Champlain Towers South (Surfside, FL) Collapse Investigation
Vložit
- čas přidán 24. 05. 2023
- In the early morning of June 24, 2021, the eastern half of the twelve-story Champlain Towers South Condominium collapsed, killing ninety-eight residents of the forty-year-old building in Surfside, Florida. WJE was retained by attorneys representing the condominium association to determine the cause of the collapse and provide litigation support.
Our scope of work included a review of design and construction records, videos, and photographs taken before, during, and after the collapse; site inspections at the Champlain Towers South collapse site and NIST primary evidence facility; testing of construction materials and subsurface conditions (in coordination with the involved parties); review of relevant codes and standards; and structural analyses. Our investigation found that the flat plate slab supporting the pool deck above an underground garage was under-designed, with significant structural distress apparent before the collapse.
In this webinar, WJE structural engineers Matthew Fadden and Gary Klein detail WJE’s investigation and findings, including our collapse theory.
This is a very depressing story. This collapse was completely preventable. People should not be murdered by their home. I would be very nervous if I lived in the sister building a few blocks away.
Great video, thanks!
I am concerned about the lack of security video evidence. To date the only video released is the one we've all seen and the only reason we see that is because the condo tower from which it came released it directly to the press.
The under-designed pool deck was not waterproof. This allowed water in. The rebar rusted and the concrete slowly started to dissolve. You can see the wet areas on the deck photos. Faulty repair and faulty repair design.
Did the pool deck slab also act as a strut, propping the top edge of the basement retaining walls? If so, once a significant portion of this slab failed in punching, struct action would have been removed and horizontal loads from lateral earth pressures on the basement wall could then act on the columns.
Why arent more comments pointing out the pool deck columns were under designed since day 1? That is the smoking gun to me and should have been identified during initial construction. Someone cut corners back then or is completely incompetent.
Most interesting to me has been the still obscure history of the genesis and prescription of the “40-year Recertification" requirement. Who approved, who adopted, and who influenced (if it was) the official creation and handling of such new, broad and very important document for the present (back then) and future of the real estate market and its "health". I say this because it might have been redacted and sent to city officials as "the requirement" or something that seems to be the sole requirement between notice of completion and 40 years after, therefore possibly influencing in opposite effort or mindset to the original preventative mindset or effort with which "recertifications" should be handled by associations, public in general, attorneys, professionals, etc. (assuming this preventative mindset is aligned and is a good example of responsibility: to "advance our nation's quality of life and protect the public's health, safety and welfare". If 40 years is not enough to make sure buildings don't collapse (and it wasn't enough back then since it all came from a building that had collapsed after 40 years) then why was the policy or prevention bar set at 40 years? who benefitted from that number, and who really set 40 as THE number. Thanks!
I know this is almost immaterial to the investigation; the part that confuses me is why it failed in the middle of the night. In a progressive failure like this I tend to have a mental model of strength gradually decreasing over time, with noisy actual demanded loads, and failure occurring when actual load exceeds the strength. But because the strength decrease is slow compared to the timescales over which the actual loads are noisy, you tend to see failures near locally-high loads (in the temporal sense, not spacial.).
When buildings are that close to the salt water, It must be Mandated that they use STAINLESS STEEL REBAR which won't rust like steel rebar will. it doesn't cost that much more and they were getting ready to spend over 10,000,000. on concrete repairs. stainless steel rebar would have been way cheaper.
The Surfside officials swept alot under the rug and said it was an act of God!!