Surfside…

This tragedy already has the usual suspects of conspiracy theory, conjecture, and outlandish claims. All information below can be found at the links at the bottom of this post.

While there have been claims of “explosions” and “controlled demolition” – there is no current evidence to support those assertions. The fact is, when buildings fall, they make a lot of noise. Survivors said they were jolted awake around 1:30 a.m. by fire alarms, falling debris and the feeling of the ground trembling. Fiorella Terenzi, an associate professor at Florida International University who lives in a neighboring building, Champlain Towers East, said she woke up early Thursday to a loud noise. The sound “was like a big thump all of a sudden,” she said. At first Ms. Terenzi thought it was thunder, but then she heard sirens. When she left the building, dust was everywhere.

Surfside Building Collapse – what we know.

The building, Champlain Towers South at 8777 Collins Ave – built in 1981 by the late developer Nathan Reiber, could have fallen due to a number of issues. It was the first project to be built in Surfside after Miami-Dade County placed a moratorium on new developments during the 1970s due to a need to upgrade the existing and failing infrastructure, said Daniel Ciraldo, executive director of the Miami Design Preservation League.

The median rent is about $2,000; median household income is $69,000; and median home value is $626,000. This is not an overly affluent or upscale condominium when one considers the cost of living in the greater Miami Metro area. “There are working people, families with kids, people of retirement age,” he said. “Not a particular ethnicity or particular religion. It is a diverse community.”

Structural work related to its required 40-year recertification, wherein an engineer who inspected the building determined it needed repairs, but the only repair underway was the replacement of the roof. The building had been about to undergo extensive repairs for rusted steel and damaged concrete.

Condominium owners sued the unit association for failing to fix the cracks in the outside wall of their unit in 2001 and 2015. The complaints said the cracks led to water damage that cost $15,000. The court documents noted that because the cracks were a structural issue the building association was liable for the expense.

Surfside is built on a barrier island. Climate scientists and geologists have long warned that these islands cannot be developed responsibly. They are made of a loose mixture of sand and mud and provide a natural protection for the shoreline. “These are very dynamic features. We didn’t understand that these islands actually migrate until the 1970s,” said Orrin Pilkey, a professor emeritus of geology at Duke University. An analysis of satellite images taken of Miami Beach, which includes the town of Surfside, found that the area had moved slightly each year through the 1990s, according to a study published in the journal Ocean & Coastal Management in April 2020. The study also showed signs the building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year between 1993 and 1999, and concluded that the building was unstable given that it was built on reclaimed wetlands. “That’s 2.5 inches in 30 years if it stayed at that same rate,” Bloetscher said. “That’s a lot. That could cause something like this. If you have a building that’s sinking, that’s a foundation failure.”

The 18-story, 66-unit Eighty Seven Park condominium tower, with an underground parking garage, developed by Terra and partners, was completed in 2019, just south of Champlain Tower South. This construction has also been cited as a possibly aggravating factor.