Miami Condo Collapse

[Tomb1]

What a huge disaster and this rescue mission just reeks of total incompetence. I'd love to see somebody albeit the owners, property managers or both slapped with negligent homicide. It will in no way even the scales to just have an insurance company dish out a lump sum policy limit payment and then all the families of the dead and the injured split the pie.

 

[The Cat]

Fixing the infrastructure would be better than paying off survivors.

 

[Totenkindly]

it sounds pretty horrific. I didn't do a lot of historical reading on it (i.e., what problems the building had previously), but I know there was issues. I can't even imagine. I think there's still 150 missing and survivors and 9 definitely dead (but the 150 missing are 99% deceased). That one story about the woman talking to her husband from the balcony as it all collapsed has been posted a lot, it's pretty terrible. Anyway, some level of negligence involved, no amount of money can pay for what was lost, and I wonder how many other buildings are in the same condition.

 

[The Cat]

it sounds pretty horrific. I didn't do a lot of historical reading on it (i.e., what problems the building had previously), but I know there was issues. I can't even imagine. I think there's still 150 missing and survivors and 9 definitely dead (but the 150 missing are 99% deceased). That one story about the woman talking to her husband from the balcony as it all collapsed has been posted a lot, it's pretty terrible. Anyway, some level of negligence involved, no amount of money can pay for what was lost, and I wonder how many other buildings are in the same condition.

A nauseating amount

 

[Tomb1]

Looks like the moment of reckoning actually begins with the Town of Surfside - specifically, the building inspector

Unit A of Champlain Towers South sold for 2.8+ million last month.

https://www.zillow.com/b/champlain-towers-south-condominiums-miami-beach-fl-5ZJTRr/

I'll bet the unlucky buyer did not read the Morabito Report, and I wonder whether the guy who paid almost 3 million dollars for what was formerly Unit A knew about the payment deadlines on July 1st.

From what I have gleaned, the Surfside Building Inspector who obviously likes to play with fire sat on this Morabito Report for three years, left in sub-par deck work which had probably been sub-contracted out to sub-par workers, and all the while told the condo owners everything was just fine. Then at some point later on the Town ambushed the condo owners with deadlines for making repair payments to remedy violations of the building code...payments that should have happened back in 2018 and would have been much cheaper. The building inspector let the deterioration "expand exponentially", essentially running up the tab and who knows which company the City would have contracted out the work to but surely the kickbacks would have been sizable...

This is negligent homicide plain and simple, and the day of reckoning begins first at the doorstep of the town inspector.

Another 2018 Morabito report submitted to the city said waterproofing under the pool deck had failed and had been improperly laid flat instead of sloped, preventing water from draining off.

“The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” the report said.

The firm recommended that the damaged slabs be replaced in what would be a major repair.

That came as news to Susana Alvarez, who lived on the 10th floor of the doomed tower and said a Surfside official assured residents in a 2018 meeting that there was no danger. It wasn’t clear who that official was.

Collapsed Miami condo needed $9 million in repairs - Chicago Tribune

PR has obtained minutes of a Nov. 2018 meeting that shows a Surfside town inspector met with residents of the building, and assured them the building was "in very good shape." NPR learned of the meeting from a resident who was in attendance and who in an interview with Weekend Edition recalled being told that the building was not in danger.

The inspector's comments directly conflicted with an engineering report from five weeks earlier, which warned that failed waterproofing in a concrete structural slab needed to be replaced "in the near future."

...according to the report, the structural slab was deteriorating because it was flat instead of sloped. That meant the water didn't drain off the concrete's waterproofing quickly, but rather pooled there until it evaporated.

Exclusive: Surfside Condo Was In 'Very Good Shape,' Town Told Residents In 2018 : Live Updates: Miami-Area Condo Collapse : NPR

 

[Lexicon]

Reminds me of the Sampoong Store collapse in S. Korea in the 90s. Horrific.

 

[Tomb1]

Just as I expected there is a Florida Statute that caps governmental liability at an absurdly low amount. Florida's bureaucracy-protection statute caps liability at 200,000 per person/300,000 per accident.

"Neither the state nor its agencies or subdivisions shall be liable to pay a claim or a judgment by any one person which exceeds the sum of $200,000 or any claim or judgment, or portions thereof, which, when totaled with all other claims or judgments paid by the state or its agencies or subdivisions arising out of the same incident or occurrence, exceeds the sum of $300,000."

Statutes & Constitution
:View Statutes
:

Online Sunshine

By the way, that comes out to 300,000 total for all claims arising out of the Condo Collapse, not 300,000 per claimant:

In Barnett v. State Department of Financial Services, No. SC19-87, ––– So.3d ––––, 2020 WL 5667286 (Fla. Sept. 24, 2020), the Florida Supreme Court ruled that when multiple claims of injury are brought against the State (or its agencies or subdivisions) by multiple parties arising from one overall injury-causing event, liability is capped at $300,000 for all resulting injuries or deaths, as opposed to $300,000 in liability for each individual victim being injured or killed being treated as a separate incident or occurrence.

Florida Supreme Court Limits Amount of Recovery in Mass Events | Martindale.com

So if there turns out to be 200 claimants, they will all have to split up a lump sum of 300k. Under florida's current wrongful death statute a single wrongful death suit alone brought by a person who lost their spouse-doctor for negligence of a non-government entity/actor could be worth millions of dollars when you take lost earning capacity into effect:

Each survivor may recover the value of lost support and services from the date of the decedent’s injury to her or his death, with interest, and future loss of support and services from the date of death and reduced to present value. In evaluating loss of support and services, the survivor’s relationship to the decedent, the amount of the decedent’s probable net income available for distribution to the particular survivor, and the replacement value of the decedent’s services to the survivor may be considered. In computing the duration of future losses, the joint life expectancies of the survivor and the decedent and the period of minority, in the case of healthy minor children, may be considered.

Statutes & Constitution
:View Statutes
:

Online Sunshine

Under the bureaucracy-protection statute that spouse will have to split up 300 k with possibly 100s of other similarly situated claimants. That is totally absurd. There is a loophole where the claimants can petition the legislature for payment in excess of the 300k and then the legislature would have to pass a bill authorizing the payment. I did not find any examples where that has ever occurred, though.

Even if the legislature exercised that loophole in response to insane political pressure, here is a real shot in the gut for the families of the missing and dead: "liability shall not include punitive damages or interest for the period before judgment." If this were a corporation, they would get nailed with punitive damages but not so against the City of Surfside and the Building Inspector whose reckless yet knowing and calculated cover-up would surely put the town on the chopping block for punitive damages if it were a corporation and he were a CEO rather than a building inspector. That building inspector is a stone cold criminal.

Absurd statutes like this insulating incompetent government bureaucracy from paying the piper give corrupt inspectors like the one at issue incentive to engage in acts which effectively resulted here in the negligent homicide of an ever-growing body count.

 

[Totenkindly]

Reminds me of the Sampoong Store collapse in S. Korea in the 90s. Horrific.

jesus. total disregard for physics. somehow it stood for 5 years.

...The Sampoong Group began construction of the Sampoong Department Store in 1987 over a tract of land previously used as a landfill. The building's plans originally called for a residential apartment building with four floors, to be built by Woosung Construction.[3] However, during construction, the blueprints were changed by the future chairman of Sampoong Group's construction division, Lee Joon, to instead create a large department store. This involved cutting away a number of support columns to install escalators, and the addition of a fifth floor.[3][4][5]

After Woosung refused to carry out the changes, Lee ignored their warnings and fired them, using his own company to complete the construction.[3][5] The building was completed in late 1989, and the Sampoong Department Store opened to the public on July 7, 1990, attracting an estimated 40,000 people per day during the building's five years of existence. The store consisted of north and south wings connected by an atrium.[5]

The completed building was a flat-slab structure without crossbeams or a steel skeleton, which effectively meant that there was no way to transfer the load across the floors. To maximise the floor space, Lee Joon ordered the floor columns to be reduced to be 60 cm (24 in) thick, instead of the minimum of 80 cm (31 in) in the original blueprint that was required for the building to stand safely, and the columns were spaced 11 metres (36 ft) apart to maximize retail space, a decision that meant that there was more load on each column than there would have been if the columns were closer together.

A fifth floor was originally planned to house a roller skating rink, added later to comply with zoning regulations that prevented the entire building from being used as a department store.[3][5] However, Lee Joon changed the plan for the fifth floor to include eight restaurants instead.[3] The construction company tasked with completing the extension advised that the structure would not support another floor, but was promptly fired, with another company being hired to complete the project. The restaurant floor had a heated concrete base referred to as ondol, which has hot water pipes going through it; the presence of the 1.2-metre-thick (4 ft) ondol greatly increased the weight and thickness of the slab.[3]

In addition, the store's three 15-tonne air conditioning units were also installed on the roof, creating a 45-tonne (50-ton) load that was four times the design limit. In 1993, the air conditioning units were dragged across the delicate roof, resulting in cracking.[5] The units were moved over column 5E, where the most visible cracks in the floor of the fifth level were seen before the collapse. The cracks in the columns worsened because the columns supporting the fifth floor were not aligned with the ones supporting lower floors, causing the load of the fifth floor to be transferred through the slab.[3]

And then there is this beauty:

In April 1995, cracks began to appear in the ceiling of the south wing's fifth floor, but the only response by Lee and his management staff involved moving merchandise and stores from the top floor to the basement. On the morning of June 29, the number of cracks in the area increased dramatically, prompting managers to close parts of the top floor. The store management failed to shut the building down or issue formal evacuation orders,[3] as the number of customers in the building was unusually high, and it did not want to lose the day's revenue. However, the executives themselves left the premises as a precaution.

 

[Maou]

This should have never happened. The owner was a slum lord, and I have a personal vendetta against them. This push to turn America into a renter country is just going to make things like this happen more. So many real estate companies and the government are absolute dog shit at maintaining their properties. People need to pay attention to renter's rights more as well. The owner should be locked up.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This should have never happened. The owner was a slum lord, and I have a personal vendetta against them. This push to turn America into a renter country is just going to make things like this happen more. So many real estate companies and the government are absolute dog shit at maintaining their properties. People need to pay attention to renter's rights more as well. The owner should be locked up.

Where I live, there's a tenant's union, and I know a lot of people involved in it. I'm too chickenshit to join, though.

 

[The Cat]

Sure would be easier to just pass the god damned infrastructure bill without being nickle and dimed to the death and just god damn fix the broken shit (AND ITS ALL FUCKING BROKEN) rather than have to play hindsight who should pay for it after the fact. Call your cngressmen kiddos; and tell them to drop the identity politics grift and fix the real problems, like infrastructure, before the ground literally falls out from under you...

 

[Virtual ghost]

Someone should answer for this, especially if the problem was known for some time.

 

[ceecee]

Someone should answer for this, especially if the problem was known for some time.

This is an issue of state legislation that will do anything to roll back regulation and safety standards for decades, especially when it comes to developers and real estate, a shrinking tax base and criminal local governments - they allowed this building inspector to operate. Curious who the insurer for the building is too.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This is an issue of state legislation that will do anything to roll back regulation and safety standards for decades, especially when it comes to developers and real estate, a shrinking tax base and criminal local governments - they allowed this building inspector to operate. Curious who the insurer for the building is too.

I had a feeling this had something to do with it. It's Florida, after all (but that's not the only place where that's an issue).

 

[ceecee]

I had a feeling this had something to do with it. It's Florida, after all (but that's not the only place where that's an issue).

It's not a single party either (although the FL SC has been right wing for some time and the legislature since the late 90's). Local governments are either. But the issues go back years with this building and if you have ever been to Miami Beach there is so much building/rehab going on, it could contribute to destabilizing too.

 

[The Cat]

Not to mention so many of the damn buildings were built there to launder money.

 

[Abcdenfp]

This should have never happened. The owner was a slum lord, and I have a personal vendetta against them. This push to turn America into a renter country is just going to make things like this happen more. So many real estate companies and the government are absolute dog shit at maintaining their properties. People need to pay attention to renter's rights more as well. The owner should be locked up.

agreed with all of this. Disgusting.

 

[The Cat]

Someone should answer for this, especially if the problem was known for some time.

It was built knowing it was a problem; they really dont care.

 

[Tomb1]

Brad Kohn, the attorney suing on behalf of condo residents, made a really dumb decision not to include the Town of Surfside as a defendant. This dumb decision is unfathomable given that the Florida Supreme Court decision in Trianon Park Condo Assoc'n v. City of Hialeah basically establishes an action against a town for negligent code inspection and failure to enforce code.

Here is the key excerpt from that decision:

"Similarly, we find that the City's enforcement of the established Code standards is a purely ministerial action which does not rise to the status of basic policy evaluation since the majority of the inspectors' acts involve simple measurement and enforcement of the building code as written rather than the exercise of discretion and expertise. See Jones v. City of Longwood, Florida, 404 So.2d 1083 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981).

Although the initial determination by the City to inspect and certify construction within its boundaries is a "planning" decision, the subsequent performance of inspection, plan review and certification is clearly an "operational" level activity implementing that policy. Once the City undertook to inspect, review and certify construction, it was obligated to do so reasonably and responsibly in accordance with acceptable standards of care: "Immunity of a government for negligently performing an act no longer exists, even though the initial decision to act may have been purely discretionary, and not compelled in any way." Collom v. City of St. Petersburg, 400 So.2d 507, 508 (Fla. 2d DCA 1981) (emphasis in original). Consequently, the City's inspection and certification of buildings within its borders is an operational level activity, for which it may be subject to tort liability under section 768.28, Florida Statutes."

Trianon Park v. City of Hialeah, 423 So. 2d 911 | Casetext Search + Citator

I cannot underscore enough what a really dumb and incompetent decision it was not to include the City of Surfside in the lawsuit. Putting the City in as a defendant was important, because clearly it was within the building inspector Rosendo Prieto's knowledge to know that the 2018 engineering report had identified some pretty serious code violations and that as an inspector it was his duty to take action to enforce the code. Though the City's liability would be capped at a 300k total, there is a loophole in the statute (see my last post). The residents would get whatever the judgment is, and then go to the legislature. The legislature would have to authorize the pay-out and I am sure they would be inclined to do so if they wanted to get re-elected. Kohn still has time to get with the program and amend the initial complaint to include the town of surfside but there's no excuse for them not to be in there already. I'd also consider it equally as incompetent if the Homeowner's Association failed to file a third-party complaint against the Town of Surfside in response to Kohn's complaint.

I'd also love to see the State pick this up and charge Rossendo Prieto with negligent homicide (ala Aeroperu Flight 603). This is not the first time a building has collapsed under his watch, just now there's over a hundred more dead. Prieto was front and center during the Biscayne Kennel Club collapse and as an inspector then gave the job to his buddy and unlicensed contractor Thomas Schwab of Cuyahoga Wrecking. Thomas Schwab was as big of a crook as there got in that business laundering money for "the biggest drug dealer ever arrested in Broward County" Castor Gonzalez. No doubt that would have been another juicy kickback into Rosendo's greasy palms had the Biscayne Kennel Club not collapsed and killed Thomas Schwab's two brothers, injured a bunch of others

WNY NATIVE ACCUSED OF LAUNDERING DRUG MONEY | Latest Headlines | buffalonews.com

 

[typologyenthusiast]

This is the video