A consultant warned there was evidence of “major structural damage” below the pool deck of a Miami Beach-area condo building nearly three years before it collapsed.
As officials continue to investigate what caused the deadly collapse at Champlain Towers South, officials in the Florida city’s Surfside suburb late Friday released a trove of documents related to the building, including the consultant's October 2018 report.
The findings from consultant engineer Frank Morabito also showed there was “abundant cracking” and crumbling in the underground parking garage of the 12-story building, which suddenly collapsed as residents slept in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Morabito said the waterproofing below the pool deck and entrance drive was failing, “causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas.”
“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” he said.
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The main issues with the waterproofing, Morabito said, were that it had been “laid on a flat structure,” which had not been sloped to drain, so the water sat on the waterproofing until it evaporated. This was a “major error” by the original developers, he said.
Morabito also noted that “several sizeable spalls were noted in both the topside of the entrance drive ramp” as well as the underside of the pool, the entrance drive and planter slabs “which included instances with exposed, deteriorating rebar.”
“Visual observations revealed that many of the previous garage concrete repairs are failing resulting in additional concrete cracking, spalling and leaching of calcium carbonate deposits,” he said, adding that he was “convinced that the previously installed epoxy injection repairs were ineffective in properly repairing the existing cracked and spalled concrete slabs.”
Morabito went on to recommend that concrete slabs, which were “showing distress” by the entrance and pool deck, “be removed and replaced in their entirety.”
“Unfortunately, all of these failed slab areas are under brick pavers, decorative stamped concrete and planters which require completed waterproofing replacement,” he said.
Morabito gave no indication that the building was in imminent danger, but he said that it needed repairs, which would be aimed at maintaining the building’s structural integrity.
“Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion,” he said.
Morabito Consultants said in a statement that it was "working closely with the investigating authorities to understand why the structure failed."
Officials said Saturday that five people had been confirmed dead and 156 were unaccounted for.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at news conference Saturday that she was not aware of the 2018 report.
In an interview with NBC's "TODAY" show, she said investigators and structural engineers will look into all potential causes of the collapse.
“We have hope, and we need to continue to focus on that,” Levine Cava said. “We are going to get to the bottom of this and find answers and prevent it from ever happening again.”
Moshe Candiotti, who survived Thursday's collapse, said he was never made aware that the building could have structural issues when he moved in 14 months ago. Told about the 2018 report, the 67-year-old asked why the building wasn’t shut down.
Inside the Grand Beach Hotel Surfside lobby on Saturday, where family members and friends of those unaccounted for huddled around a television to hear what Levine Cava had to say, Mike Dboss said Surfside officials "should be ashamed themselves" after the release of the report.
"But we’re not about to point fingers," said Dboss, whose uncle and two cousins are among those unaccounted for. "Right now, we’re focused on rescue. I believe that God can make miracles and each and every one of those human beings sitting in the rubble can and will come out alive."
The rescue effort has been made difficult due to an ongoing fire underneath the rubble.
"It's a very deep fire," Levine Cava said. "It's extremely difficult to locate the source of the fire. So, they've been working around the clock, these fire rescue teams, these brave men and women, under the rubble to fix this problem so they can get on, but it is hampering our search efforts."
Since the fire started, it has spread laterally throughout the pile, she said.
"Obviously, the smoke itself is the biggest barrier right now to proceeding in those areas. So, we created a trench using heavy equipment to try to isolate the fire and continue searching for victims in the part of the pile that we can access," the mayor said. "No further victims have been found."
As search and rescue teams continued their round-the-clock hunt for survivors in the unstable mountain of debris, cranes and other heavy equipment were moved to the site of the disaster.
Teams also continued to tunnel into the site and dogs, sonar and cameras were deployed. Personnel from Mexico and Israel have arrived to help.
However, authorities had no insight Friday on what caused 55 of the 136 units in the Champlain Towers South's northeast corridor to collapse.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology said it was sending a team of six to the site of the collapse, according to Jennifer Huergo, a spokesperson for the federal agency.
After the team does its initial assessment, it will decide whether to do a complete investigation that would likely inform future building codes — the kind of work that was done after terrorists brought down the World Trade Center’s twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, she said.
