By Marclle Dibrell

The Surfside, Florida, condominium that collapsed in June 2021, killing 98 people, had a defective pool deck and failed to meet other codes, according to preliminary reports from federal investigators.

This June, investigators reporting to the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the collapse of the Champlain Towers South said that the pool deck had many areas with severe strength deficiency and also did not comply with the code standards from when it was originally built.

Officials leading the investigation have presented dozens of hypotheses on how the collapse may have started. But the defective pool deck is “somewhat of a leading hypothesis,” according to Jack Moehle, one of the investigators.

“The conditions that existed in the pool deck slab at that time represented a serious safety concern for the building,” said Glenn Bell, another investigator reviewing the collapse.

Investigators said that the pool deck’s design lacked sufficient strength between its supporting

Images from Morabito Consultants Inc., 2018 Structural Engineering Report of the field survey completed at the (then) existing Champlain Towers South Condominium Complex in Surfside, Florida. https://www.wfla.com/wp-content/ uploads/sites/71/2021/06/8777-collins-ave-structural-field-survey-report.pdf columns and that the design provided only half of the strength required by the original codes.

And while the weak pool deck is the leading theory on what caused the collapse, investigators are still exploring other possibilities.

Investigators are considering whether the collapse started in the tower, where heavily loaded columns showed construction deficiencies.

And while there is no evidence to support such an explanation, they are also looking into whether an unusual occurrence may have set off the collapse, such as a car striking a column in the basement or an underground explosion.

Officials still have many months of work before reaching a conclusion about what caused the collapse and have described it as one of the most complex inquiries of its kind because there was no obvious cause.

The investigation has included interviews with witnesses, review of historical records, building materials testing, and model productions.

Review of a 2018 engineering report on the building yielded conflicting messages. On the one hand, the report warned the condo association that there was a major error in its design that allowed water to pool at its base. But another report by the same firm gave the building its top grade on several items.

Residents complained of leaks and, in the months leading up to the collapse, voiced worries about vibrations from the construction work that was going on next door. Residents said the shaking in the building was “ridiculous.”

Meanwhile, the owners of the building fought over paying for the repairs and put them off. They were aware that extensive repairs were needed for the building’s 40-year recertification, but there was nothing in the 2018 report to indicate that the building was at risk of complete structural failure or was unsafe for occupation.

Champlain Towers South was a 136-unit condominium designed in the late ‘70s, completed in 1981, and marketed as luxury living. As a beachfront building made of reinforced concrete, the ocean was a real source of danger because saltwater seeping through the concrete was causing the steel rebar to rust. Adding insult to injury, the tower’s original architectural plans called for only 0.75 inches of cover in floor slabs, as opposed to the 1.5 inches that were required by the building code at the time. That meant it was even more vulnerable to corrosion.

The 2018 inspection reported finding no waterproofing — which has been recommended by the American Concrete Institute since the late 1970s — in parts of the ground slab. Frank Morabito, president of Morabito Consultants, which was hired for the inspection, wrote that failed waterproofing “is causing major structural damage” and that the damage would “expand exponentially” unless it was fixed.

But the owners of Champlain Towers South were dragging their feet on making structural repairs such as replacing pool deck waterproofing and other fixes, fighting with each other because the total cost had increased to greater than $16 million.

A March 2020 report from Association Reserves, a company that analyzes housing association finances, warned the condo association a year before the collapse that they were critically underfunded to pay for the urgently needed structural repairs.

They eventually received a $12 million loan. In April 2021 the association board moved to levy a $15 million special assessment on condo owners to raise the money to pay it back.

They were all set to pay their shares, ranging from $80,000 to $336,000 each, the week after the building collapsed.

Following the collapse, Florida enacted legislation requiring condos to pass milestone structural inspections and to fully fund their reserves.