Major new details have surfaced in the deadly collapse of a Florida condo. Back in 2021, the Champlain Towers South condo collapsed in Surfside, Florida.
Now, federal investigators are sharing their preliminary results. They believe the collapse began at the pool deck. The partial collapse began there, then spread to the rest of the tower. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a statement about the collapse, which killed 98 people.
According to the agency, "large-scale structural testing and computer analyses" showed the pool deck as the source of the collapse.
"It is more likely that the failure started in a pool deck slab-column connection," the NIST said in a statement.
Condo Collapse
It also added, "Indications that the building was in distress in the weeks before the collapse. These included a sliding glass door that came off its frame, the previously reported horizontal crack in a planter wall and distress where the wall meets a planter box, and the vertical shifting of a gate, causing it to jam so that it could not be opened. All of these issues were concentrated in a small area of the pool deck and street-level parking deck, which has been confirmed to have begun collapsing at least seven minutes before the tower."
Unfortunately, the condo collapsed in the middle of the night when many people were asleep.
The report also added, "Additionally, the day before the collapse, water was seen leaking from the ceiling of the garage in an area that had been the site of many cracks and repairs over the years. The flow of water dramatically increased in the hours before the collapse."
However, the condo apparently had a lot of problems.
"Our team has worked tirelessly to find the causes of this disaster and we are on the home stretch, but much of the very hard work of bringing about change is still in front of us," Associate Lead Investigator Glenn Bell said.
