I bet you are right.
The Youtube cxomments (yes,I know!) said that condo was owned by the woman than ran out and survived when her wall cracked.
I hope the inspections go far and wide and bear fruit. I’m really surprised that faulty construction of this magnitude passed initial inspection.
The people in the sister building have got to be nervous about the design. I was expecting continuous horizontal support beams under the building and I didn’t see them in the video. If the debris we see (in the video looking down the garage entrance) fell straight down it’s in a section with less support. It’s hard to make out the layout because the video is constantly moving but It almost looks like the building is divided in 3rds with the outer sections more robust.
WaPo article says the master insurance policy is for $48 million and the land is estimated to be worth $100-$130 million. Hopefully the insurance settles quickly and the funds disbursed so the owners get some of their money sooner rather than later. Money from the land won’t be available until the property is sold (possibly to the government to turn the site into a memorial park).
will the insurance company have to pay if the owners neglected the building?
She should be able to establish a timeline. Did the building start to crumble followed by the pool deck collapse? If that’s the case it’s not the faulty deck.
Could she see the pool deck at the same time as she saw the wall crack? Even if so, was she paying attention to the condition of the pool deck as she saw the wall crack and got ready to run for her life?
Maybe she does know; but I wouldn’t count on it.
– we do have testimony, from the woman who was on the phone, that something visible happened to the pool before the building actually fell; but I think she said the building was shaking before she said the pool had sunk. Of course, the pool may have also shaken before it collapsed.
Even if they could demonstrate in court that neglect was a proximate cause of the collapse I would think that the bad publicity they would get from denying the claim (this being a highly visible case) would outweigh the financial benefit. Plus if there was contributory negligence on the part of the city or any of the engineering firms involved they could sue them to recoup some of the payout.
the various eyewitnesses are also earwitnesses. I would expect the site of the wall cracking corresponds to sounds from within the building and outside the building. the same goes for the witnesses who video recorded the entrance to the garage from next door. What was the order of sight and sound and was that picked up in the video. Depending on how far down the frequency the camera mic goes there should be a low frequency timeline to back up what people heard and saw. The same goes for any security cameras in the area recording sound. They don’t have to be in view of the building to supply audio evidence.
I expect they can get a good deal of information from any recordings that were going at the time and that survived. But I rather doubt that if I were running out of a building that was literally falling down around me that I’d be able to remember accurately later exactly which noise I heard before which other noise; let alone be able to identify a particular noise as having been, or not been, from the pool deck.
I’m not saying that any such testimony from somebody who thinks they can do that should be ignored. But I wouldn’t come to any definite conclusions from it unless it’s backed up by something else.
I do think we have convincing testimony (from the woman who was on the phone) that something happened to the pool area before the building actually fell; though of course something might have been happening elsewhere that affected both the pool and the building, and it might just have been that the pool gave way first.
I think we’ll get more information after the engineers have been able to access and then analyze everything; which I expect will take some time.
Do we know which unit the person on the phone was in? Was she in the section that collapsed first, or the part that collapsed about ten seconds later?
from this article:
Cassie Straton was speaking to her husband, Michael, from their balcony on the south side of the Champlain Towers when she noticed the building started shaking in the early hours of Thursday, her older sister Ashely Dean said.
“Suddenly she says, ‘honey, the pool is caving in. The pool is sinking to the ground,’” Dean said, according to Sky News.
here is an article with pictures of her. She was on the 4th floor and one of the pictures shows a corner unit facing the ocean so that would make it the last section to fall.
Here is a Google Earth rendering at an angle that would show the 4th floor corner unit. Her view would have been blocked from seeing the first section collapse.
You can zoom in and out with + - and rotate by holding the shift key and one of the 4 arrows.
Here’s a view on the North side showing the garage entrance. You can see the ocean side of the building is 1 story taller. You can also see the elevator tower.
Good point; I hadn’t thought of that.
– edited out the rest of post, having just seen @Magiver’s post.
I’m not. There’s a lot of bad construction out there.
Also, I suspect it wasn’t just the initial construction, I think there may have been a lot of deferred maintenance over the decades, with perhaps too much emphasis on cosmetics and not enough on the bones of the building. Because fancy lobbies and fresh paint are more sexy than concrete repairs.
There is currently a company specializing in inspections and analysis examining the buildings and taking samples of things like concrete. I forget which, but either Surfside or the county hired them the day after the initial collapse to inspect North Champlain. So far they haven’t found anything as bad as the South - for example, North’s garage apparently stayed a lot drier than South’s, which makes me wonder if the the waterproofing/drainage was done properly at that building - but they continue to look.
It depends in part on how successful the lawyers are at suing everyone in sight.
Yes. Cassondra Stratton lived in 412 and was on the balcony, on the phone with her husband, when the building fell. The x12 units were in the part of the building that stayed up briefly (I think it was 5-8 seconds) after the first bits collapsed, then fell down/pancaked.
Depends on how far her balcony extended out and how far she was out on it. She might have. That might have been what prompted her scream. Or maybe she screamed when her section started to fall.
Regarding the inspection, one thing that’s been suggested is that the rebar in the swimming pool and parking decks weren’t as specified in the construction drawings. Is that something that should have been picked up on inspection? In other words, does the crew set up the rebar and then wait for a city inspector before pouring the concrete? (Although I think it’s possible to x-ray the finished concrete to see where and how much rebar there is.)
Today I heard on the news (listening to it while at work so I couldn’t listen with my complete attention) that the company inspecting North Champlain Towers is using radar (presumably, ground-penetrating) to inspect the concrete and rebar of their pool deck without getting destructive.
This is a story in the New York Times about the current investigations.. Sorry, it’s paywalled although I think you’re still supposed to be able to get a few free articles a month from them.
There’s a bunch more out there.
After taking a closer look at the building it looks like her condo goes farther back than I thought. What I thought was a stairwell was a kitchen bump-out. Floor plan. She would have seen her condo sheered off from the beginning then a slight pause as the building leaned over. At that point there is nothing anyone can do but stare in stunned horror and disbelief.
I assume that 11 on that floor plan does not correspond to unit 611, which is the two-bedroom unit with a YouTube video linked to upthread? Because 11 on the floor plan seems to show a one-bedroom unit and unit 611 is a two-bed, two-bath unit.