I remember reading about the digging through of WTC after 9/11 and how all work stopped for a few minutes whenever remains were found until they were removed from the site, some of the workers even taking off their hard hats. This went on for as long as the job lasted.
Israel has regular incidents of terrorist bombings in crowds, so these experts are skilled at identifying small pieces of human remains. That’s something that is likely to be needed in this situation, and I doubt that the local police department has people with experience in this.
So those Israeli experts may be especially useful.
… 
Insurance scam. “Look, you just pull out this small block at the bottom…”
I think the media is being pretty unfair and alarmist in their reporting here. Like @Ann_Hedonia when I review the engineering report I see nothing that would raise my hackles. Most of that $15M appears to be rolled up into cosmetic issues. The largest line item is for balcony repairs, which are not structural.
And to @Broomstick I disagree, I’d say that building was downright ugly. There were lots and lots of exterior issues that were left unaddressed in both the report and the various photos. This doesn’t appear to be a lipstick on a pig kind of situation, they were probably generally a very fiscally conservative board who prioritized low dues, and a subsequently low reserve, and deferred every non-essential repair. Not a good policy of course, but also not indicative of a impending collapse.
I also don’t think you can blame the association for dragging their feet on addressing this report. The report was filed 2 years ago, but things like this take a lot of time to sort out. Associations are manned by owners who have day jobs and who generally meet just 4 times a year. For a report this large in scope and of this variety of issues, you’d certainly expect them to get 3-5 bids for repair and have several open discussions with the owners. All that takes a long time. They have to meet to review the report, they have to discuss the findings with the association, they have to get the bids, they have to meet to review the bids, they have to meet to present the proposals to the association, they have to meet to discuss how to pay for it, they have to present the financing options to the association, they have to give people time to decide how to pay for it, they probably need to get second opinions on everything and review everything with laywer, etc. It was reported that the deadline for owners to decide how they were going to pay for the special assessment was just a couple days after the collapse. To be honest, having been on a HOA board for a while now, this sounds like a board that was moving forward at a perfectly reasonable pace for such a massive project.
One thing that feels like it might be getting taken out of context here is the report of the issues around the pool area. As is obvious from the many pictures, the pool area is not under any structure. The “major structural issues” repeatedly cited are not indicated for the building itself. Verbatim from the report:
The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.
This commentary is specifically indicated for the “Pool Deck & Entrance Drive as well as all the planter [areas]”. So what the report is saying is that the concrete slab supporting the entrance and pool has deteriorated due to the standing water. Not that the the building supports were indicated as being problematic.
In the next paragraph it talks about issues with the concrete in the parking garage levels underneath the pool and entrance areas. It indicates that it will repair all concrete issues in the parking garage but only specifies that the significant issues were under the pool, not the building itself.
Now, certainly the collapse of the deck supporting the pool and planters could have triggered a chain reaction that brought down the building, but the report seems to pretty clearly imply that this is a pool issue and not a overall building integrity issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if the association’s discussions were in the context of this being a pool/patio issue and prioritized it accordingly. I think the way this report is being quoted out of context here and in the media are unfairly pointing the finger at the association.
As many other people upthread suggested at the outset, this is probably a cascading set of failures. Perhaps the poor waterproofing and lack of attention to the pool area allowed the event was the initial trigger, but I would not expect that to cause the rest of the structure to come down it it were sound. And I wouldn’t expect that standing water on the pool deck would have somehow caused the deterioration of the building supports in other areas, it’s possible that those areas had their own issues introduced by climate, materials or design and those issues were never reported or known.
I don’t know where you live, but where I am (Chicago area) every time the TV news has mentioned “foreign teams” they have mentioned both nations, Mexico and Israel.
I’ve been able to watch some of the news at work the last couple days and the national level news has also mentioned Mexico sending help as well as Israel.
If your local outlets are not doing this then by all means take it up with them.
The teams are already trained. The residents of the building have ties to both Israel and Mexico. It’s a gesture of goodwill from both nations.
As for Israel giving aid - they’ve been doing that for years, often with little recognition. Both countries, Mexico and Israel, sent help to the WTC site after 9/11. Israel has sent help after the big Haiti earthquake, and to China after earthquakes there, with very little fanfare.
The Mexican group started with an earthquake back in the 1980’s and has special expertise with searching collapsed buildings. They’ve given assistance not only in the Western Hemisphere after earthquakes but also after the Boxing Day Tsunami in Indonesia, Italy, and also in Haiti.
This is what these groups do - they travel anywhere in the world where they can help.
This article mentions both groups and highlights the experience and background both groups bring to this project.
I’m going to spoiler this because it’s pretty gruesome and not everyone would want to read it.
From the way they’re speaking of the recovery efforts and also because they’ve asked relatives for DNA samples I’m assuming that in most cases they’re not recovering intact bodies but rather parts of bodies. Maybe very small parts of bodies, parts of parts if you will. Imagine driving a semi-truck over a hotdog and you’ll get an idea of what the results might be. Parts caught in “voids” might be recognizable. Other bits probably range from ground meat to splatter. With that in mind, the people recovering these bits probably can’t answer your questions, and may not be able to until the DNA tests come back. Given that they dug a trench to a fair depth they’ve probably recovered parts from several floors. However, given that not all of the building fell at once, there may have bee some mixing and shifting in the pile before the dust settled. In some areas it would be possible to distinguish discrete floors, in others not so much. You could also have body parts from, say, someone on the 6th floor mixed in with the debris from other floor as falling parts of building punched through other fallen parts of building, carrying stuff with it. Given that these folks with international experience in this sort of work are describing the rubble pile as “horrible” I expect there’s been some churning, mixing, and reduction of human beings into bloodstains on concrete.
Not known to the public at this time. Inspectors were supposed to be going over that other building starting yesterday.
Apparently the subsidence in the 1990’s was not under the other building so presumably it lacks that factor (but more information might change that)
A lot depends on the that building’s condo board’s approach to maintenance and repairs. If they used different contractors, if those contractors did a better job, if problems were attended to more quickly, if the waterproofing for the “pool deck” was installed with a proper slope instead of flat… there are a lot of factors to look at. That other building may or may not be sound, we won’t know until some thorough inspections are done.
Really? Because if a balcony falls down it’s going to be a problem. Granted, it’s not the same as the whole building collapsing but if a building needs all its balconies worked on or replaced I’m going to wonder about the rest of the structure.
I was basing that on reading the 2018 report which indicated that epoxy repairs to the concrete had not been done properly, which struck me as patching the appearance without really addressing the underlying problems. Cracks radiating from prior repairs would also seem to indicate that repairs addressed symptoms and not root causes. But hey, I’m not a structural engineer, I might be wrong on that and if I am I can handle being corrected.
While I get why that building management structure exists, clearly it’s not ideal for situations where repairs need to be addressed quickly.
I can’t tell if this is a situation where the situation was downplayed, leading to less urgency, or if they problems really were so hidden that almost any inspection would miss them. In hindsight yes, the structural problems should have been addressed years ago but that doesn’t change the current reality on the ground.
The price tag is daunting, I can well understand why it took awhile to figure out how to assess the owners and get this done.
I watched this video yesterday which I found a useful discussion of water, corrosion, pool deck and planter issues related to this disaster in a non-hyped, non-sound bite manner. The man’s channel has a couple more videos on this collapse as well although I have not watched them. I don’t normally link to videos but I am making an exception here since I think a calm, reasonable discussion needs to balance out the news media trying to sell cornflakes. I don’t think some of these problems are obvious to those of the general public.
And here is me trying to embed the video:
The photos of the epoxy repairs are from the underside of the pool deck as viewed from the inside of the garage. Not exactly a high-curb appeal item. The epoxy fix was a attempt to address the highest concern structural issue, not an attempt to fix a cosmetic issue. Whether it was sufficient, done correctly or even addressing the correct issue is an engineering question, so those failures would not be on the association but on the contractor who did the work.
The video you linked is good. One of his earlier videos does a good job of explaining the epoxy issue around minute 16.
This letter from the board President to the membership seems to indicate that the board was taking the situation seriously and working to address the problems.
It’s not the kind of repair where you call some guy and he sends a crew over the next day to fix it. You have to hire people to further assess the situation and engineer a solution. Then they need to draw up the contract documents, then you need to bid out the project to multiple contractors and squeeze a million or so dollars out of the residents.
I know the press has latched onto this report as…….proof that the building wasn’t in perfect condition, or something. But I’m just not seeing these waterproofing issues as something that would bring down the building.
You’re confusing organizations, I think. The team in Miami is from one of the Israeli army’s Rescue Battalions, reserve units founded after the Scud attacks in the 1991 Gulf War, designed to help rescue civilians from collapsed buildings. My late father-in-law, a structural engineer, was the XO of one of these battalions. Basically, they’re units made up of reservists most of whom work in the construction business in civilian life, who train extensively in search and rescue. They’re very dedicated guys, and they know everything there is to know about pulling people out of rubble.
If you haven’t watch the video @Broomstick posted. I do think that this should have been enough information to know that this situation is serious. We can’t know what conversations that were had with the engineer, but the letter you posted does sound like they knew this not an optional thing.
Of course if anyone at all in the chain of responsibility had a sense that the building’s collapse could be imminent you’d be sure the building would have been condemned. So clearly this was a extreme circumstance. I also think, reading that letter, the current association was doing everything humanly possible to deal with the problem. It also hints that maybe previous boards were more negligent and without the 40-year recertification, they may have never tackled this.
The most jarring thing was the report on the building’s finances. A $770k reserve is astonishingly low for a building that large with average values that high. Add to it that they apparently had 2 special assessments in 2019 and 2020 indicates that this building had been running this building on a terrible shoestring for a long, long time. The 2018 was definitely a wakeup call.
Was it not “Breaking News” that Mexico sent People? Why is it wrong for me to point out the the Breaking News often leaves out the good that Mexico does?
And what are you talking about anyways? How is my comment or views in my comment “Political”???
Is it a political issue for the news not to report when Mexico is offing help?
And both the Democrats and the Republicans support and give money to Israel, so how can commenting about it be political?
If I made a comment asking why Canada didn’t send people to help, would that also be “political” in your view?
Seems the so called moderators on here are just trying to attack me cause it seems we all must have the same view on everything as they do. I’m trying to give the straight dope, while the moderators want it to be slanted.
Maybe the moderators are Republican and nowadays that clearly means they are racist, which in turn means anything you say good about people of color or counties which have people of color, would be Political. Is that why my comment was Political, cause it brought up that Mexico sent people days before Israel?
A word of advice: Don’t hijack a thread to argue with a moderator. It will not end well.
But to your points:
As was pointed out upthread, Mexico is being mentioned along with Israel. The lack of mention may be with your news source. Would you like to share which news source is omitting Mexico?
It’s political when you link U.S. foreign aid with Mexico’s ability to send help, which has nothing to do with the building collapse.
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I would not go for the “doing everything humanly possible” as this news report showed in a similar case with another condo in Florida:
Possibly for residents of dauphin tower this care is hard to forget. This is video of crews working to stabilize the building in downtown Sarasota back in 2010. More than 100 residents had to evacuate after engineers found a main concrete slab holding most of the building up had failed.
The video and stills showed damage that at a glance looks less impressive than in the Champlain Tower. And the engineers recommended an evacuation. A delay with the repairs that needed to be done does not mean that an evacuation should not had been made as a precaution. IMHO not everything humanly possible was done in this case.
In that case there was a visible sign that the structure was actively failing in a potentially catastrophic way. And thus the engineers advised (forced) the residents to evacuate. The city got involved. That situation was clear and steps were taken. As they note, once it was identified it took 3-4 years to correct.
In this case they didn’t have any obviously failing support structures that they saw. Lots of deterioration, but not any clear cracks or breaks. They were in the process of making repairs. It was the engineers duty to assess the safety of the building. Maybe they were negligent in not seeing the imminent risk (remember, we still don’t actually know WHY the building failed yet, just a couple guesses), and if they were it’s their failure for not taking preventative action. The association seems to have responded as you’d hope based on the provided information.
This is a complete sidebar question: why are condo towers in Florida named after the founder of Quebec?
Probably named after the lake rather than the person the lake was named for. A familiar name to most people in the northeast US (i.e., customers).
Aha! Blame Canada! add the federal government to the class action!