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NIST Report Details How Design Flaws and Added Weight Contributed to 2021 Florida Condo Collapse That Killed 98
Federal investigators concluded that the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside began failing weeks before its June 2021 collapse that killed 98 people. The structure had insufficient design strength and later modifications that accelerated the failure.
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology released its final report on Monday detailing how the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida, developed over several weeks before the structure gave way at 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021. Two connections between garage columns and the pool deck began to fail around early June 2021, according to the report.
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The pool deck started falling minutes before two sections of the 12-story tower collapsed, with residents describing the deck giving way one bay at a time in a sequential chain reaction. The building did not meet the codes in place at the time of construction, and its original design provided less than half the required strength in some locations, Judith Mitrani-Reiser, who co-led the investigation, said in a video accompanying the report.
Large planters, sand and pavers added to the pool deck after construction, along with corrosion in reinforcing steel, further reduced capacity.
Cracks appeared in a planter wall on the pool deck in the weeks before the collapse, and one planter detached less than a day prior. Water leaking from a parking-garage ceiling increased about one week before the event, with one witness describing the flow as a water faucet hours before the collapse. A strong concrete wall limited the spread of destruction to a third section of the building.
A Miami judge later approved a settlement exceeding $1 billion for personal injury and wrongful death claims. Florida enacted a 2022 law requiring condo associations to maintain sufficient reserves for major repairs, followed by a subsequent measure that gave associations and residents more flexibility in covering those costs.
