Miami building collapse

 
Ugh. At 2:00 a.m. Plenty of deaths to be discovered given the fact that everyone would be home and in bed. Hopefully, the areas that collapsed were living areas rather than bedrooms.
 
I wonder if people in all the surrounding condo buildings are thinking, "if it happened there, why can't the same thing happen here."
 
How old is the building?

Like the Mexican elevated train bridge collapse my initial thoughts are it is the fault of the construction team, doubt it is faulty design because if that was the case it would happened fairly close to when it opened. Sub contractors are always cutting corners to make a buck plus the city inspectors look the other way when they see the big names on the construction team because of politics and bribes.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a sinkhole given the nature of that area. It's tough to tell from the video but it almost looks like it started from the bottom up rather than a collapse from the top stories down.
 
It COULD be a sinkhole. Has there been any evidence of this? On multi story structures you usually have pile that goes to bedrock. They said the building was 40 years old and also said roof repairs were going on? The one thing about concrete structures is if something happened they would still relatively stay together as the rebar inside is all tied together. It can crack and shift but even then it SHOULD stay intact to a large degree. The other thing about concrete is that it covers up what really matters and that is again the rebar. Inspectors have to be there to see the rebar before it is poured. At least they should. If not a natural event like a sinkhole, my guess would be improper installation of rebar.
 
^^^

Roofs not tied down properly is what took out Homestead. I wouldn't doubt the rebar not proper.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a sinkhole given the nature of that area. It's tough to tell from the video but it almost looks like it started from the bottom up rather than a collapse from the top stories down.

Top down looks to me? I see top floor go first. The stress could have still occured at the bottom but it was top floor first. it was a pancake that took it so fast. Same as the Towers.

Here's what I got from Satellite map. From the images, it looks as if it were just a face of the building. No. First the area around 8777. Then the right side collapsed.The only thing standing I think is the left rectangle. L on the right looks almost like an add-on.

I just looked at Google Street View. A building shown on the map just south of this structure, isn't there on the Google Street view. Construction cranes are. I wonder if the construction of that new building didn't destabilize this one?
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Okay, now I think it was caused by a combination of a sinkhole, bad construction and vibrations from nearby construction and started from the bottom and the top simultaneously!

It will be interesting to see what they eventually determine.
 
I'm going with rebar and your sinkhole theory. That part that fell really does look like an add-on. If it weren't tied in with the original, I could see why it fell and the other didn't.

The sinkhole of course could have been agravated by that new construction, a change in the water table. I just don't recall sinkholes that close to the water. I think they usually form when water gets depleted from the table? I'll have to look that up or maybe construction guy know?

I'm wondering how ANYone survived buried in rubble. It's just shocking.
 
The thing that I find most offensive in tragedies like this is the quick line that forms of politicians that want to use the event for face time in the media, many of whom have no expertise or knowledge beyond that of the general public. They really just come across as attention whores and characterless goofballs desperate for votes.
 
These things are usually so over engineered that I would find it very unlikely that anything with the roof caused the collapse. Sinkhole makes sense but only if it was localized to the front columns. Looking at the pre-disaster pics it could have been precast rather than pour-in-place but even then it would be tough to see this happen. The sinkhole, poor footings, vibration theory makes more and more sense to me.
 
These things are usually so over engineered that I would find it very unlikely that anything with the roof caused the collapse. Sinkhole makes sense but only if it was localized to the front columns. Looking at the pre-disaster pics it could have been precast rather than pour-in-place but even then it would be tough to see this happen. The sinkhole, poor footings, vibration theory makes more and more sense to me.

Some Prof at FIU said they did a study a long time ago, the building was sinking 2mm a year, considered dramatic but there was no follow. Guess when buildings are structurally reinspected in Miami? Every... 40 years. The building is 40 years old. It was due for inspection. Whether they would have caught anything or not... now we won't know.
 
My son has several clients in the construction industry. All of them are saying that was not a sink hole they said the way it went down it looks like a controlled demolition. Then you see this:

Relatives of Paraguay's First Family among the missing at the collapse.


Makes you go hmmmm...
Ricin would work so much easier.

I'm old enough to not discount anything these days but...

Poor construction with perhaps some natural forces would still be my guess. I've been in this business for 25 years. The way that the balconies overextended the columns suggests the columns were poured in place and precast floors were set on top. Not conclusively but I'd bet. I'd also bet there was some shoddy construction when it came to the column to precast connections.

I will admit, it is certainly odd the way that it collapsed for a concrete structure. As I said earlier, well built concrete/rebar structures can crack and shift and even lean but will not break. In 1st world countries this happens to these structures after earthquakes. In 3rd world countries they crumble because they were not engineered properly. And it does look like a demo job but to suggest that some enemy of the Paraguayan government's first family went through the trouble of hiring a demo expert who put charges at the right points just to off some family members of a 120 unit building is a stretch.

 
I suppose someone could have put explosive on the top floors.
In demos, rebar is cut and explosives kill support up and down the entire structure at the same time during demo, to keep it from laying out. All floors collapse at the same time. To ME, it looks like the middle section collapses top down. Structure was lost on the top floors and that weight brought down the middle. Once that was gone, the right structure lost support and collapsed bottom (parking garage) up. The forensics on this are going to be in Engineering classes by Fall.
 
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Other Miami collapses. One was in the process of being demolished but the charges had not been set off. The preparation resulted in loss of integrity. Seems a lot of these Miami buildings are on borrowed time.
 
159 missing now.

As for the Paraguayan link, that's a lot of work, planning and destruction to get one person. There are plenty of cleaner old fashioned ways to get that done.
 
On a side note….

Speaking to my son in law who builds homes, he would highly recommend not buying a home built during COVID. Many inspections were done virtually and the inspectors he worked with basically approved everything with known contractors. He had a heating guy install an exhaust pipe incorrectly and when he called it out the contractor said the city approved so no go on the redo of the work. If some family in Delaware County dies in a home because of carbon monoxide poising you will know why.
 
I suppose someone could have put explosive on the top floors.
In demos, rebar is cut and explosives kill support up and down the entire structure at the same time during demo, to keep it from laying out. All floors collapse at the same time. To ME, it looks like the middle section collapses top down. Structure was lost on the top floors and that weight brought down the middle. Once that was gone, the right structure lost support and collapsed bottom (parking garage) up. The forensics on this are going to be in Engineering classes by Fall.
I think this is it. Much like what happened with the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. Once one floor failed, the previous floor could not handle the added stress/weight and it pancaked like dominoes. In the controlled demo you posted you can see the upper part of the building is still intact as it first starts to implode. If it were a sinkhole it would have looked like that IMO.

Anyone that has been to Florida sees these things constructed about every two minutes. I have passed by plenty of pour in place multi story structures that do not appear to have the best quality. They are usually ran by a white guy with a cowboy hat and a bunch of illegals doing the work. Just saying.
 
Well....I just saw a story stating the potential cause as.....climate change (causing rising sea levels...).

 
Good Lord people,
While it is too early to say whether climate change is to blame for the collapse of the 40-year-old Champlain Towers South,

It's a legit hypothesis and an important one. Hell, it was the first one put forth on this thread. And it's as old as the pyramids. They would know if brackish waters are showing up in basements that it didn't used to. It is reclaimed land over limestone. These are facts. We know climate changes. We know average sea levels are changing. No one is challenging that they are rising. It's important to look and see if environment is a concern to old or new instruction. Nothing new, nothing to see here folks, move along.

Another report had a guy whose Ma and Grandma were in that first section that went, say the day before that she was woke by creaking. This thing probably hit critical point, just like most systems do. Buildings, particularly concrete are not designed with any kind of feedback correction. They hit a point. They go.

I'd like to have the ulta-sound imaging biz down there. Going to be a BIG demand.
 
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It COULD be a sinkhole. Has there been any evidence of this? On multi story structures you usually have pile that goes to bedrock. They said the building was 40 years old and also said roof repairs were going on? The one thing about concrete structures is if something happened they would still relatively stay together as the rebar inside is all tied together. It can crack and shift but even then it SHOULD stay intact to a large degree. The other thing about concrete is that it covers up what really matters and that is again the rebar. Inspectors have to be there to see the rebar before it is poured. At least they should. If not a natural event like a sinkhole, my guess would be improper installation of rebar.
It would be no shock to me if this was a building built in the 70s as a front to launder $ for cocaine.
 
Good Lord people,


It's a legit hypothesis and an important one. Hell, it was the first one put forth on this thread. And it's as old as the pyramids. They would know if brackish waters are showing up in basements that it didn't used to. It is reclaimed land over limestone. These are facts. We know climate changes. We know average sea levels are changing. No one is challenging that they are rising. It's important to look and see if environment is a concern to old or new instruction. Nothing new, nothing to see here folks, move along.

Another report had a guy whose Ma and Grandma were in that first section that went, say the day before that she was woke by creaking. This thing probably hit critical point, just like most systems do. Buildings, particularly concrete are not designed with any kind of feedback correction. They hit a point. They go.

I'd like to have the ulta-sound imaging biz down there. Going to be a BIG demand.
Spot on.

New evidence comes out the building WAS sinking (cm's) and there were previous lawsuits against the owner for cracks which caused water damage. Concrete, even the strongest and best built with proper rebar installation cracks but water damage is an obvious concern. Anyone who has spent time near the ocean knows there is a constant mist/spray in the air. Leave your car parked at the beach for a weak and you will see this brine on your vehicle. If water was getting in through poor design it can obviously erode the rebar. A local structural engineer also pointed out how the building's balcony design was poor because the water essentially has nowhere to go. You can even take climate change out of the equation and simply point out that barrier islands are essentially large natural occurring sand bars. They move and shift regularly depending on wind and currents.

Lessons are always to be learned. Forty years is probably too long for inspection. These places are owned by people with money and those people pay for good insurance so you can imagine that every darn structure above a story from Donna, TX wrapping around the Gulf states to the FL Keys and all the way up the Atlantic Coast to NJ is looking for a structural engineer inspection today.
 
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