Maya Washburn / Asst. News Director
An FIU professor found that the ground underneath the Champlain Towers South condominium was sinking in a study he published a year ago. The number of missing, wounded and dead from the building collapse in Surfside has risen overnight.
120 people are accounted for, 159 are missing and four are confirmed dead, according to Daniella Levine Cava, Miami-Dade County Mayor.
Cava said in a press release the numbers are fluid and not certain at this time. Three were added to the death toll as their bodies were found among the rubble overnight.
“We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope that we will find people alive,” said Cava to the Miami New Times. “That is why we’re using our dogs and our sonar and our cameras, everything possible, to seek places where there may still be people to be found.”
The 40-year building located at 8777 Collins Avenue began its recertification inspection process just a day before the collapse, said Charles Kesl, Surfside commissioner, to Local 10.
Shimon Wdowinski, an environment professor at FIU, conducted a study in 2020 that looked at areas subject to catastrophic coastal flooding, focusing on Miami Beach, Florida, and Norfolk, Virginia.
Wdowinski said his study detected land subsidence, which is sinking of the ground’s surface, at Champlain Towers South condominium with data collected between 1993 to 1999, in an interview with FIU News.
Miami Beach, that stands in wetlands, subsided one to three millimeters per year in the 1990s, said Wdowinski.
“In most cases, the buildings just move…there is no catastrophic collapse like in the case here in Surfside, which was very unfortunate,” said Wdowinski.
Wdowinski explained that movement of the ground beneath a structure can cause cracks in the structure of a building. He determined there was movement under the Champlain Towers building in the 1990s.
“What I was studying reported that there was some movement in the building, whether it’s because of the ground underneath, or because of some failure of a practice that was formed in a building in the 1990s,” said Wdowinski.
Atorod Azizinamini, an FIU engineering professor, ruled out the possibility of age being the cause of the 1981 building collapse in an interview video with the university yesterday.
“I wouldn’t say age is a factor at all,” said Azizinamini. “My guess would be that there are some other factors possible in this case, but it’s too early.”
Azizinamini said that the biggest mistake one could make immediately after a building collapse is trying to pinpoint the exact cause.
“That’s not the scientific way, that’s not the way engineers look at the problem,” said Azizinamini who explained environmental factors could have corroded the building.
Tragedies like the Chaplain towers are prevented by inspection, not by prevention, because in Florida, “a non-seismic area, we don’t design the buildings for the progressive collapse,” Azizinamini said.
Miami-Dade set up a family reunification center at 9302 Collins Ave and a hotline at 305-614-1819 for family and friends searching for their loved ones.
About Post Author
