Surfside Condo Collapse A Coastal Wake Up Call?

One of the great understatements is WSJ’s headline, “Miami-area Champlain Towers South condo collapse raises safety concerns over seaside construction.”

“Buildings like this do not fall in America,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told Fox’s Tucker Carlson. “This is a third-world phenomenon and it’s shocking.” The mayor eerily added the “disturbing” collapse was “reminiscent of the fall of the Twin Towers in New York City following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, as far as the way the structure crumbled in moments.” But, there was no jet liner crashing into the 12-story high rise before it “tumbled out of the sky without warning.”

State Senator Annette Taddeo was probably more helpful if not spot on in tweeting: “Buildings need to be inspected much sooner than 40 years [as now required], especially in a county where sea level rise can affect a foundation…” In fact, Fox noted, a 2020 study on sea level rise & sinking land in buildings in Miami, Fla & Norfolk Va found that “some structures in the seaside cities were losing about 1 to 3 mm per year since the 1990s; most of the risk was found on reclaimed marshlands.” These coastal hi-rise foundations, then, may not be embedded as well into solid rock like, e.g., the legendary skyscrapers are in Sweet Home Chicago. Once a slippage of any degree starts, is it hard to imagine how a cascading collapse might happen?

Davd Soul