDENTS ARE NOW FEELING ABOUT THEIR OWN SAFETY. THIS IS ALL VERY,
VERY SAD.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/29/us/florida-condo-shaking-construction-invs/index.html
'Shaking all the time:' Surfside condo owners complained of luxury tower being built next door
By Casey Tolan, CNN
Updated 7:37 PM ET, Tue June 29, 2021
VIDEO -- Man avoids condo
collapse after girlfriend requests he stay with her, CNN, 06:28 MIN
(CNN) Two and a half years
before her building collapsed into a pile of rubble, Champlain Towers South
resident Mara Chouela dashed off the latest in a string of angry complaints
about the development project next door.
"We are concerned that the
construction next to Surfside is too close," Chouela, a board member of
the condo association, wrote in a January 2019 email to a building official in
her Florida town. Workers were "digging too close to our property and we
have concerns regarding the structure of our building," she wrote,
attaching photos of construction equipment directly across from her building's
property wall.
Just 28 minutes later, the
official, Rosendo Prieto, responded that "there is nothing for me to
check." The reason why: The offending development, an ultra-luxury tower
known as Eighty Seven Park, was directly across the border separating the town
of Surfside from the city of Miami Beach, which runs between the two buildings.
In the wake of the Champlain
Towers South disaster, Eighty Seven Park is facing new scrutiny: Champlain
residents had complained that construction on the neighboring building would
regularly cause their units to shake, according to friends and family members
of the condo owners, as well as emails released by the town.
PHOTOGRAPH -- Ultra-luxury
tower known as Eighty Seven Park, left, across from the ruins at Champlain
Towers South.
There's no evidence that the
construction of Eighty Seven Park, which took place between 2016 and 2019,
contributed to the collapse.
"We are confident that the
construction of 87 Park did not cause or contribute to the collapse that took
place in Surfside," the development group behind Eighty Seven Park said in
a statement to CNN Tuesday.
But the 18-story tower would
not have been allowed to be built across the border in Surfside, where
buildings are subject to a 12-story height limit (although Champlain Towers
itself received an exemption in the 1980s to add nine extra feet, The Wall
Street Journal reported Monday).
That height limit doesn't apply
in Miami Beach. The new tower looms over its now-ruined neighbor, its sleek,
glass curves contrasting with the workmanlike stucco and concrete balconies of
the section of Champlain South that's still standing.
Magaly "Maggie"
Ramsey told CNN her mother Magaly Delgado, who is among the unaccounted for
Champlain residents, had been concerned about the work being done next door.
"She did complain of a lot
of tremors and things that were being done to the other building that she
sometimes was concerned what may be happening to her building -- that might be
putting it at risk," Ramsey said.
RELATED ARTICLE -- This is what
we know about the dead and unaccounted for in the Miami condo collapse
The new tower was designed by
renowned architect Renzo Piano -- and billed as the starchitect's "first
residential project in the Western Hemisphere." Its units are selling for
millions of dollars, far more than most of those in Champlain South, and an
outlier in what has historically been a more middle-class neighborhood of Miami
Beach.
Eighty Seven Park's owners have
included the world's top ranked tennis player: Novak Djokovic bought a
ninth-floor condo in the building in 2019 and sold it earlier this month,
according to property records -- less than two weeks before the deadly
collapse.
Peter Dyga, the president and
CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors, said that the likelihood of the
Eighty Seven Park construction "being a significant cause" in the
Surfside collapse "is slim, but no lead or idea should be excluded."
"There's probably going to be multiple things in the end that have contributed in some way or another," he said. "Still, buildings are built next to buildings all the time, and it doesn't mean that they come down."
He said minor shaking would not
be unusual.
There are plenty of other
potential causes: Engineering reports and a letter from the building's condo
association have documented examples of structural damage in the doomed tower,
with a 2018 report warning of "abundant cracking" in the concrete of
the building's parking garage.
The residents' struggle with
the developer across the border became a topic of conversation in Surfside.
Marta Castro, a former member of the board of Champlain Towers East, a nearby
building built by the same developer as Champlain Towers South, said she had
heard many complaints from her friends and neighbors in the south building
about the Eighty Seven Park construction.
"Everyone in town knew the
problems they were facing," she told CNN. "My neighbors could feel
the vibration -- they protested, they complained, nothing happened. I signed so
many petitions."
And Eliana Salzhauer, a
Surfside town commissioner, said she had heard from residents saying that the
building "was shaking all the time" during construction.
"They were very
traumatized and shook up," she said.
Debris, noise and a lack of
response
Records released by the town
showed that Champlain South residents sent a series of outraged emails to Terra
Group, one of the Eighty Seven Park developers, complaining about construction
debris, noise and the lack of response, and often attaching photos and videos.
"I am shocked and
disappointed to see the lack of consideration and respect that Terra has shown
our residents," Anette Goldstein, a condo board member, wrote to
executives with the developer. "You have said you want to be a good
neighbor... This is truly outrageous and quite unprecedented from what we hear
from other associations in the area that have dealt with construction beside
them."
PHOTOGRAPH -- In this aerial
view, search and rescue personnel work after the partial collapse of the
12-story Champlain Towers South condo building. Eighty Seven Park is to the
left.
An executive with Terra replied
that construction workers had addressed or were in the process of fixing
several specific issues, including plastic foam that was clogging the Champlain
pool and unsecured tarps that were noisily flapping in the wind.
The emails released by Surfside
so far don't show the residents specifically complaining to Terra about the
building shaking, or bringing up the possibility of structural damage with the
developer directly.
Miami Beach employees responded
to more than 50 noise complaints at the building's address between 2016 and
2019, most of which specified construction noise, and the developers were fined
for excessive noise at least eight times, according to city records. But there
doesn't appear to have been any code enforcement cases specifically related to
alleged shaking caused by construction.
A Miami Beach spokesperson did
not respond to requests for comment about whether building officials in the
city were aware of the complaints from Champlain Towers residents or planned to
investigate the issue in the wake of the disaster. Prieto, the former Surfside
building official, also did not respond.
Miami Beach approved the Eighty
Seven Park development in 2015, with a review board allowing a height increase
from 60 feet to 200 feet, according to news reports at the time. As part of the
approval, Terra agreed to build public walking paths from the street to the
beach and pay the city $10.5 million for improvements in a nearby park and
other infrastructure upgrades. In exchange, the developer took over the
right-of-way of the street, 87th Terrace, separating the development from
Champlain South.
Joy Malakoff, who served as a
Miami Beach commissioner at the time, said she hadn't heard any complaints from
Surfside residents about the construction. "As far as I know, Eighty Seven
Park was very carefully built, well built, and expensively built," Malakoff
said.
The development had previously
faced controversy over its demolition of the Biltmore Terrace Hotel, designed
by well-known Miami architect Morris Lapidus, which was previously at the site.
The hotel had not been protected by historic preservation rules, but Terra had
originally said it would renovate the hotel and add a condo building to the
property alongside it.
Instead, it tore down the
hotel, saying the project wasn't viable. Some community activists to complained
of a "bait-and-switch," the Miami Herald reported at the time.
Malakoff said that the hotel
was in disrepair. "There were some preservationists who really fought to
keep it, but it was past its life," she said.
Now, the condo tower is among
the priciest in the city. Its penthouse came to market in 2019 asking $68
million, a price that would have been the highest paid for any condo ever sold
in Florida, according to The Wall Street Journal. (It eventually sold for a
mere $37 million.)
A $10.9 million four-bedroom
condo in the building was posted on the real estate website Zillow earlier this
month -- with photos showing an expansive view looking down on what is now a
pile of ruins.
THE NEW YORK TIMES GIVES A
DIFFERENT TAKE ON THE GRAVITY EXPRESSED IN THE 2018 STRUCTURAL REPORT. “THE
WORK WAS FINALLY ABOUT TO GET UNDERWAY,” AFTER THREE YEARS.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/miami-building-collapse-investigation.html
Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo Complex
A consultant in 2018 urged the managers to repair cracked columns and crumbling concrete. The work was finally about to get underway when the building collapsed.
By Mike Baker, Anjali Singhvi and Patricia Mazzei
Published June 26, 2021
Updated June 29, 2021, 8:12 p.m. ET
PHOTOGRAPH -- A structural
engineer detailed a range of problems at the Champlain Towers South complex,
including poor waterproofing at the base of the building. Credit...Gerald
Herbert/Associated Press
Three years before the deadly
collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex near Miami, a
consultant found alarming evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete
slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns,
beams and walls of the parking garage under the 13-story building.
The engineer’s report helped
shape plans for a multimillion-dollar repair project that was set to get
underway soon — more than two and a half years after the building managers were
warned — but the building suffered a catastrophic collapse in the middle of the
night on Thursday, crushing sleeping residents in a massive heap of debris.
The complex’s management
association had disclosed some of the problems in the wake of the collapse, but
it was not until city officials released the 2018 report late Friday that the full
nature of the concrete and rebar damage — most of it probably caused by
persistent water leaks and years of exposure to the corrosive salt air along
the South Florida coast — became chillingly apparent.
“Though some of this damage is
minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely
fashion,” the consultant, Frank Morabito, wrote about damage near the base of
the structure as part of his October 2018 report on the 40-year-old building in
Surfside, Fla. He gave no indication that the structure was at risk of
collapse, though he noted that the needed repairs would be aimed at
“maintaining the structural integrity” of the building and its 136 units.
In a statement on Saturday, Mr.
Morabito’s firm, Morabito Consulting, said it provided the condo association
with both an assessment of the “extensive and necessary repairs” needed and an
estimate of how much they would cost.
“Among other things, our report
detailed significant cracks and breaks in the concrete, which required repairs
to ensure the safety of the residents and the public,” the statement said.
Emails show that the secretary
of the condo association forwarded the report to an official in the town’s
building department on Nov. 13, 2018. The town did not disclose any further
correspondence related to the report.
Mayor Charles W. Burkett of
Surfside said on Saturday he did not know what, if any, steps were taken to
examine the problems further.
“Of course there should have
been follow up,” he said. “And I don’t know that there wasn’t. I think we need
to understand exactly what happened at that time.”
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of
Miami-Dade County said officials there knew nothing of the 2018 report. On
Saturday, she announced a 30-day audit of all buildings 40 years and older
under the county’s jurisdiction, and she urged cities to do the same for
buildings within their borders.
“We want to make sure that
every building has completed their recertification process,” she said. “And we
want to make sure to move quickly to remediate any issues that may have been
identified in that process.”
The condominium complex had
been preparing for the recertification that state law requires of similar
buildings in the area that have reached 40 years of age, and was on notice that
it needed to complete the repairs in order to pass inspection.
But solving the problem of
water leaking down from the pool area into the garage was going to involve
major work and cost millions of dollars. Brad Sohn, a lawyer representing at
least one resident who has filed a lawsuit against the Champlain Towers South
Condominium Association, said on Saturday that residents were facing
assessments ranging from $80,000 to as high as $200,000.
Mr. Sohn said he was still
trying to understand why repairs had not begun immediately after the 2018
report outlining the major problems with the building.
“There is no acceptable answer
to that question — period, full stop,” he said.
Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer
who represents the resident-led association that operates the building, said on
Saturday that while the report outlined problems to fix, the condo board had no
warning that there was a major safety risk.
“If there was anything in that
report that really outlined that the building was in danger of collapse, or
there was a hazardous condition, would the board and their families be living
there?” she said. She noted that one board member, Nancy Kress Levin, was
missing in the collapse, as were her adult children.
The association had taken out a
$12 million line of credit to pay for the repairs and was going through a
careful, step-by-step process to get them done, Ms. Berger said. She said that
such a process could seem more like moving a commercial tanker than a speedboat,
always involving pushback and debate as board members decided on what to tackle
first and how much of a cost to impose on homeowners. “Nobody likes a special
assessment,” she said.
The coronavirus pandemic also
slowed progress on getting repairs underway, she said.
Eliana Salzhauer, a Surfside
commissioner, said that while the cause of the collapse was unknown, it
appeared to her that the problems identified by the engineer in the 2018 report
could have contributed to the structural failure.
“It’s upsetting to see these
documents because the condo board was clearly made aware that there were
issues,” Ms. Salzhauer said. “And it seems from the documents that the issues
were not addressed.”
A former Surfside building
official who said Champlain Towers South was ‘in very good shape’ is on a leave
of absence.
Teams of rescuers at the
collapsed condo site have a long history of joining forces.
Officials say an emergency
audit has not yet found any other nearby buildings at risk of collapse.
TUESDAY
'Shaking all the time:' Surfside condo owners complained of luxury tower being built next door
By Casey Tolan, CNN
Updated 7:37 PM ET, Tue June 29, 2021
"There's probably going to be multiple things in the end that have contributed in some way or another," he said. "Still, buildings are built next to buildings all the time, and it doesn't mean that they come down."
Engineer Warned of ‘Major Structural Damage’ at Florida Condo Complex
A consultant in 2018 urged the managers to repair cracked columns and crumbling concrete. The work was finally about to get underway when the building collapsed.
By Mike Baker, Anjali Singhvi and Patricia Mazzei
Published June 26, 2021
Updated June 29, 2021, 8:12 p.m. ET
Investigators have yet to identify the cause and are still awaiting full access to a site where rescue crews have been urgently sifting through an unstable pile of debris for possible survivors.
*Frustration Mounts in Search for Survivors of Condo Collapse Near Miami, June 25, 2021
*Among the Missing: Retirees, Families and a Woman on Her First Trip Abroad, June 25, 2021
*Harrowing Condo Collapse Near Miami Prompts Frantic Search for Survivors, June 24, 2021
Collapsed Florida condo building had been shifting since 1990s, geologist says
FLORIDA
by: Sam Sachs, The Associated Press
Posted: Jun 24, 2021 / 04:37 PM EDT / Updated: Jun 25, 2021 / 07:20 AM EDT
Researchers who found Florida condo was sinking reported similar issues nearby
By Ben FeuerherdJune 25, 2021 | 12:41pm | Updated
*Ex-Florida building official on leave at new job after damning condo report
*Death toll in Florida condo collapse rises to 12, 149 still missing
*Media keep trying — and failing — to take down Florida’s Ron DeSantis
*Celebs including Joe Jonas and Bethenny Frankel help at building collapse
*Security footage shows Florida condo being pelted with debris before collapse
Engineer suggests corrosion might be to blame for Champlain Towers South partial collapse
Engineer Asher Cohen says the condo’s builders didn’t have access to modern construction technology
Tarik Minor, Anchor, I-TEAM reporter
Published: June 25, 2021 4:42 pm
Updated: June 25, 2021 9:08 pm
Tags: Champlain Towers South, Saltwater Corrosion, Surfside, South Florida
Tarik Minor
Tarik anchors the 4, 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. weekday newscasts and reports with the I-TEAM.
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