A new report confirms preliminary findings that the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South Building in 2021 likely originated in the pool deck rather than the tower itself, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal agency in charge of the investigation.
The report also identified signs of distress in the building that were visible in the weeks before the disaster.
It has been more than four years since the Florida condominium collapse killed 98 people. Federal investigators have yet to make a final determination of the cause. The NIST has said it hopes to conclude its full investigation next year.
Most residents were asleep in the 12-story Champlain Towers South when the beachfront condo building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed into a huge pile of rubble at 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021. A Miami judge has since approved a more than $1 billion settlement for personal injury and wrongful death claims from the disaster.
Meanwhile, a new luxury condominium is going up at the Champlain Towers site, a few miles north of Miami.
The latest update on Tuesday was made by lead investigator Judith Mitrani-Reiser and co-lead investigator Glenn Bell at a virtual meeting of the National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee.
"This tragic event has revealed flaws in our systems, and quality is at the heart of it," Mitrani-Reiser said in a statement.
Bell explained that the team’s ongoing work, including computer simulations and structural testing, has led them to refine their analysis of what led to the building's collapse. He said that the results of these efforts “indicate that it is more likely that the failure started in a pool deck slab-column connection.”
Mitrani-Reiser highlighted several indications of the building's distress in the weeks before the collapse, all concentrated in a small area of the pool deck and street-level parking deck. These signs, she said, included a sliding glass door that came off its frame, a previously reported horizontal crack in a planter wall, and a gate that had shifted and could not be opened.
In addition, water was seen leaking from the garage ceiling the day before the collapse, with the flow dramatically increasing in the hours before the building fell. The pool deck and street-level parking deck have been confirmed to have begun collapsing at least seven minutes before the tower.
NIST is now focused on completing its technical work by the end of this year and drafting its reports, which will include a summary and six subject-focused technical reports. The goal is to provide recommendations that will improve building safety for both new and existing structures.
After Surfside, state legislators enacted a law in 2022 requiring condo associations to have sufficient reserves to cover major repairs. Some residents were caught off guard by hefty fees imposed to cover years of deferred maintenance expenses required to bring their buildings into compliance with the law’s standards.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed new legislation allowing some condo associations to fund their reserves through a loan or line of credit. It also gives residents more flexibility to pause payments into reserve funds while they prioritize needed repairs. It extends the deadline for condo associations to complete structural integrity studies and exempts some smaller buildings from those studies.
This story was produced by WLRN, South Florida’s only public radio station at 91.3 FM, as part of a content sharing partnership with The Biscayne Times. Read more at WLRN.org.