Heartbreak north of Miami-Dade as the number of missing persons in the Surfside condo collapse rises to 159 people. Search and rescue efforts continued throughout the night and morning as rescue workers enter their 36th hour of operations. The work is dangerous as the remaining elements of the building are very unstable.
MIAMI-DADE The arduous and heartbreaking task of recovering the bodies of victims at the site of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside began overnight and continued into a somber Friday morning in an unfolding tragedy that is feared to be the worst building failure in Florida history.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Friday morning that the number of people who are unaccounted for in Thursday’s building collapse increased to 159 — dramatically higher than the 99 reported earlier. The official death toll rose to four, as three more people were found in the rubble.
She said 120 people are now accounted for but stressed that all the numbers are “fluid” because some residents may not have been in the building when it collapsed.
[…] While the cause of the 12-story oceanfront condo tower’s collapse remains unknown, Levine Cava and other county officials confirmed that there was no sinkhole under the building.
State Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who also serves as the state fire marshal, said on CNN early Friday morning the rescue mission would continue into the day, with search-and-rescue teams from Naples and Orlando coming to relieve Miami-Dade searchers who had been working their way through the rubble for more than 24 hours. (read more)
While the cause of the collapse is unknown the fact the building was located near the coast in South Florida; was built with an underground parking garage, and previous reports of the building slowly shifting/sinking point to structural instability and potential design flaws from the 40 year-old construction. Not to be too blunt, but put a barstool on a beach and sit on it…. that’s the stability element many structural engineers in S-FL are discussing.
Regardless of cause this is a horrific event and our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. The rescue workers are also facing peril as the elements of the remaining building that did not collapse are tenuous at best. We pray for the safety of those trying around the clock to rescue and recover the lost.
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Reunification Hotline 305-614-1819
Horrible. Absolutely horrible. Praying for the survivors and their families.
The people in the first collapse might have had the blessing of dying in their sleep, but the noise from the first collapse would have awakened those killed in the second collapse. A horrifying nightmare.
My exact thoughts. Awful. Just awful.
Very brief in any case, fraction of a second to seconds at most, in many cases with disintegration of the building.
It’s the temporary survivors that suffered.
And may we learn from this. May this serve to begin inspection of all the structures in the area, regardless of their age, to prevent further loss of life.
You need timely and consistent accountability, transparency, and oversight, otherwise it just becomes like every other area where greasing wheels
to meet deadlines etc. grows increasingly entrenched. Guess how high all of that is going to be on the list of priorities from activist governments concentrating on signaling.
I’m no concrete expert, but I dont see a lot of rebar in the rubble…
Pics I saw showed a lot of rebar.
Look at the floors of the condos,where they broke off.
There’s plenty of rebar, you can look at the structural plans. Top and bottom matts for all the 8″ floor slabs. It appears, after looking at the plans, that the slab-to-column connections were too wimpy.
“Inspection” was already done, and a full set of plans was prepared detailing the needed repairs. You can look at the plans online. Page after page of modifications to the existing concrete structure were needed.
https://rumble.com/embed/vgf0z1/?pub=4
Sundance, thank you so much for having the best news site on the internet and all of your hard work. God bless you! Does this remind you of what happened in Las Vegas by any chance? Something to distract from the border, surging crime and election audtis? Just a thought!
Not a bad observation. It’s a shame that every damn thing happening anymore becomes suspect. I don’t believe this is grandiose enough to distract though.
Could there be a better Governor?
I don’t think so. Not on this planet.
Desantis is such a competent leader how refreshing. Why can’t they all be that way? I can dream.
https://www.theshul.org/8777
https://supportsurfside.org/
?
Well so much for the Biden narrative that the Feds are ready to go but the FL Governor just wont make the call.
Also, I remember you are involved with relief and rescue efforts in the past. You all need anything down there, please let us know.
So sad … prayers
If the left side of this picture is a mirror image of the right then you can tell this building collapsed from the ground floor by floor. That pile of rubble will be very difficult to clean up layer by layer.
There is a video of the actual collapse, probably from some security camera at a distance. There may be others not yet seen.
In the video, it seems pretty clear that the initial collapse occurred from the top (or near the top) down. Another section collapsed shortly thereafter, but it appeared to collapse from the bottom.
This building “appears” to be one of those with slab floors supported by steel pillars. There are a couple of ways of building these. One of the ways is to pour the slabs at ground level, then jack them up the steel pillars to their final level, at which point they are anchored in place. The other method is to pour each slab at its intended level. Both can be very secure if done properly. Both can fail badly if done wrong, or if the anchoring to the supporting pillars fails for some reason due to overloading, corrosion, or both.
Slab floors high-rise construction is very prone to “pancake” failure if an upper floor fails. They simply are not designed to support the load of an entire floor slamming down onto a floor below. Below that, it simply gets worse.
The forensic examination of the failure will take a lot of time, and it may be a couple of years before we know for sure just what happened.
Dave… for what it’s worth, the building structure consists of 8″ thick reinforced concrete slabs supported by concrete columns. In other words, it was a standard cast in place concrete building. The slabs have standard, top and bottom rebar matts, and the columns have the requisite reinforcement. From the renovation blueprints, which you can see online, it looks like the building needed EXTENSIVE concrete upgrades, including grade beams, drop panels, soffits, extra reinforcement in many places, etc. The concrete structure was *way* underdesigned, it looks like, especially the slab-to-column connection points, and especially near the bottom, at the garage and lower floors. The building was essentially a piece of crap, cheaply built, barely meeting the structural codes. Typical Miami Beach condo structure. The owner was facing $millions in structural upgrades, and just didn’t get it done. Now there’s a lot of shattered families as a result. It’s disgusting
Good comments, the best I’ve seen anywhere. The thought occurred to wonder if this was either an act of premeditated terrorism, or a Breaking Bad meth lab explosion. From your comments, it would appear that it’s simply you gets what you pays for …
Idle curiosity the second: are the owners liable for the deaths and damage and likely to be sued into oblivion by survivors?
Kris,
Have you done reinforced concrete design?
“If the left side of this picture is a mirror image of the right” – https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2021/06/24/florida-beach-condo-buildling-collapse-investigation-underway/5333761001/ has before and after pictures. Some pictures are still photos, and some are animated gifs whose pause is 3-5 seconds between images.
Sadly I doubt there is much hope for many more found alive. This video talks to some brothers who have given DNA so their parents could be positively ID’ed.
..we keep searching,
so that we can keep rescuing.
[ someone(s) have already been found alive, and that is also meaningful… ]
Love thy neighbors
The World Trade Center was 5x taller and had a pocket where people survived.
I’m Sorry you are wrong . Perhaps one or two nearby , at surface , rightaway afterward . But the hospitals were geared up for injured recovered dugout survivors and they were waiting for more of the missing 3000 to be found , But remained quiet and empty , the digging went night and day and no survivors found in rubble , still like 1000 missing and never found , not even DNA . Sad story , asked acquaintance to bring in missing daughter’s toothbrush . Never found , very sad .
I hope in this situation a hurricane doesn’t come through any time soon. This building is smaller so hopefully there will be a better chance to find remains and DNA, but yeah, I remember on 911 all the hospitals and everyone waiting around for the injured to arrive at the hospital, and there were no injured, no bodies, no nothing for the EMS. I remember all the fireman alarms going off in the rubble and there being no firemen. One day in a McDonald’s I heard that same sound, it was an odd experience.
There were some miraculous survivors at the WTC who were found in pockets. Maybe less than a dozen, but it did occur.
like 20 or so , most were rescue workers who had been working below in concourse and tunnels , not in Towers , all within 24 hours .
That young reporter was quite something, I hope he will be able to remain pure and keep the same integrity in his job in his future of being in the media.
A sad, painful, moving story.
My condolences to the families of the deceased. Miami, we hope and pray with you, that the unaccounted for, are found alive. Rescue workers, the area is still dangerous, stay safe and focused, your families want you home safe and sound, after work.
Horrific. Sad.
Condolences to everyone affected.
I worked for a few for a large professional construction management company.
Building codes change. Conventions change. Then, add in “value engineers” who look for ways to cut costs after the architects go wild with creativity.
San Francisco currently has a sinking high rise newly built to “modern” standards. Not tied into bedrock. (Joe Montana used to live there.) Just like the $8 Billion new HALF a Bay Bridge with ‘microfracturing’ and leaky components. (Thank you, Demicrats Jerry and Willie Brown.) Oh yeah, and Chinese steel.
Expect major CYA and legal litigation for years.
The state and cities need to be identifying who built that building and flagging all other buildings built by the same groups for inspection.
If there was work being done, those companies and workers need to be queried about what was done.
We are not going to truly know and be able to address what caused this until they fully examine this mess, which needs to take a backseat to rescue efforts. We can do multiple things. And some things need to be done for safety purposes as soon as possible.
Everything made in China is of such poor quality that we always search for an alternative before buying anything made there. The operative words on Chinese manufacturing are “cheap Chinese stuff”. People need to learn that we get what we pay for. I believe that typically a US made product will outlast and/or outperform a Chinese knockoff buy about a factor of 1.5. In other words, if I pay 1.5 times as much for the product as I would pay for the Chinese version, I will probably save money buying the USA product. I have been at this for about 15 years and this is my best guess as to the actual average value of most USA goods by comparison with those made in China. They are gaining on us for the simple reason that so many US manufacturers have been sold to Chinese interests who like to own American brand names. Imagine that.
The Chinese can build quality.
It’s the corporate buyers and importers here who demand stuff be made cheap.
I know there are as an example , 10 different grades of auto bearings varying in degree of cost and quality.
Guess what we get ?
You think the Chinese would send out a nuke sub with a sub par bearing.
Something goes wrong and somebody gets a bullet to the head with said cost of bullet and funeral charged to the family.
They send rockets to space , you think any of that hardware is suspect ?
That said there are bad apples in China who will send you a container of good quality, you let your guard down and the next shipment is shoddy, they have cheapend the product to get more profit.
Sadly we are an ocean away with no way to sue or prosecute the bad guys.
Only thing you can do is research what you need to buy first along with any comments and vote with your wallet.
Some friends designed some surf kayaks and decided to have them made in China. The boats finally arrived but failed upon their first encounter with the waves. They broke almost immediately.
My friends wanted good quality but did not receive it.
I had a heavy industry shop for about 40 years and back in the 90’s was when I started hearing from customers both large and small that ‘we can get it sourced cheaper in China and shipped here’. I pretty much bankrupted myself keeping to what I believed was quality U.S. sourced raw materials like steel, aluminum, stainless, bronze, etc, for the assemblies I manufactured and repairs performed. Covid put the final nail in the coffin.
Good on those who were able to cater to wealthy customers willing to spend extra for U.S sourced materials and/or from the winds of political change shifting more to MAGA. Also, in business, people lie. A lot. Hence it’s called a narrative now. Sounds better. And people don’t apologize for mistakes (doozie it appears with this building), they double down or exclaim ‘my bad’. No personal accountability anymore. America.
I noted a Penthouse unit, PHA at 8777, appearing to be at the listed address of the collapse, sold about a month ago for 2.8 million dollars and was advertised as a great deal, for sale for a third of what a similar type unit in the area sells for. Oh, well. Rest in peace.
Perot, San Francisco highrises *do not* rest on bedrock. The pilings are “friction piles” only. They are not typically socketed into bedrock, which is very deep in that location. The Millenium Tower you mention is no different than any of the other San Francisco towers. In other words, it wasn’t built to “shady” standards. It is sinking due to other reasons
Prayers for the families.
??
Oh Lord empower your malakim on site now and send more of your heavenly host to hold foundations, floors, joists and columns. You are Y_w_h Tseboath, in you will we trust.
Please Dear God, help all those affected by this and look after everyone helping.
Amen.
AMEN
I haven’t been riveted to my TV, how many have been rescued and how long ago was the last rescue?
It is good that the accounted for number has increased, and even good that they are learning more about who may be missing. But I want to see the rescued numbers increasing too.
How will this affect all of the other high rise buildings in Miami?
For sure, I would not want to be in one of them at this point.
Old building that was built with maximum profit in mind instead of maximum safety and stability. IDK what technology existed 40 years ago to analyze and ensure that whatever reclaimed land was created was over top of sufficiently compacted, supportive, and stable substrate. And it seems from early reporting that warning signs of uneven structural movement/ settling may have been present for at least the past 25+ years.
Hopefully every other building in the reclaimed former swamp area is now getting a structural “anal” exam to assess its integrity. Residents in all of them should be demanding it.
For those wanting more play by play on what is happening at Champlain Towers South, CFP Posted a link to this guy yesterday and he has done a great job.
He has EMS feed in background and the comments section is very fluid.
Agenda-Free TV
“159 people are now missing in the Surfside building collapse near Miami, Florida. Get the latest on the Surfside building collapse in our LIVE BREAKING NEWS COVERAGE.
The condo building, Champlain Towers South on Collins Ave, partially collapsed at around 1:30am Thursday. Search & rescue operations at the collapsed building are ongoing. In this interactive live stream, host Steve Lookner brings you the latest updates on the Surfside building collapse near Miami, Florida, and he’ll also read your comments and questions on the air!”
and local WSVN showing has occasionally been showing a live shot of workers on the pile.
and another with some good live heli shots. but… es en espanol 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJbijjA_MKk
and local 10 has some good shots and is live…
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2021/06/25/nearly-24-hours-after-building-collapse-surfside-community-fears-the-worst/
from The Sun YT
Live: Aerials of rescuers searching through collapsed Florida tower
My educated guess is that it was from the corrosion of the steel within the concrete structure. Its the vary same issue we have with all steel reinforced concrete. Which is even now, used as the primary approach in construction.
Was doing some work beachside in a similar 15+ story tower. The parking garage was closed as they were dealing with point loading and rebar corrosion issues in the base of the columns. Heavy work. Nice place but in my opinion some of these old structures have a get the hell out of alive by date.
Sundance: are you there on site as a SERT volunteer? or are you in touch with those who are?
Blessings of Safety and Good Health to all the rescuers and SERT volunteers.
I have no idea if this is true…but who knows
Why. would he tell them where to go? Sounds more like fake news.
Take out a building for a few hard drives? That is like using a 2000 lb. bomb to take out a fire ant nest.
Where they hidden in the walls or something? Even so, metal detectors could find them.
Yeah, it’s silly to think that way for sure!
“Former FBI special agent warns against conspiracy theories a week after Nashville bombing”
https://www.wkrn.com/news/nashville-bombing/former-fbi-special-agent-warns-against-conspiracy-theories-a-week-after-nashville-bombing/amp/
There is security video of the ‘explosion’ which shows what appears to be an incoming / downward streak of flame immediately prior to the explosion, which took out a sensitive underground data center.
Winner winner….chicken dinner 🙂
McAfee wouldn’t give them the address for his deadman switch, no.
But sadly, I no longer put anything past the powers that be, so yes I do believe they’d demolish a building and kill hundreds if they knew those servers were there. There is no way the servers would survive that catastrophic collapse. Mission accomplished.
If it is true, that’s pretty nefarious. Who can tell? People have low opinion on statists.
Is this true?
Princess Kracken Warrior…..Defender of freedom twitter account
@Jennife97778685
Jun 24
Interestingly enough, Pat McAfee had an office [file storage] in that condo that got leveled today in Florida.
That is John’s son if you didn’t know…
And yes I said leveled because that was most definitely demolition
video looked like controlled demolition
These low-cost condos were built up and down the South Florida coast during the period 1960 to 1990 targeting senior citizens. The cost was kept low and targeted the retired letter carrier income level. Basically, a small government pension and Social Security. Anybody who goes to bed at night in 40-50 year old beachfront condo along the Florida coast is playing Russian Roulette with their own life! The balconies on these buildings are collapsing all the time because the steel rebar in the concrete rusts away.
This bldg survived scores of hurricanes including Cat 5 Andrew.
True to a point. Andrew was small and hit South Dade and Homestead. This is closer to Broward on the North side so it was spared the strong wind. The big difference is wind for a few hours verses rusted rebar and crumbling concrete!
EXCLUSIVE – Engineer who surveyed Champlain Towers for six months wasn’t asked to look at its foundations, condo board lawyer reveals – as first survivor files a $5million lawsuit over building collapse
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9726647/Engineer-surveyed-Champlain-Towers-wasnt-asked-check-foundations.html
Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University, detected that the ground beneath Champlain Towers was sinking at 2mm per year last year.
He was surveying other land nearby and coastal flooding.
He said he wasn’t surprised when he heard about it on Thursday, and that his team had detected it.
Wdowinski said he found that Champlain Towers South was sinking at a rate of around 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s due to its position on wetlands but that rate could have slowed down or sped up since then.
However, the land’s slow sinking alone would not have caused the building to collapse, he said.
controlled demolition
it’s not the “slow sinking alone” that’s cause for concern
it’s whether there was DIFFERENTIAL sinking across the building’s footprint that could have caused shear failure in the structure
or whether there was ABRUPT sinking, like from sinkhole collapse, that resulted in downward momentum in the building that caused any one floor to collapse, thereby taking other floors with it by momentum in a pancake collapse
FIU would understand collapsing structures:
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/new-video-released-by-florida-international-university-shows-miami-bridge-moments-before-collapse-1299893316001
Now add in significant spalling of concrete structural members
Who are they going to sue? The engineer didn’t build the condo with cheap material. Anybody who buys a 40 year old crumbling condo a few yards from the Atlantic Ocean with a hurricane bullseye on the roof is insane!
Can anyone verify a tweet from John McAfee( now dead by ” suicide” ) saying he had 31 TB of files on hard drives located at 8777 Collins Avenue South- Tweet was posted on June 8 2021.. with the caveat ” If anything happens to me”… I can’t do it myself because twitter censors banned me when I posted a story with pictures from Hunter Biden’s laptop from a link of the Daily Mail.. Thank you.
Wrong thread.
No, no one can.
We can, however, use critical thinking to ask questions.
IF, McCafee had a deadman’s switch, would he publicize the location of the cache (which would allow for its immediate seizure and removal of said cache immediately following the supposed Tweet)?
If you think anyone would publicize the location of a deadman’s cache of materials…then why would anyone who was looking to intercept those materials wait two weeks and then demolish a building to secure the destruction the cache.
Why not just seize the materials on June 9?
Seems simpler.
here’s another view
from this angle we can see a large gap into the sub-ground parking space where the deck has collapsed over by the corner of the pool
‘We Need a Definitive Explanation’ on Surfside Building Collapse: Florida Governor
Yep, the Atlantic Ocean is right there.
Engineer Warned Of ‘Major Structural Damage’ Before Miami Condo Tower Collapsed
https://www.townofsurfsidefl.gov/docs/default-source/default-document-library/town-clerk-documents/champlain-towers-south-public-records/8777-collins-ave—structural-field-survey-report.pdf
Study Reveals Miami Condo Had Been Sinking
Wdowinski’s study, titled “Local land subsidence in Miami Beach (FL) and Norfolk (VA) and its contribution to flooding hazard in coastal communities along the U.S. Atlantic coast” was co-authored by Simone Fiaschi and published on ScienceDirect, revealed the Champlain Towers South condo complex “had some kind of unusual movement” and was sinking 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s.
https://faculty.fiu.edu/~swdowins/publications/Fiaschi-Wdowinski-OCM-2020.pdf
thx Winston
read thru the first one, looked like fairly typical concrete spall issues to balconies and such
later pages showed spalling problems in the underground parking and main support columns
not sure why the report left that for last, as the column spalling is potentially of structural stability importance (“all fall dosn”)
but the balcony issues are what all the occupants see with their own eyes, so unsurprising the report covered that for 7 pages before getting to the columns
note – those mostly-superfical spall issues are on a building’s regular maintenance schedule, coming up every 5-7 years or so.
I was on a condo Board of Directors and we performed a scheduled spall repair project and the same was in the planning budget that looks out 20 years or so
that’s (“all fall doWn”) in my first comment
Let us learn from this tragedy and take actions.
Nuclear reactors on fault lines and high rises built on sandy wetlands???
We are smarter than this!!!
Let’s fix what we can before we have more horrors.
Miami waterfront is sky-high condo’s right to the edge of the water-everywhere.
I wonder if any of the same engineers, contractors, sub contractors, building inspectors were the same:
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/new-video-released-by-florida-international-university-shows-miami-bridge-moments-before-collapse-1299893316001
Incredible tragedy. Prayers for the victims and families. Just unthinkable.
There is something that no one in the media has mentioned yet, which I find even more troubling.
Go to your favorite map app, select the satellite view and in the search type 8777 Collins Avenue, Surfside, FL. That is the building that came down.
Now go in the search and type 8977 Collins Avenue, Surfside, FL. Three buildings to the North THERE IS A SISTER BUILDING. IDENTICAL!
The Surfside Mayor should be calling for an immediate evacuation of that sister building.
I’m not sure whether sinking sand or a controlled demolition is to blame. One thing I am convinced of is that the Deep State Operatives care nothing for human life and personal property.
I hate to be so suspicious when these tragedies occur but I have seen too many “coincidences” to trust the popular “wisdom” advising on these events.
Found in the bin…. 🙁
So sad. Came across this information also:
https://apnews.com/article/paraguay-miami-building-collapse-first-lady-relatives-92d3d5967e968ad7f6a1ce6d9f605cb9
The First Lady of Paraguay had a sister and her sister’s family in this building that went down
Having formerly lived on the top (16th) floor of a high rise apartment building I can only wonder at the issues involved in determining whether an older building is still safe for occupancy.
My condolences to the families.
“The federal government agency responsible for leading investigations into building failures is sending a group of scientists and engineers to collect information on the Miami-area building collapse to determine whether a larger probe into potential structural failures is needed. “
thehill.com/homenews/administration/560311-federal-government-sending-scientists-to-investigate-miami-area
How long before a “whistleblower” comes forward to claim that DeSantis curtailed inspections in exchange for campaign money or who-knows-what?
Saw a video, can’t find it now, of a middle aged guy in a nearby high-rise condo complaining that he had relatives missing and no one was going through the rubble looking for survivors and blaming DeSantis.
I wondered, why he himself wasn’t down at the site of the collapse volunteering to look for his missing relatives himself.
Isn’t that what most people would do, rush to help?
If he were on a sinking boat he would be complaining no one is fixing the hole in the bottom, instead of fixing the hole himself.
The left truly thinks differently.
I have recently been reminded about the shock explosion test of the Gerald Ford ship off the coast of Florida causing a 3.9 magnitude (earthquake- I don’t know the corret term for this). This was 2 days prior to the collapse of this building. It seems reasonable that this COULD have been a contributing factor. I say could as opposed to was.