SURFSIDE, Fla. — Ahead of the five-year anniversary of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside that claimed the lives of 98 people, lead investigators with the National Institute of Standards and Technology said the collapse began in early June of 2021 when two connections between the garage columns and the pool deck slab failed.
Once the first connection failed, they said other elements of the pool deck were left to carry their loads, but they were not strong enough to handle them.
“When building structures are designed to required codes and standards, they have margins against failure, meaning they should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” said Judith Mitrani-Reiser with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “In the case of Champlain Towers South, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”
NIST investigations are conducted by national construction safety teams, and while the federal research laboratory has produced full investigations into large scale structural failures - to include the Station nightclub fire and World Trade Center attack, what happened in Surfside was a first even for them, as previous building failures they’ve looked into had obvious causes, such as storms, fires or a terrorist attack.
Glenn Bell with NIST explained some of what their investigation uncovered.
“Severe and widespread deviations from the building’s original structural design from the codes and standards of the day,” he said.
According to a town manager’s 2021 report, the condo’s sister building, Champlain Towers North, was designed “by the same engineering firm and constructed at the same time” which leads to questions of whether it has those same original design and construction flaws.
Allyn Kil-Shimer of KCE Structural Engineers is the structural engineer the town hired to help with its independent investigation into the collapse. He also searched for clues at nearby Champlain Towers North.
“Champlain Towers North asked us to evaluate their building to make sure their building didn’t have issues similar to what we found in Champlain Towers South,” Kil-Shimer said.
“We did that for about a year and a half, and we found the same, if not more, design flaws and construction deficiencies in the structure of Champlain Towers North than we had found even in Champlain Towers South, so with the ownership of Champlain Towers, the condominium group of Champlain Towers North, which now is called Ocean Waves, we essentially put in a bunch of emergency shoring in a lot of places, and we designed the structural design for the remediation necessary to take care of those problems,” he added.
Kil-Shimer said working with the building owners, they began the process of remediation.
“We began construction, contractors began construction at that time, contractors we selected from experts all over this country, and we got permits from the town of Surfside,” he said. “It’s been a year and almost two years, and essentially all of the structural deficiencies in construction and design in Champlain Towers North that we found, both from investigating Champlain Towers North and investigating Champlain Towers South, have all been remediated satisfactorily in Champlain Towers North.”
He was also asked if it is safe to live there.
“Essentially I’m now 86 years old and I have great grandchildren, I’d let them live in the building,” he added. “From all the things we have found, the building is structurally sound and not only does it meet most of the codes that exist today, which you don’t have to do, they now meet at a minimum the building structural codes that existing when the buildings were designed.”
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