The deadly destruction of a Florida beachfront condominium actually started weeks before it collapsed into a pile of rubble in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in 2021, but the building had been vulnerable from the start, federal investigators found in a final report issued Monday.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology said in the report that two connections between garage columns and the pool deck started to fail around early June. The combination of a structure design that did not meet building codes and alterations made to it over its 40 years meant that the other parts of the pool deck weren’t strong enough to withstand the extra load, leading to the type of slow-motion collapse.
Photos taken by people at the building in the weeks before the collapse show a long crack in a planter wall on the pool deck as well as cracks in the corner where the planter wall met a planter box, according to the NIST report. Less than a day before the collapse, that planter had detached from the pool deck.
About one week before the tower collapsed, water that had been leaking from a ceiling in the parking garage increased, according to NIST. A few hours before the destruction, one person interviewed by investigators described it as a “water faucet.”
People in the building described seeing the pool deck collapsing, “one bay at a time as if dominoes were falling in a sequential chain reaction,” said Mitrani-Reiser. Some said they felt a sudden wind in the lobby and others heard sounds like a “jet engine.”