How to Prevent Another Building Collapse

In the wake of the Florida condo disaster in Surfside, lawmakers are seeking ways to prevent further tragedies. The collapse and loss of life has sent shivers down the spines of thousands of Florida condo owners, fretting whether the same thing could happen to them.

Much of the thinking in local government circles concerns whether new and updated inspection requirements are needed – requirements which would be much stricter than they currently are. After all, the vast majority of Florida counties do not require inspection once a residential building is completed. Jeff Brower, Volusia County Chair said, “We inspect bridges every two years [by law] and yet a high-rise can go up right on the coast and it’s inspected at the time it’s built and never again.” Brower certainly seems to have cogent point. He believes localities should be carefully inspecting new buildings every ten years, and this should be enacted into law. Miami-Dade County (where the tragedy occurred), for example, requires buildings to be inspected every forty years after construction completion, and every ten years after that. This clearly seems unsatisfactory, and certainly not erring on the side of caution.

The disaster prompted the North Miami Beach locality to issue an evacuation order for the 50-year-old Crestview Towers and won’t permit residents to return until required repairs have been completed.

The more stringent rules being contemplated are based on the fact that Florida beachfront high-rises suffer corroding influences from sea winds, saltwater, and sea air which can wear down concrete and other common building materials. The repetition of storms and hurricanes has a degrading and lasting effect on these buildings, a well.

Bret Turner, a project manager in southwest Florida said, ”Up until the 1980s, there virtually were no inspections [in the mid-eighties, inspection codes were tightened somewhat]. Our codes were horrible. So, any building or house that was built prior to 1986 is suspect. It was the Wild West – whatever you could get away with if you were making a buck.” Turner said he’s seen very dangerous damage in Florida buildings. He added, “I’m surprised that Surfside is the first one that I’ve seen this happen to. I’m not surprised it happened; I’m surprised it’s the first one.”

The city of Boca Raton, for example, which is in Palm beach County requires no building recertification on neither the city nor county levels. In Boca’s Chalfonte Condominiums, the residents are not waiting for new guidelines. The building association has already hired engineers to inspect the two 22-story towers built in the late seventies. The association is now conducting repairs and plans new inspections every year going forward. Clearly, these folks are wisely not going to wait for the government bureaucracies to issue stricter guidelines.

Recently, Governor Desantis said, “We want to be able to identify why did this happen? Is this something that was unique to this building?” Desantis added, “Is it something that buildings of that age that would have implications beyond that, whether southern Florida or the entire state of Florida? I think we need to get those definitive answers.”

Democrat State Senator Jason Pizzo, who represents Surfside in the Florida Senate, has stated he’ll seek new legislation to address condominium inspections.

The town of Surfside hired the KCE Structural Engineers to investigate the June 24^th collapse. The firm recommended multi-level residential and commercial buildings to:

Hire a geotechnical and structural design engineer to conduct geophysical studies of the foundation.
Use ground-penetrating radar to analyze the concrete and steel used in the building’s construction.
Attain concrete samples for strength testing.
Engineers should study the structural drawings used for the construction of a building and confirm that it is consistent with what was built.

Bottom line: new building codes and updating recertification of resident buildings is sorely needed. But as government moves slowly, it seems a good idea for waterfront Florida condo buildings to be proactive (as the Chalfonte Condominium is doing) and bring in engineers and building inspectors as soon as possible if the building has not been inspected and recertified in the recent past.