As questions mount over condo collapse, a trail of missed warnings emerges

SURFSIDE, Florida — Questions mounted Monday about how a residential building in the Miami area could have collapsed so quickly and violently last week, as attention turned to a city official who deemed the tower in “very good shape,” despite a report pointing to structural issues three years ago.

Experts are looking at possible pre-existing critical flaws in the structure of the apartment tower in Surfside, near Miami Beach, which pancaked into a pile of smoking rubble in the early hours of Thursday. Some have focused on the building’s pool, where a Miami-area contractor said he spotted serious damage hours before the collapse.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 11 bodies had been retrieved from the rubble, and put the number of unaccounted for at 150.

Officials said investigators were at the scene to do a preliminary review to determine if a full investigation of the incident would proceed — an outcome which Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said seemed likely.

Debris with “forensic value” was being taken to a large warehouse to be inspected as investigators seek to determine what happened, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said.

An October 2018 report released by city officials late Friday revealed fears of “major structural damage” in the Champlain Towers South complex, from the concrete slab under the pool deck to the columns and beams in the parking garage.

“Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion,” the consultant, Frank Morabito, wrote.

Despite the report, though, Surfside official, Rosendo “Ross” Prieto told a meeting of the Champlain Towers South board that the building was in “very good shape” a month later, on Nov. 15, 2018.

The discussion with Prieto came as Champlain Towers was beginning to explore what work was needed under city and county ordinances for the building to meet a 40-year recertification that was to arrive in 2021.

The board meeting minutes say that Prieto told them in 2018 the Morabito engineering report had collected the necessary information and “it appears the building is in very good shape.”

A day later, Prieto told the then-town manager of Surfside he thought the meeting was a success and credited Champlain Towers with getting a good early start on the recertification process.

“The response was very positive from everyone in the room,” Prieto wrote in the email, also released by town officials. “All the main concerns over their forty-year recertification process were addressed.”

Yet there is no evidence any of the critical concrete structure work ever started, the documents show. Owners of the 136 units had been told earlier this year they would have to pay their share of a $15 million assessment — $9.1 million of which was major work — by July 1. That assessment ranged from about $80,000 for a one-bedroom unit to more than $330,000 for a penthouse.

Prieto no longer works at Surfside and efforts to locate him Monday for comment were not immediately successful. Prieto previously told the Miami Herald he didn’t remember getting the Morabito report and declined to comment on the November 2018 board meeting.

The minutes were forwarded to Surfside officials on Sunday by an attorney for the board, according to the town.

The Morabito report focused attention on the pool deck, which was found to have waterproofing underneath that had failed and had been laid flat instead of sloping to drain off water. This threatened not only the concrete slab under the pool but also other structural areas.

“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” said the report, which also cited “abundant cracking” in concrete columns and beams.

Experts who have reviewed video footage of the collapse are now looking at the idea of “progressive collapse” — when an initial failure, perhaps in the parking garage or even below, would have snowballed into tragedy.

“It does appear to start either at or very near the bottom of the structure,” Donald Dusenberry, a consulting engineer who has investigated many structural collapses, told The New York Times.

“It’s not like there’s a failure high and it pancaked down.”

Michael Stratton said he was talking on the phone with his wife Cassie Stratton when the building collapsed. He said she described a hole appearing near the pool when the line went dead.

A commercial pool contractor who visited the building just 36 hours before the collapse told the Miami Herald of damage he saw in the basement-level garage, including cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool.

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” said the contractor, who also provided photos and asked not to be named.

While numerous theories have emerged, no definitive cause has been identified in the collapse. Experts have been puzzled by how a building that appeared to stand with relatively no issues for nearly 40 years could fall down suddenly one night with little or no warning.

One problem that surfaced back in 2019 involved work at another building adjacent to Champlain Towers South.

“We are concerned that the construction next to (Champlain) is too close,” board member Mara Chouela wrote in an email to Prieto in January 2019. The construction work, she added, is “digging too close to our property and we have concerns regarding the structure of our building.”

Prieto responded that Surfside didn’t have an official role in that issue. “There is nothing for me to check. The best course of action is to have someone monitor the fence, pool and adjacent areas for damage or hire a consultant to monitor these areas,” he wrote.

Champlain Towers South resident Steven Rosenthal, who lived on the seventh floor and escaped the collapse, said in a negligence lawsuit filed Sunday by his attorney Robert McKee that there were ample signs of danger.

The building board, the lawsuit says, had warnings and other sources of information years ago indicating “the risk or potential indicators of severe building damage or collapse.”

Rosenthal, the lawsuit adds, “lost his home. He lost his personal property obtained over the years. He has been forced into a life with no home or possessions.”

The lawsuit is at least the second filed so far in the tower’s collapse. It seeks unspecified damages.

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said during a news conference Monday that the minutes of the building board meeting were of some concern but did not elaborate. He said the town continues to gather documentation on the history of Champlain Towers South and inspections of its structural integrity, and is posting them online as they become available.

“We will be 100% transparent,” Burkett said.

He also alluded to concerns regarding the tower’s nearly identical “sister” building a block away.

No structural problems have yet been identified there, but Burkett said accommodation was being found for anyone wishing to evacuate.

“We’re not pushing the panic button right now. But there is a serious question there,” Burkett told CNN on Monday.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.