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He wanted to head home to Champlain Towers. His girlfriend wanted him to stay. She may have saved his life.

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There was nothing unusual about the lobby and pool area at Champlain Towers South condo, which looked clean and well maintained to a commercial pool contractor who visited the building last Tuesday, just 36 hours before half of the building unexpectedly collapsed. Then, he saw the basement-level garage.

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool.

He also took photos, which he shared with the Herald.

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Originally posted by wtg:

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There was nothing unusual about the lobby and pool area at Champlain Towers South condo, which looked clean and well maintained to a commercial pool contractor who visited the building last Tuesday, just 36 hours before half of the building unexpectedly collapsed. Then, he saw the basement-level garage.

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool.

He also took photos, which he shared with the Herald.

Photos here:

https://www.miamiherald.com/ne...rticle252421658.html

I think the picture of what happened may be getting clearer....

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Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
Wouldn’t it take more than a few corroded concrete beams to have a whole building fail?

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Nearly a week since the horrible collapse of the Champlain Towers South, a new video has emerged showing the building moments before it went down.

In the video, the camera is pointed at the garage of the building, and water and debris can be seen falling.

This is significant because it potentially corroborates reports from a valet and resident of the building who described the same scene on the morning of the collapse.

It also fits in with an engineer’s report from 2018 that documents corroding rebar and failing concrete in the same garage area.

The video, which can be seen at the top of this page, was taken at 1:18 a.m. on Thursday, June 24.

It was less than ten minutes later when a large portion of the residential building came crumbling to the ground.

Search and rescue efforts have been going on around the clock since that morning. So far, officials have confirmed that 18 people have died while 145 remain unaccounted for.

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A week after the partial collapse of a Miami Beach-area condo building, search and rescue crews paused their work early Thursday over fears that the other half of the building might come down.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said operations were halted over "concerns about the standing structure." She said the families of those missing were informed, and the "search and rescue operation will continue as soon as it is safe to do so."

Fire Chief Alan R. Cominsky said "slight movement in the concrete floor slabs near north and south corner of the building that could cause additional failure of the building moving in the debris pile" forced the temporary stop at 2:11 a.m.

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Engineers who have visited or examined photos of the wreckage of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex have been struck by a possible flaw in its construction: Critical places near the base of the building appeared to use less steel reinforcement than called for in the project’s original design drawings....

Reached by phone, Allyn E. Kilsheimer, a forensic engineering expert hired by the town of Surfside to investigate the collapse, said the investigation was still in its early stages. But he confirmed there were signs that the amount of steel used to connect concrete slabs below a parking deck to the building’s vertical columns might be less than what the project’s initial plans specified.

“The bars might not be arranged like the original drawings call for,” Mr. Kilsheimer said in an interview. He said he would need to inspect the rubble more closely to determine whether in fact the slab-to-column connections contained less steel than expected.

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They're taking the rest of the building down before the tropical storm hits.

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he confirmed there were signs that the amount of steel used to connect concrete slabs below a parking deck to the building’s vertical columns might be less than what the project’s initial plans specified.

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'Should We Sell?' After Collapse, Hot Florida Market Faces Uncertainty

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“No one ever asked about a 40-year recertification before,” Ines Hegedus-Garcia, a real estate agent with Avanti Way Realty in South Florida, said of the process of assessing the structural condition of buildings constructed decades ago. “Nobody ever did that, but buyers are now asking for that.”