Nearly five years after the disaster at the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, federal investigators on Monday released their technical findings on what caused the collapse of the building that killed 98 people.
In an hour and seventeen-minute video released Monday, the lead investigators from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Construction Safety Team explained how it began in early June, just weeks before the collapse on June 24, 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed.
“When building structures are designed and built to required codes and standards, they have margins against failure, meaning they should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” co-lead investigator Judith Mitrani-Reiser said.
“In the case of Champlain Towers South, however, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”
Cracks grew, and loads were redistributed in the pool deck over the next few weeks, transferring their load to other structural elements that were not strong enough to support them due to the original design and construction of the building, investigators said.
That ultimately led to the larger collapse at approximately 1 a.m. on June 24.
According to the report, the southern pool deck edge became unseated from a supporting wall, causing a slab to sag and break away from the middle tower face. The slab break damaged two supporting connections.
“When the connections between the pool deck slab and these two columns in the garage below failed, it increased the loads on neighboring connections, eventually causing them to fail as well,” Mitrani-Reiser said.
The report also makes clear what did not cause the collapse. All things that have been alleged — vibrations from nearby construction, foundation failure, sinkholes, and storm surge effects — have been ruled out as playing a part in the collapse.
“Throughout this investigation, we have kept top of mind those who were most directly impacted by the collapse of Champlain Towers South,” co-lead investigator Glenn Bell said. “We appreciate everyone who has helped with this work, including the survivors and the families of those who were lost. With their invaluable input, this effort will help make other buildings safer and help prevent tragedies like this from happening again.
Among the 98 killed were the husband and 5-year-old son of Raquel Oliveira. She was out of town when the tower collapsed.
“It’s extremely disturbing, specifically the fact that it started cracking three weeks prior to the collapse,” Oliveira said after learning about the report’s findings.
According to federal engineers, the report does not provide new answers about why the building collapsed, but it does offer a more detailed timeline of events leading up to the disaster.
Oliveira said she was shocked to learn the building had been showing signs of failure for weeks before June 24, 2021.
“It’s very shocking to me, especially because we’ve had so many visitors those three previous weeks,” she said. “I had a birthday party for my son with four kids. We had Father’s Day with a lot of families with us. And it’s very disturbing the fact that we were there.”
As another anniversary of the collapse approaches, Oliveira says the grief remains.
“The pain is the same, but I think that we learn how to live with it,” she said. “I think that we grow bigger than the pain year after year. The pain is still the same.”
