Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Miami-Dade, FL collapsed 2021 June 24

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“As I moved closer, I could hear somebody making noise and yelling. I started to get close to the building and climbed into the debris, and I could hear him saying that he was over there, and I could see his arm sticking up through the debris and waving his hand,” Nicholas Balboa, a man from Phoenix, told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Thursday night.

“He was just saying, ‘Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ I told him that we weren’t going to leave him,” Balboa said. “It was myself and one other person. So, we were there and we just felt like we could get to him. It didn’t feel right to just leave him, especially hearing that his voice was just so young.”

Balboa was in Surfside, Florida, to visit his father when Champlain Towers South building crumbled early Thursday. According to NBC News, authorities were called about the collapse around 1:30 a.m. ET

www.cnbc.com

Florida building collapse: Eyewitness describes how he helped save young boy from rubble

A man who witnessed the harrowing collapse of a 12-story oceanfront condo tower outside Miami helped save a young boy who was stuck in the debris.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
 
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Early Thursday morning, Mike Stratton awoke to the sound of his cellphone ringing. It was his wife, Cassie Stratton, on the other end, speaking frantically about their condo building shaking. She told him she saw a sinkhole where the pool out her window used to be. Then the line went dead.

“It was 1:30 a.m., I’ll never, never forget that,” he said.
amp.miamiherald.com

She was on the phone with her husband when the condo was shaking. Her body was just found

Early on the morning of June 24, Mike Stratton awoke to the sound of his cellphone ringing. It was his wife, Cassie Stratton, on the other end, speaking frantically about their condo building shaking. She told him she saw a sinkhole where the pool out her window used to be. Then the line went dead.
amp.miamiherald.com amp.miamiherald.com
 
Fearful that what was left of Champlain Towers South was going to crumble, she grabbed her dog and rushed out of her apartment. She tried running down the only available stairwell, but there was rubble.

“We were screaming, ‘Help! Come get us! We are here! Come get us!”

She was banging on the door hoping someone could hear her. Schechter realized she was on her own. She decided to climb with her dog through rubble and on top of cars. The goal was to get out of the 12-story building as fast as she could.

“It was pitch black ... We are finding our way out until we get to some light,” Schechter said.
www.local10.com

Champlain Towers South resident survives by climbing through rubble in the dark with her dog

Sharon Schechter said her life changed in seconds. She is among the 127 Champlain Towers South residents who Miami-Dade County authorities have accounted for after a section of the building collapsed early Thursday morning in the oceanside town of Surfside.
www.local10.com www.local10.com
 

Two days before condo collapse, a pool contractor photographed this damage in garage​

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool.

In the pool equipment room, located on the south side of the underground garage, the contractor saw another problem — exposed and corroding rebar in the concrete slab overhead. He snapped some pictures and sent them to his supervisor along with a note expressing concern that the job might be a bit more complicated than expected. He worried they would have to remove pool pipes to allow concrete restoration experts access to repair the slabs.

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www.nytimes.com

Rubble, Narrow Voids, Storms: The Dangerous Rescue Effort in Miami (Published 2021)

The death toll rose to 11 as search-and-rescue teams continued to sort through pulverized steel and dig through concrete boulders.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
Ms. Castro said most everything inside the building was destroyed when a significant portion shuddered and collapsed on itself early Thursday morning. “There have been some wallets. Some pieces of jewelry. Larger picture frames we have identified to go back to them,” she said.



At Monday morning’s news conference, Ray Jadallah, the assistant fire chief of operations for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, was adamant that officials had not made the grim decision to end search-and-rescue operations and focus on the uncovering of remains.

He also emphasized the complexity of the efforts. This was not a matter of lifting one floor after another to look for survivors, he said, but of sorting through pulverized steel and digging through concrete boulders. In other areas, rescuers have come upon “larger concrete areas that now require heavy machinery,” a process that uncovered at least one of the two bodies on Monday.

The crews on the pile are using cameras to explore the narrow voids rescuers have not been able to reach. In some cases, they have been following faint sounds. But Chief Jadallah cautioned that this was not necessarily proof of survivors.

“It could be a tap, could be a scratch — it may be nothing more than some of the metal that’s contorting,” he said. But, he said, all variables have to be considered “before we make a decision to move to the next phase.”

The broader effort to clear the site and identify remains may take months, based on similar efforts at collapsed buildings, according to experts. In the short run, using DNA provided by the family members to identify bodies takes about 90 minutes. But the medical examiner must also provide additional confirmation of the remains, a process that typically takes one day.
 
SheWhoMustNotBeNamed said:

Two days before condo collapse, a pool contractor photographed this damage in garage​

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool.

In the pool equipment room, located on the south side of the underground garage, the contractor saw another problem — exposed and corroding rebar in the concrete slab overhead. He snapped some pictures and sent them to his supervisor along with a note expressing concern that the job might be a bit more complicated than expected. He worried they would have to remove pool pipes to allow concrete restoration experts access to repair the slabs.

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I am wondering if all of these leaks and the reported basement parking flooding over the years had caused erosion below (think sinkhole). At least some of that water had to be seeping through cracks and crevices and even a little tiny bit of erosion accumulating over 40 years could make a difference supporting all of the floors above it.
 
Guess Who said:
I am wondering if all of these leaks and the reported basement parking flooding over the years had caused erosion below (think sinkhole). At least some of that water had to be seeping through cracks and crevices and even a little tiny bit of erosion accumulating over 40 years could make a difference supporting all of the floors above it.
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I asked my dad about this (retired chemical engineer) & his opinion was there had to be multiple factors involved instead of isolating it to a single source. The chemicals would increase deteroriation however not at a rate one would presume. These buildings have withstood hurricanes so keep that in mind too.

Does anyone know if Florida building codes (on the coast) require structural piers? If so, to what depth?
 
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A long-married, elderly couple who died in the Florida condo disaster were found by each other’s side in the mangled wreckage of the collapse — still together in bed, their family said.

Antonio Lozano, 82, and his wife, Gladys, 80, who had been married for 58 years, were pulled from the rubble by rescuers CBS Miami reported.

“I was told they were in bed together. That’s the end of the romantic story,” their son, Sergio Lozano, told the outlet.

Sergio said his parents, who met when they were 12 years old in Cuba, often joked about who would die first, because neither wanted to live without the other.

“My dad would say to my mom, ‘If you die, I don’t even know how to fry an egg, I’m gonna die.’ My mom would say, if my dad would die, ‘I don’t know how to pay the bills,'” Sergio said. “I always told my mom, ‘Don’t worry, I will do it.’ But they died together.”

He said he last saw his parents for dinner at their ninth-floor condo Wednesday evening, just hours before their building crumbled to the ground.

“After dinner, I work early in the mornings and hugged my mom good night, kissed my dad, and that was it — no more,” he said.

Sergio returned to his own condo about two blocks away at Champlain East, the sister complex to his parents’ building, and was awakened by a strange noise around 1:30 a.m.

I thought it was a tornado outside my apartment. I opened the door and I told my wife, ‘The building is not there,’” he said.

“She goes, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘The building is gone.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘My parents’ apartment is not there!’” he recalled.


nypost.com

Elderly couple who died in Florida condo collapse found in bed together, son says

Antonio Lozano, 82, and his wife, Gladys, 80, were pulled from the rubble by rescuers following the collapse last week of the Champlain Towers South Condo in Surfside, CBS Miami reported.
nypost.com nypost.com
 
So, far Miami-Dade Police have identified 12 of the victims:
  • 54-year-old Stacie Fang
  • 54-year-old Manuel Lafont
  • 83-year-old Antonio Lozano
  • 79-year-old Gladys Lozano
  • 80-year-old Leon Oliwkowicz
  • 26-year-old Luis Bermudez
  • 46-year-old Anna Ortiz
  • 74-year-old Christina Beatriz Elvira
  • 55-year-old Frank Kleiman
  • 52-year-old Marcus Guara
  • 50-year-old Michael Altman
  • 92-year-old Hilda Noriega
wsvn.com

6 more victims, including 2 children, found at Surfside condo collapse site, death toll at 18 - WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports | Fort Lauderdale

SURFSIDE, FLA. (WSVN) - Rescuers have found six additional victims at the site of a partial collapse of a condominium building in Surfside. Thursday night,<a class="excerpt-read-more"...
wsvn.com wsvn.com
 
kdg411 said:
I asked my dad about this (retired chemical engineer) & his opinion was there had to be multiple factors involved instead of isolating it to a single source. The chemicals would increase deteroriation however not at a rate one would presume. These buildings have withstood hurricanes so keep that in mind too.

Does anyone know if Florida building codes (on the coast) require structural piers? If so, to what depth?
Click to expand...
I am not finding the stats requirements for high rise buildings, but am seeing how they are required for just plain houses that are within a certain distance from the shore.

I also went back a bit in time on Google Earth and I found an image that I could see how the construction next door could have been of concern for the residents. Their parking garage is under the pool and look just how close to the pool's foundation the construction was!
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Just out of curiosity, I went street view at both of the twin buildings. What I am seeing is a glaring difference in maintenance and/.or a serious problem with the concrete between the two.

Two pics from basically the same place on both buildings.

This is the building that came down. Notice all of the cracks and missing chunks of material just on the bottom of the balconies.
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Here is basically the same place on the twin building, built at nearly the same time just a couple of blocks down the same road.

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2 children found :cry:

"I'm pained to tell you we found two additional bodies in the rubble, which brings our total count to 18 — 18 fatalities. It is also with great sorrow, real pain, that I have to share with you that two of these were children. Aged 4 and 10. Any loss of life, especially given the unexpected, unprecedented nature of this event is a tragedy, but the loss of our children is too great to bear," she said.

www.cnn.com

June 30, 2021 Buliding collapse near Miami

Search and rescue efforts continue after a building in Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed. Follow here for the latest news.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
 
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