Surfside Building Collapse - Did the Champlain Towers South Garage Provide Warning Signs in 2020? 

Most enjoyable, more accurate, more polished, more attention to important details, everything about this is better.

@@nuladee exactly! The editing is amazing, too. I know this content is info-focused but shitty music and bad editing can make it so hard to keep watching

Some of those channels which appear to be done by engineers are not done by structural engineers.

agree!!!!

He gives us the clearest explanations.

I agree 💯

big time agree

The crime my brother is he is analyzing the failure 3 years before it happened .And from what I can see and I'm hearing which is totally as a retired Equipment Tech so a lamen it was a disaster then that was waiting to happen should have been evacted and repaired ASAP and thats 3 years ago.I mean that friken basement garage and structural foundation look frighteningly ominous .

Totally legit.

I agree , well done.

Excellent 🙏

I think you've stolen Josh's thunder from his next video. Nevertheless from Australia, that car park resembles a well lit cave!

Miami Dade County needs to hire you for building inspections.

Thank you for the good information.

I still can’t believe no one did anything about all the water damage. 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Engineering is a wonderful, professional discipline. My very first class emphasized the need to learn well so we do not kill anyone. Its engrained in me to this day. I spent a career in nuclear power and we read lots of failure analyses. You learn a great deal from these. The Challenger and Columbia space shuttle accident investigations are fantastic reads. Challenger especially since social dynamics, and the psychology of decision-making contributed greatly.

Agreed! Every evening I am glued to RU-vid soaking in this information.

Engineering fail big time, made that condo building as cheap as possible to make as much money as possible

Ya hooked!

Include the fact that new decking / tiling was done in last 10 years to the outside deck slab. IF the waterproof membrane was not replaced or patched then it is a free path for water to enter the slab and move through it along the the rebar lines. I also strongly suspect the footing steel corrosion which would cause downward punch through.

Florida's engineers got some concrete rings coming

THIS!!!!

*A simple exercise:* For _each_ 100 pounds of _horizontal_ component of wind force directed against a north wall, each of the east and west outside walls that are at right angles to it takes up 50 pounds of force. If a third interior wall is added parallel to the east and west walls then each wall will take up 33.3 pounds of force. The floors that also transmit this horizontal component of force to the outside walls prevent inward deflection of the north wall. Horizontal force transmitted by the floors that is taken up by the footings of the columns and rear wall may be ignored for this analysis. Is a third interior wall of solid concrete required? (Referred to in some discussions as a shear wall). After calculating the force that the east and west walls must accommodate it is a matter of design choice. It is likely that the minimum thickness and strength of the east and west walls already greatly exceeds the horizontal force that these must hold back. Thus, for each 50 pounds exerted horizontally, the walls as a result of their strength to function as a wall supporting the vertical downward load from weight, are already capable of sustaining a horizontal component several times that amount, which is why the contribution of the footings was ignored. A building is designed so that the entire structure remains standing. That a collapse is only partial appeals to emotions, not logic. An interior wall of solid concrete that is not connected by rebar to the adjacent part of the building is in effect an _exterior_ wall to which an abutting structure has been added that encloses it making the whole thing appear to be a single building. Pre-construction-sales enabled raising capital for a much larger structure.¹³ The reason behind this two-phase approach is _finance,_ not engineering. ¹³ For each dollar investors advance for the cost of constructing a 100-unit building these funds are sufficient to build twice as many units. The 80-unit addition that effectively costs them nothing accrues to the organizers.

So can you explain why people should build high rise building on the beach in salt air? If people are that stupid then they should not get compensated for living in a dangerous area.

@@greenlawnfarm5827 Have you traveled just along MD up to DE if you want to see high rises along the beach? It this is a chronic issue, a lot of engineers/architects were derelict in their jobs.

Please investigate whether man-made caves, aka garages, intrinsically make buildings less stable. I'd fill them all in after quadrupling the number of supporting columns.

@@greenlawnfarm5827 high rise buildings can be built safely next to the oceans and the resulting salt air. But they need to be designed well and maintained well. Storm water runoff needs to be properly controlled. Waterproofing needs to be properly designed, installed, and maintained. There are hundreds of these high rise buildings just in that city alone, and yet they rarely fail, which is indicative of their safety.

@@M1911jln Untold hundreds of those budings are possibly in as bad or worse condition but this whole time nobody has said anything st all.

That`s what Chartered Surveyors are for.

*A simple exercise:* For _each_ 100 pounds of _horizontal_ component of wind force directed against a north wall, each of the east and west outside walls that are at right angles to it takes up 50 pounds of force. If a third interior wall is added parallel to the east and west walls then each wall will take up 33.3 pounds of force. The floors that also transmit this horizontal component of force to the outside walls prevent inward deflection of the north wall. Horizontal force transmitted by the floors that is taken up by the footings of the columns and rear wall may be ignored for this analysis. Is a third interior wall of solid concrete required? (Referred to in some discussions as a shear wall). After calculating the force that the east and west walls must accommodate it is a matter of design choice. It is likely that the minimum thickness and strength of the east and west walls already greatly exceeds the horizontal force that these must hold back. Thus, for each 50 pounds exerted horizontally, the walls as a result of their strength to function as a wall supporting the vertical downward load from weight, are already capable of sustaining a horizontal component several times that amount, which is why the contribution of the footings was ignored. A building is designed so that the entire structure remains standing. That a collapse is only partial appeals to emotions, not logic. An interior wall of solid concrete that is not connected by rebar to the adjacent part of the building is in effect an _exterior_ wall to which an abutting structure has been added that encloses it making the whole thing appear to be a single building. Pre-construction-sales enabled raising capital for a much larger structure.¹³ The reason behind this two-phase approach is _finance,_ not engineering. ¹³ For each dollar investors advance for the cost of constructing a 100-unit building these funds are sufficient to build twice as many units. The 80-unit addition that effectively costs them nothing accrues to the organizers.

Yeah, years. The people ignored the signals because what they had to do was so costly they could not afford it, because before they moved in, the signals have been ignored too. So they just postponed repairs until later, later, later. And once they finally started doing them, they started with the easiest part, the roof.

Everyone who resisted the truth of the repairs necessary are guilty of murder 😡😤

That’s exactly what I was thinking. It’s almost eerie to think this person did a walk through without necessarily knowing what she was looking at. Had this video been analyzed prior to the collapse, or by those city people making the big bucks before passing it, all these deaths and possibly the disaster itself would have been avoided. It’s just SO obvious where all the damage was. Very eye-opening!

@@marcus8559 Sadly it takes many deaths for people to make progress towards safety. I'm an aircraft mechanic and that's why aviation is so safe. Its because many have died to make it that way. People don't like to spend money.

Me neither!! 😥😥

@@doiron12 That's why they call it tombstone technology. Awful.

@fake username Yep. Mechanical. Never spent much time studying concrete.

I thought that was common sense....

@@boostjunkie2320 A lot of concrete has cracks but doesn't really seem to be affected by it because it's not load-bearing. So is it common sense? No.

I think the biggest flaw is the lack of beams and puny little columns, which leads to shear punching failures. I live in a building of similar height and design in Chicago, but we have massive beams and columns everywhere holding things up.

@@oicfas4523 There is another building up the street from Chanplain towers called Mirage that is of a similar design except the columns on the lobby floor are HUGE! That building ain’t coming down unless it is demo’d.

Yeah common sense tells you a tremendous force would be required to crack concrete and it is cracking because its not being supported evenly underneath or the steel inside the concrete is rusting and swelling, the slab on the floor of the garage at the entrance has a large crack, there seems to be plenty ventilation through the garage entrance so why so much damp inside ?

There's no way this is one person or one company's fault its a catalogue of errors.

@@marklittler784 Yes.

@@marklittler784 everyone is going to be sued.

Yeah another good one is " water always ends up taking the most expensive route if you let it ! "

I'm not a mom (yet... but hopefully soon), and I am a foreign language teacher at the high school level. I too find these videos very interesting as they offer things to think about, answers to questions to seek. :) Personally, I am not sure if I could teach preschool... I taught first grade for a year, and that was enough for me. Preschool is far more difficult than so many believe. My hat is off to you! You are far more than "just a mom/preschool teacher"... all mothers are special, and as a teacher you fundamentally touch lives, in your case of the very smallest. :)

me too!

Don’t sell yourself short.❤️

Also knowledge is power! Something we all might look at now when we go stay in Hotel or a sky rise building right

If you're a teacher u are smart maybe you can go back to school and get a new career❤️

She uploaded another video showing her exploring the rest of the building and visiting a unit. I believe she was visiting friends/family and just wanted to soak up all the beauty

@@emerconghaile4902 she was looking to purchase a unit. Unit 611, I think. She films herself in the hallway, the unit, looking through the rooms and closets, all over the apartment. If she had bought it, she might not be here today. I think it was mentioned somewhere that she lives in another building in the area, and was waiting for a unit to open in this building, probably because it has better views.

@@emerconghaile4902 Do you have a link to her video? Thanks!

Read that the woman that did buy 611 got out. She heard cracking and quickly evacuated.

@@neighborhoodcatlady6094 Heard that on CBS evening news tonight, isn't that amazing she got out going down the stairwell 6 flights while the building was coming down, stated by reporter. Just a miracle.

Yeah. the whole "lets use a band-aid to fix a bullet wound" mentality is one of many reasons this species is a failure and it makes me angry.

@@killman369547 So edgy... I just can't handle the edge

I work for a company that sells outdoor lighting. Selling to condo complexes is a waste of time. Unlike a university or a corporate facility, the condo's always buy the cheapest off shore crap they can get their hands on. Lighting made with pot metal that rusts within weeks, poor paint. Questionable UL labels. All cost driven and short term thinking.

Many condo boards cannot undertake serious repairs because non-resident or broke owners will not vote for it. So they patch things up, until something breaks, and then it's an emergency.

His eyes are so seductive

I second that. As a normal person and not an engineer I can follow well and understand it good. I now can watch out in my building better

But can you call this collapse a tragic situation or is it criminal negligence? Personally I think it's the last. The Morabita report stems from 2018, that's 3! years before the collapse, and their engineer(s) called the structural state of parts of this building "alarming" and advised that action should be taken asap. From what this video shows, the building owner(s) "solutions" are mostly cosmetic patchwork to hide the damage. Injecting severely damaged concrete with obviously rusting rebars inside with polymers doesn't repair any of the damage, as at worst it's only a temporary cosmetic band-aid to make things look better and at best somewhat slows down the damage spreading and/or worsening, as the rebar keeps on rusting inside the concrete and does more and more damage underneath the patchwork. I think the conclusion must therefore be that the building owner(s) knew, at least after the Morabita report from 2018, that this building had severe structural damage and yet kept postponing proper repairs, probably to save a few dollars and/or reach the end of the certification period and then "fix" everything in one huge project so the building could be re-certified.

@@tjroelsma What has been shown in this video does not indicate that this damage would have lead to the collapse of the building. What is important is the state of the columns, they appear to be in reasonable condition. Though it does show the general state of the building was not good. The water flooding the basement must have come from below which would suggest a cavity under the building. The collapse video shows the building collapsing first from below ground level. pulling all the levels down. I think it is to early to say the owners were negligent.

@@tjroelsma agree

Worse, is several I tried to watch were laden with cheesy music. Like a soap opera.

Yes, the quality of this content is really high.

Agree with what you say there. Some content by others is full of BS and speculation by clearly unqualified individuals more focused on media 'personalities' and 'inconvenience' to spectators during emergency response operations.

"Crazy person". So you have also tried to watch the videos from "Construction Engineering & Failure Analysis"? :D That guy certainly comes across as nuts.

It's nice to hear a professional who has his information organized so he can flow through it.

Not to degrade Josh's excellent work, but he has home field advantage working in his own office, with no time crunch and with the ability to edit. A live presentation for a trial where a building collapsed and people died is different. I do agree Josh would be great at presenting facts to court.

@Sergei Torockov Even more valued advice now⌛️

I can't believe condos that are that fancy had such a crappy parking garage. We have a condo in Branson Missouri and our parking area is much better than this and it's not nearly as fancy...not even close.

Every unit I see has a ton of heavy ass stone in their units...ugh the weight was tremendous on them popsicle sticks

So true even as a teen I look at how a home is built. With homes I am never a fan of these new constructions I always preferred homes made of brick.

@@eternalsun.3400 But then living over popsicle sticks wouldn't be smart regardless of the weight of your condo design and furniture. Having an unstable underground cave aka "parking garage" at all is dangerous. I don't think cars were ever meant to share vertical space with humans.

Basanite is the future

Come up north to NY (and probably other northern states). Between the sand they use to melt ice, freezing and warming, and snow and ice melting off the cars, this garage actually seems to be in good working condition, sadly. One thing I learned in watching this video is that cracks, pooling water, or seeping water is not in itself indicative of a structural problem. It's the location, angle, and other signs that show it's more than just cosmetics.

@@jasonhaynes2952 I really think it might be just the horrible design of this building plus all those thinge that just added up.

That’s absolutely unacceptable!!! It’s all about the $$$$$$! 😭

Have you ever recommended that a building should be vacated? Or condemned? Does that ever happened? I’m sure the city has the authority to issue such an order.

That would make sense as a temporary fix (if permanent repairs were to be done later, and they were just buying time until an extensive renovation was done), however water should not be leaking at all. Obviously there was something wrong that allowed water to seep through in the first place. I can understand buying time (ex. it's a minor leak, we're going to re-do the garage in a few years anyhow), but over a longer period of time, it goes from a minor leak to a major problem. Just like a leak in a standard home roof...sometimes when it rains heavy, we get a drip in the ceiling. No biggie...we're going to get a new roof in a couple of years any how. This would normally make sense, but if you let that leak go for 5-10 years, at some point the rafters may begin to rot out! It's about the duration of time that it goes on that's concerning.

@@jasonhaynes2952 They had so many leaks that they had to put up those corrugated plastic sheets up you would of thought more people would of been complaining about water leaking on the cars. We only saw a few, but I really wonder how many there were.

For $60,000-$100,000 cars you sure don't want calcium water drips on it, ruining the paint. One woman interviewed who had an expensive car, broke her condo rental contract and moved because parking there was ruining the paint on her car. Smart person, to move.

@@jeanetteshawredden5643 , And if you can afford a car in that price class, you should not be complaining about the $100,000 special assessment to repair structural deficiencies in the $700,000 roof over your head. Too many people have totally wack spending priorities.

@@chicagonorthcoast Cement pillars aren't sexy. A new mercedes is sexy. It's as simple as that- if you don't enforce and codify things, people will always pass the buck down (especially when they will just move out in a few years anyway)

His deconstruction of the disaster has been very helpful and informative.

Except he stammers plenty.

​@@HSAC.WDTK.DTKT.LFO. Too bad there is not more of the video footage. There were many security cameras and also the collapse was a camera recording of a screen that missed first few seconds...

Could be geological as well, such as Sinkhole opened up under pillars, pillars not into bedrock to begin with, soil liquefaction under pillars.

@@jlw184 where?

Absolutely!😡

Nope. In Florida anyone can't just simply sue anyone---they must have "standing", which goes to spouses and dependents.

@@Jeph629 A lease is a contract and the lessor takes on the obligation to provide a safe premises to the lessee, right? There’s your basis for « standing » IMHO. It’s the same principle as when a landlord is sued by a tenant who was injured by falling off a wobbly stair tread. The owner/landlord can get coverage for this kind of liability in homeowners insurance. However, in such a lawsuit the defendant should be the lessor, not his or her family. If the lessor is deceased, then the suit should name his/her estate.

The video hasn't even been out long enough for you to of seen the whole thing.

Yeah that was WTC 7 , inside job no doubt.

@@inlikearefugee5194 yes... no building could be brought down by fire alone (WTC-7)... or salt water... it was clearly "space aliens!!"

Me too

Me too! Yikes, that garage ceiling...

Me too!!!

@@marisapolesky it looks like my office building- 😱

I'll second that.

I agree. I used to work in a building on the 33rd floor. I paid to park in the 6 level garage. Sure glad, I'm no longer employed there.

The heck with that -- I'm not even going _into_ a parking garage! Hahaha,

Right? We have one at work that I park in. I'm going to be looking up and down when I'm in there from now on

I live in Rochester New York, a northern state. We have severe winters, and they use salt on the roads and garages to melt the ice. You wouldn't believe the garages and bridges here...the exposed rebar, cracking concrete, spalling, etc. It really makes me question if this could happen here. Or perhaps because of our northern climate, they do more rigorous inspections and/or overbuild the structures for this reason?

Seriously

And it appears that it wasn't just seeping into the garage below, but to the north end under the building. I think if it had only been seeping beneath the planter boxes, a section of the concrete deck could have collapsed, but wouldn't have compromised the integrity of the building itself. I wonder if attempts to seal the leaks from under the planter boxes just diverted water to structural building columns and beams? In other words, is it possible that sealing leaks in the planter boxes without addressing why water was seeping though in the first place made the building structurally unsound?

You can see several leaking plumbing issues as well, and ironically the public bathrooms in the lobby were right where he points out the gutter they had diverting water. You can see all kinds of leaking pipes in the video with patches over them, which should have been replaced.

Conc more turning to sand as binder /stabilizer leached out

I can imagine a planter box with bad drainage weighing many thousands of pounds more than design expectations, plus providing a continuous seepage of contaminated water under high pressure.

I see all these collum but no beam to support them

Same here, this guy is a natural as a teacher. 😊👍

Salt water even worse.

They said it was 1 and a half feet deep in the past in the garage so not properly draining, maybe a pipe burst just before the collapse flooding the garage for some time without anyone noticing.

One things for sure besides capillary reaction water goes down not up 😂😁😀😃😅😅

One wonders if this building was burning the candle at both ends the garage entrance floor and planters poolside floor.

@@marklittler784 Correction: FLOWING Water follows gravity, Capillary Water "wicks" along following some tangible, physical item (ie Rebar) in whatever direction that conduit item goes. (Think like electricity flowing in a single wire. The electricity does not flow "through" the solid copper core of the wire, it flows along the SURFACE, the outside diameter of the wire.) Any water trapped below the garage floor slab doesn't have any place to drain to by gravity. Under pressure from the slab & building above, it becomes capillary water & will infiltrate and follow even the tiniest crack. Once that capillary water finds a rebar, it's off to the races!

Because of this coverage is everywhere the brought up some Trama for me that caught me off guard ,I had to speak to my therapist. What I found was things that happened over my life were all linked to fire and destruction or structure (9/11). I worked in security as my former self and the maintenance guy was just a jerk. He never really did anything either and the building had problems. So seeing this unfold triggered this Trama I had not addressed yet. Now watching your videos it really opens my mind to knowing somewhat of a root cause for this particular tragedy will help with this Trama. Forever thankful for this explanation.

@@mummificationpls Best wishes for your situation.

To me this is more a study in psychology . No matter what the reason for the collapse is ,so many people ignored warning signs . People obviously did work on the building which clearly shows that a problem kept getting bigger . The building was doomed .Amazing that nobody could stop the deaths . "Do you want the truth ? You can't handle the truth ! "

@@fraukatze3856 ah thank you.

i agree it was shocking, and at times cars were actually floating, how was it that people just accepted the whole mess, i also have never seen such a mess of the ceilings. even all the tradesmen that came and patched it up over the years it was in bad enough condition to warrant recurring repairs. repairing repairs that had disintergrated. these people surely must have some sort of sense of responsibility, some sense of the seriousness. or is it kinda like a normal repair they would do in the course of the job. Or did they report their concern to maintenance manager, and was told, we know . we are on to it. you can see and as has been explained the repairs were many, and corrogated plastic sheeting over cracks !!! to keep water off the cars. then what, it directs it onto the floor behind the car. and tradesmen did that work...... no way omg, it would be very interesting to see the maintenance history AND Staligtites..... no way.... that is too much, too too much.

Decades of repeatedly repainting

@@tictaktotiki The fact that the cars were floating at times!! That in itself was ignored basically!!?? They used to say buy a car from FL but the salt is just as destroying as salt roads in the north and if a car is floating in it....??!!

This is the problem with condos. If you think HOA's are bad, now imagine an HOA that's responsible for everything outside the walls of your home - the walls, the roof, the foundation, the utilities, etc. No one likes paying for infrastructure - infrastructure isn't sexy - so you get situations like what happened here. If people think this is an isolated incident - I wish I could be that optimistic. I have no doubt there are thousands of buildings across the country that area teetering on the brink for similar reasons. There was an ongoing dispute over the assessments for the needed repairs - I've seen it in person at several condo associations when going with friends and family to meetings. Convinced me I NEVER wanted to get tied into a condo of any sort!

@Neil Rusling Exactly. My best friends mom was in a small association - cluster of two story buildings with no underground basements/garages, so pretty simple infrastructure. Except half the buildings had that gray plastic water pipe that eventually fails - was defective. They got so many claims against their master insurance from pipe burst that their insurance was going to drop them unless the pipe was replaced (makes sense!). The ugliness and selfishness - especially from people in the buildings without the faulty pipe - was horrible. Luckily they came up with a water meter solution (previously the association covered the water for all) where the water meter company basically loaned them the improvement money up front and gets the loan repaid from collecting the water fees with a small assessment. But it was a horrible process with lots of ignorant/selfish people intent on gumming up the works. Convinced me condos were next level evil compared to HOAs. Anyone who things socialism can actually work is a freaking moron, especially after watching that crap go down.

"Professional journalists" could learn something.

I'm not sure that is the case, the thicker columns only exist on the lobby level parking portion of the western side of the building that was left standing after the initial collapse, yet at about 4:44 in the video there clearly appears to be a red column marked with 17 above it. Based on the floor plans this column is the same size as the remaining columns that were holding up the pool deck, North/South facing building and the western portion of the building.

@Neil Rusling There are more than just two in inches, 24"x24" (576 in sq.), 16"x16", 14"x18", 12"x24", 12"x36" (432 in sq.), 12"x16", 8"x12". This is according to the original plans which can be found here: surfside.one/public-records-search/ The larger 24x24 pillars appear to be isolated to the lobby level parking and most of the western side of the building which was left standing even though the lobby level slab failed by punching sheer at the parking and most of the pool deck. I have a feeling had the remaining building supports, or at the very least the perimeter pillars directly between the pool deck and the main building slab, had been as robust in size as the western portion of the tower, we would be looking at a completely different picture today. Someone screwed up royally. There are now reports of major slab deficiencies(cracks and spalling from rusted rebar) all the way back to 1996!

@Neil Rusling Morabito Consultants pointed out these patch / crack injection jobs and their failure to correct the spalling problem back in 2018 when the 40 year inspection was coming due, so it makes me wonder if the contractor in 1996 (Western Waterproofing of America) was the last contractor to do any patchwork and was, therefore, responsible for the improper techniques Morabito was referring to. Someone was obviously dicking around by placing corrugated plastic sheets under cracks to keep water and calcium carbonate from leaching out of the concrete slabs and ruining the paint on peoples cars. Now, the question, why wasn't this leaching, spalling, cracking and rusting rebar issues pointed out as a major structural flaw pointed out before it turned into a disaster? Wouldn't the building code people know something? This has been a problem since 1996, and no one thought "gee this might become dangerous to the lives of humans sometime in the not too distant future". How many more condos are teetering on the edge, where the perfect set of unfortunate circumstances would turn into disaster. I'm not saying Western Waterproofing is responsible for the disaster, but there obviously was a lot of complacency going on with the management of those towers.

I was in Washington, DC a couple weeks ago. On our way out of the underground parking spot I couldn't help but notice all the rebar and spalling along the way. Ugh!

It's what happens when you build such large structures on bad ground with a sand/gravel base. Nature always wins in the end.

it is possible that you could not fix the damage,

@@jmyers9853Maybe it wasn’t fixable, but that’s all the more reason to get residents out of the building. I watched an interview with an older man (resident) who said their association sent out information discussing the cost of upgrading the building. He said it would cost $15,000,000. 😳

@@jmyers9853 No, they could. Tell everyone to move their car, brace everything up, and start replacing slabs 1 at a time. Tip each slab towards an adjacent slap and add a drainage chute too so it never happens again.

Their only concern was water was getting onto some of the cars. They didn't know the building was deteriorating. The plastic was a Band-Aid and made the car owner happy. Of course, none of the owners were structural engineers. They didn't know what was happening. We've all seen the same thing and we don't really understand what we're looking at.

@@KayInMaine so..the blind leading the blind..but there is that pesky 2018 inspection, and concern (horror?) expressed by the pool guy..oh well..

I mentioned in a comment on another video that he could be an engineering professor. And we don't know, maybe he is!

The first time I watched one of his videos just a couple weeks ago, he had about 2k subs. Now 28k! People recognize quality information and integrity.

All valid points, if the waterproofing was failing, chances are it was clogging up the drains as it disintegrated. Also, if you look at the boxes from google street view, the trees the had In them were massive! They must have put a lot of strain on the slab below them.

I suspect that many, many years of water repeatedly seeking its lowest point in the same area may have undermined the columns below the slab. I find it curious that the ground floor slab has cracks, is uneven, and seems to have been repaired in the past. I wonder if one or more of the columns in the row near parking space 78 went first causing a domino effect that pulled down the weakened pool deck which was tied into the building’s structure. Witnesses reported that the building was making loud, strange noises with walls cracking prior to hearing the thundering bang which, presumably, was the sound of the pool deck collapse.

Go back to like the second or third video he did after the collapse. He goes in depth on the planters

I think it is very clear that there should not be planters collecting water in complexes of this type. There is too much chance they will collect water and become problematic.

Good point... Did you see deflection of the beams?

Thanks for watching!

Lamp shades are from IKEA :) www.ikea.com/us/en/p/nymoe-lamp-shade-white-brass-color-10377200/

There should be HOA mtg notes showing what was done to that slab and when. Even work was performed years ago, the HOA notes should reflect it.

I have some construction background but am by no means an engineer or expert. That being said, I would like to believe that had I observed the structure as a potential buyer as in this video, just common sense would have thrown up some major red flags that the building might have major issues. This was an expensive building and area to live in, given that the residents cared more about such superficial things while ignoring the necessary maintenance and warning signs, shows that they unfortunately bear part of the responsibility for the tragedy.

@@ADAMJWAITE Well if you just watch the video this woman took, she's not trying to highlight problems with the building. She's looking for a parking space. At the same time the problems are so alarming she keeps subconsciously focusing the camera on them. As well I believe another woman was suing the HOA over the building's state of disrepair. So there was clearly big trouble at the Champlain Towers and lots of people knew it. Ultimately I think it was failure of imagination on the part of everyone to comprehend how dire what they were seeing was. In America buildings don't just fall down. IMO the fact that our structures are overwhelmingly well built and safe led to a reckless complacency on the part of everyone involved. The 2018 engineering firm saw large scale structural problems but didn't see the building could fall because that really doesn't happen in the USA. They thought our report sounds scary enough the HOA would never wait years to start repairs. The HOA thought yeah there's trouble, but it can wait till the 40 year re-certification when owners will have no choice, but to pay for repairs. Owners thought it's just some water in the parking garage and some chipped and cracked concrete nothing to pay a massive special assessment over. I mean I may die or move away before the 40 year re-certification forces these repairs. Hell No I'm not paying 125k now. The government thought these buildings don't need to be looked at before they're 40 years old.