Not necessarily. She could’ve walked down the hall.
And she said she heard banging (construction like noises) which doesn’t necessarily mean pieces falling. It could’ve been the noises and movements of the concrete, precollapse. So the pool deck/parking garage still could’ve been the first collapse.
That’s true.
Well, both describe the building shaking before the deck collapses and the construction noises were described as very loud and something falling although the sounds were associated with the level above. So I think the building itself was in serious distress before the deck collapsed and we do have pictures of what looks like debris from the view of the garage entrance.
I would suggest that a shaking building requires something serious going on for that to happen.
No doubt. Whether the deck was the first to fail or some other part, it’s pretty clear that the irreversible process had started.
However, the exact order of events is going to be important in determining the exact cause and what should be done to prevent future collapses. Unfortunately, for us, eyewitness recollections are notoriously unreliable. Did these people actually see the pool deck collapse or did they just notice it and infer that it had just collapsed?
per the link above she said she was in the lobby when she heard a metallic boom and then saw the cars upended. She then went back to her condo (111) and ran down the street with the kids.
The search is almost over
.https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/07/15/surfside-condo-collapse-victims-recovered/
Thanks for posting that. There was a discrepancy in the numbers throughout the reporting and this puts to rest the thought of anyone unaccounted for.
I thought I saw a picture of an empty basement on the news but I can’t find any images when I search. I was hoping to see an update on what happened to the columns.
A judge recently approved the sale of the land where the tower was. The proceeds will go to the families affected by the collapse.
I hope they build a memorial park; but I did see a report that said that it was sold to a developer; so maybe just some housing will be built
That’s … amazing. 3 years for the owners association to work out fixing the building, but less than a month to sell it.
the Federal Government paid to haul off the old building. It’s a clean slate.
That actually makes sense. It’s always so much easier to avoid the problem than to solve it.
I wouldn’t be able to answer that question. But one thing I’ve noticed in accounts of such disasters–a recurring theme is that the architect specifies a certain grade of steel, or a certain thickness of support beam, or something along those lines; but the builder decides to substitute something that’s cheaper. Thus the building is flawed from the very beginning.
Here is another Building Integrity video showing why they may have had so much trouble keeping water out of the basement. He describes how the change in water table level and create voids under the garage floor. he also talks about how irregular sink rates among the pilings can put stress on the building.
And the thing I found most interesting is a term he used to describe some of the rebar used. He called it punch-through rebar. Here’s a video describing that kind of rebar and how it’s used to replace down stamping, column capitals or drop down panels. You don’t see any of these used under the pool deck. And to the untrained eye it just looks like regular rebar on the columns that remain standing. I think I mentioned this early on but there doesn’t seem to be anything spreading the load onto the column. It just looks like the only thing holding it up is a small area of concrete adhesion between the deck and column with a little bit of rebar. When that bond breaks it punches through pulling the rebar out. The deck drops down largely intact.
The options are sell the land or rebuild. Very doubtful that anyone who lived there (or their heirs) would want to rebuild. Certainly the majority would want to liquidate the condominium’s assets, distribute them, and terminate the condominium. They (or their estates) still have mortgages to pay.
My guess is that the new building is going to be a lot fancier with much more expensive condos. I think the condos there were selling for $500,000 to about a million or so. Meanwhile, just over the border in Miami Beach is Eighty Seven Park, a much more expensive condo designed by starchitect Renzo Piano. Even with the insurance money, the residents of this building aren’t going to be able to afford the replacement apartments.
To be clear, I doubt that the owners or even the owners association were asked about the sale: that’s why it had to be approved by a judge. It was railroaded through – by the insurance company, by the government at some level, or by the developer. Probably by all three, and not necessarily that the three parties were actually independent.
I was told last night that 911 has released audio, and had 24 calls from inside the building before it collapsed. I doubt that’s true – surely it’s 24 calls from outside the building?
But apparently it took a while to start to collapse (see post 455).
I wonder whether some of the people who called from inside were unable to run out – either due to their physical condition (or to the condition of someone who they couldn’t move and didn’t want to leave) or because they started to leave and found the stairs or the way to them already impassable.
I suppose some might also not have realized the noise and shaking were due to the building starting to fall, but might have thought there’d been an explosion somewhere near by; depending on the possible causes of such an explosion, staying put might have been safer than running out into an unknown situation. They might have called 911 partly in the hope of finding out whether to run and if so in which direction.
Do the calls show what 911 told them? I don’t suppose the 911 people knew at first what was happening, either.
An executive for Live Nation is one of the identified victims. She was visiting her parents.
Hackers are stealing the identities of the dead. 
Nitpick; what that and other articles I found say is that a judge ruled that the land should be sold. I’ve found nothing that says it has been sold.
You’re hoping some of those calls were from outside, right?
It might have been that many from inside. I haven’t heard the audio from all of them, but some of them were definitely from inside. I remember one in particular where the 911 operator asked the lady if she could get out of her apartment and the caller said no, the hallway and stairs were gone. I hope she was one of the people taken off balconies by the fire department that night.
I’m positive that 911 didn’t know what was going on, because the first responders didn’t realize they were dealing with a building collapse until they actually arrived. One of them said they had been told there was a problem with a stairway (hmm… wonder if that’s connected to the call I mentioned) only to find out that yes, there was a problem with a stairway and 2/3 of the building being gone.
There may also be the problem that quite a few residents and people on the condo board died that night. There might be legal issues with even being able to assemble a quorum to vote on issues like sales which required the intervention of a judge. Otherwise it could be years sorting out the legal issues in approving anything to do with the property.