16 Days Before the Surfside Collapse - The Warning Signs Were There

Watch till the end, you will want to see these newly released photos.

Thank you to the Miami Herald writers:
Sarah Blaskey, Ben Conarck, and Nicholas Nehamas

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𝙈𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙣𝙞𝙪𝙢 𝙏𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩:

𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙏𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩:

𝙊𝙣 𝙋𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙩 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩:

𝙊𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙅𝙤𝙗 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩:

𝙊𝙣𝙚 𝙤𝙣 𝙊𝙣𝙚 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩:

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Disclaimer: Nothing contained within this video should be construed as legal advice. Building Integrity makes no claims of its own regarding the guilt or innocence or liability otherwise of any legal entities mentioned in any of their videos. These videos are made for news/informational and educational purposes only.

[BuildingIntegrity]

I see a lot of comments/questions regarding spherical aberration or lense distortion causing the appearance of paver sag in the photos. This was considered but not discussed in the video. I found no other signs of lense curvature aberrations when I looked at other straight lines in the photos. In addition, barrel distortion tends to be worse toward the perimeter of a photo with modern phone cameras, not toward the center. Field distortion without barrel distortion is uncommon and I haven't seen this with other photos taken with phone cameras. For reference, I am a landscape and architectural photographer in my spare time. 😀

[Daniel-]

I'm a highrise window cleaner, and I'm on ropes every day on the side of condo's and I've seen and know of plenty of condos that have structural damage on the buildings, and I'm shocked that since this has happened that these condos are not addressed! I've turned down jobs because of how bad the damage is on the parapet walls, so bad that I do not trust the parapet to even hold my ropes!

[brianmcgauley]

Retired commercial architect here, with high-rise experience. I’ve really enjoyed watching all the analyses you and others have done on this time-bomb of a disaster. I say time bomb because from what I’ve seen, there are so very many design, construction and post-construction errors here, it’s unconscionable.

1. Having columns that don’t even line up from floor to floor is so completely 100% negligent, it defies logic. Both the structural engineer and architect are responsible here, as well as the contractor for not even noticing.
2. Having a developer act as his own contractor is going to result in short-cuts that can and will jeopardize any number of things. We ran into this same problem back in the 80s. The photo of the rusty door hinges is indicative of how the developer/contractor chose not to spend what he should have spent on stainless steel hardware in a seasalt environment. He likely made unwise cost cuts elsewhere.
3. PLANTERS: Nothing but a huge permanent wet load on a structure not designed to carry anything near that heavy. If they weren’t shown on the original construction documents, it’s almost guaranteed they weren’t included in the structural calculations. Further, it appears they had no beams or thicker slabs under them. The cracks ion the planter walls didn’t cause a failure - they were a result of the increasing failure of the deck supporting them.
4. A flat plane construction is fine, but there were no thickened slabs around the tops of the columns, thus helping facilitate the punching shear. Was there any standing-water test of the waterproofing membrane prior to pavers being placed over it?…I doubt it. ($$$)
5. The structure for the pool deck and the structure for the tower should never have been connected, but separated by a 1” expansion joint. It’s quite obvious that the collapse of the pool deck imposed an adverse lateral force on the perimeter columns supporting the tower, in effect “pulling the legs out” from under the tower.
6. Painting the ceiling of the garage - actually the bottom of the slab above - just served to hold excess moisture within the slab rather than letting it “breathe”. It wouldn’t have saved things long-term, however.
7. Financially, whenever you have multiple condo owners, no one wants to pay for the magnitude of repairs it would have taken to stave off a catastrophe. It’s only possible to kick that can down the road until failure results.

These are just some of the things I noticed: I’m sure there were likely more.

[warrenSPQRXxl]

Before I watched this series, I never paid much attention to concrete in parking garages but now I do.

[jlangevin]

I'm not an engineer but I'm a horticulturist with almost 40 years in the field and I would have dismissed offhand the suggestion that those Scheffleras could cause that much root lifting. Had there been trees there, or even larger shrubs with more massive roots it would be more likely, but not with that plant's root system.

[Gizathecat]

If you can explain a structural engineering issue in a way a “normal human” can understand it, you’ve done great! I am not an engineer, I’m a nature photographer!

[tissuepaper]

The biggest thing this channel gets right is conveying that a building is essentially a machine with moving parts, not a static structure like most would imagine.

[StevePetrica]

My late father was a civil engineer. Your analysis gives me a new level of respect for the work he did. Thanks for that.

[tuvelat]

I'm really impressed by your recall of that photo.
That said, this video nearly has me in tears. There were warning signs. There were chances to get out ahead of this and stop it. Someone noticed new damage and was concerned enough to call the engineers to come out again. And that opportunity was missed.
I doubt there will be criminal charges unless it's shown that someone was intentionally hiding how badly this building had deteriorated.

[lsswappedcessna]

man, I'm a biology major but still found this super interesting. I gotta give props, it's not often you find someone who can clearly and concisely explain engineering and use terminology in a way laypeople can understand.

[nycguy]

I an an architect with much experience on older existing buildings. I think that the design issue that hasn't been addressed enough is the lack of a functional building expsnion joint between the pool deck and the building at Surfside. The high rise building and the deck have fundamentally different loading and movement characteristics, even when new. The original design should have included a building expansion joint that would have structurally separated the residential portion of the building from the exterior deck. IF there had been, in effect, two separate structures side-by-side the pool deck could have collapsed without bringing down the towers.

[BobSentell]

You have a very good memory. Not many people would be willing to put the real picture up after spending five minutes trying to describe it by memory. But it did confirm you had seen it and you know what you are talking about as there is no way I could have described it in that level of detail. But I'm also not a civil engineer.

[jamesreid]

As a security guard, this is complete neglect on multiple levels. Security, facilities, management, HOA, and ownership. This level of damage should be obvious to anyone a professional needs to look at the damage.

[erik]

This is by far the best channel on YouTube. Josh is a brilliant structural engineer and has mastered the art of explanation so even the lay-person, such as myself, can understand. Thank you for all the hard work you put into your videos. I'm always excited when I get notified of a new Building Integrity video!

[TSUNAMI-MAMI]

I love how your channel is a sleeper class in scientific thinking, analysis and problem solving. Looking at something vague and making sense through secondary evidence to support it’s relationship to the primary event. As a fellow scientist, i just adore to see some good STEM brain work in action — and you’re making it so accessible and understandable for the laymen. You’re a fantastic science communicator! Loving the methodology and exploring of alternative causes for each piece of the puzzle, and slowly eliminating how they don’t make sense in the greater picture. Taking complex multi-disciplinary problems and making them digestible and thorough is a nerdy sight to see. Just love to watch your work! @Building Integrity

[howieduin]

Great video. Thanx. I'm not an engineer, but have worked in the excavation field for 50+ years. We see sagging patios, cracked concrete walls, and floors regularly. Not unusual. Usually inadequate compaction, poor soil, different types of soil in the same pour, etc. But when the planter boxes sink 2 in. And there are horizontal cracks. Knowing that there's a garage directly below these cracks. It should send out an immediate and profound UH OH!! The material that was holding that box in place had to go somewhere. I can't imagine myself just passing that off. I think I would RUN down to the garage to find out what's going on. To answer your question. I don't know when incompetence becomes criminal. But this is something that should never have been overlooked.

[edmundwest]

The criminal case may be too unsettling to too many entrenched interests. My guess is it will be investigated slowly till the case dies from old age.
Thanks for your organized coherent analysis - consistently informative for non engineers. I wait eagerly for each new release.

[monophoto]

From my perspective as an electrical engineer, I know that a lot of the telltale signs of failure are things that aren't taught in engineering school. Instead, engineers need to accumulate years of experience in observing those signs and interpreting what they are pointing to. And a critical part of that experience is exposure to mentors along the way.

So the individual signs easily could have been overlooked or misinterpreted by inexperienced engineers, but taken together, they should clearly have alerted seasoned engineers that something was seriously wrong. The fact that this didn't happen suggests that some combination of factors was at play here - inexperience, negligence, intentional ignorance or even criminal coverup.

As a young engineer, I learned a lot from tying to understand problems in the field. And having access to experienced mentors was invaluable - they helped me see less obvious signs an interpret what it all meant. And at the end of my career, when I was the old guy, I still wanted to have a second set of eyes with me to point out things that I missed, and to have someone to bounce ideas off of when trying to arrive at a final conclusion.

[SteveB]

I am not an engineer, but my first thought when seeing that 3cm drop between the planter walls was " I hope they went straight down to the parking lot to check underneath". It would appear that for some unexplainable reason they did not. I am shocked that even a junior or trainee engineer did not make that a priority. If I was looking at that, knowing that the wall was sitting on a concrete slab, my curiosity alone would make me want to go look below - especially if it involved a building with know water and cracking issues in the lot below.

I must also say that I noticed the dip in the paving even before you mentioned it, but like you say, it is very hard to say that was not by design to help water to flow to the drains. And would certainly not be a red flag on it's own. But with regards to any criminal negligence, in my eyes the engineering firm involved really should have realised that the building was in a dangerous state. They gave a warning in their original report (2018?), that the problems would get exponentially worse if not dealt with in a timely manner, yet when they are called out to look at a 3cm sheer break in the planter wall they did nothing. The person involved did not even bother to go down and look below - or if they did, they totally failed to recognise just how serious the problem was. Why on earth did they send a trainee, or junior member of staff out to do that inspection when they already knew that the structure had problems? The finger of blame must be pointed at that engineering firm - they were hired to inspect the building, and they totally failed to spot just how bad the situation really was.

[tolrem]

I found this excerpt explaining "concrete cancer" interesting..
"Unfortunately, steel rusts. It is prone to corrosion. When pouring a concrete member (such as a slab), it’s critical that the steel reinforcing bars are encased in the concrete with sufficient cover around them to protect the steel from the elements. Concrete is actually permeable, and so moisture and airborne salts (particularly near the ocean) can penetrate the concrete surface and permeate down to the encased steel. Once the moisture reaches the encased steel (particularly if the moisture contains salts), you have a recipe for corrosion.

Once the steel starts to rust, it expands and deforms. The expanding steel can often break or blow out the concrete, causing pieces of the concrete slab to fall away. This is referred to as “spalling”. Naturally, this then increases the steel’s exposure, and the problem is exacerbated. Whilst the problem may initially appear to be an aesthetic or cosmetic concern, the reality is more sinister. The steel bars resist the tension forces in the concrete, and the cross-sectional area of each reinforcing bar works hard to resist the load it has to carry. As the steel rusts away, the effective cross-sectional area of the bar reduces, until – eventually – there is not enough steel remaining intact to resist the forces. At that point, the slab (or beam or column or stair, etc) is now greatly weakened and at risk of sudden failure or collapse."