‘Are we next?’ Worried high-rise dwellers take photos, seek answers after Surfside tragedy
Miami Beach residents at Maison Grande Condominium are concerned about cracks and exposed rebar in the garage of their building after the Surfside condo collapse.
After the Champlain Towers South Condo collapsed a couple of miles away from his home, Miami Beach resident Dan
Ribeiro began feverishly snapping photos of what he said were concerning conditions in the garage of his high-rise — a condo taller and older than the one that partially collapsed in Surfside.
He is so worried about the cracked concrete, rusted steel and water leaking inside the garage of the Maison Grande Condominium that he now has a “go-bag” by the front door with essential documents, a change of clothes for him and his wife and gift cards for hotel stays.
“It’s just scary,” Ribeiro, 39, said.
Second to the grief that South Floridians feel for those who died in the Surfside collapse and their families, a feeling of uneasiness has washed over some residents living in older, waterfront condo towers. They are now sounding the alarm about what they fear may be potentially perilous conditions in their buildings.
On Friday, residents living in a North Miami Beach condo were ordered to evacuate after an inspection report found that the 10-story building was not safe.
Spooked condo dwellers across South Florida have contacted their building associations or local municipalities seeking updates on planned renovations, or assurances that their high-rise homes are safe. Others shared photos and videos on social media of garages with deteriorating concrete and rust, drawing comparisons to widely shared photos taken inside the Champlain Towers South building before it fell, killing at least 24 people and leaving scores missing.
“I’m getting hundreds of those,” said structural engineer Allyn Kilsheimer, who reviewed photos of the Maison Grande Condo garage at the request of the Miami Herald. Kilsheimer, whose firm KCE has consulted on other disasters like the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and the FIU bridge collapse, was hired by the town of Surfside last week to investigate the Champlain Towers South collapse. He has since been contacted by residents and condo boards seeking advice about the condition of their buildings.
Kilsheimer said he could see cracks in the concrete, rusted rebar and water penetration at the Maison Grande but stressed it was impossible to judge a building’s integrity based solely on photos or videos. First, an inspector needs building plans to see where a particular crack or piece of exposed rebar is located in relation to columns or other architectural elements. If the exposed steel is rusted, how much rust can be brushed away?
PERFECTLY GOOD STEEL UNDERNEATH
Sometimes, Kilsheimer says, an engineer will find perfectly good steel underneath the rust.
“When reinforcing, or steel, rusts it expands, so when you look at that rust it looks really bad but when you take the surface rust off it might be great bright metal underneath. ...” he said. “On the other hand, when you go to the wire brush you can sit there and you wire brush the whole bar out.”
His advice for condo residents worried about their buildings: Make sure a structural engineer comes in to inspect.
“I’m trying to get them less than panicked,” he said.
Worried condo residents point to photos taken at the Champlain Towers South, which showed cracked concrete, corroded rebar and standing water under the doomed building’s pool just two days before its collapse on June 24. Some residents note that their building is set up just like the Champlain — with a pool deck above a parking garage — and that they, too, have noticed cracks, corrosion and water penetration.
“The pictures that they showed, it’s much better than my building,” said Ribeiro, who lives on the eight floor of the Maison Grande facing the pool deck.
Lilly Allen Sanchez, president of the board at the Maison Grande, said her residents have nothing to worry about. Sanchez, who was elected in February, said the condo is already under contract to begin concrete restoration work in the garage but that the city of Miami Beach has delayed approving its permit.
Sanchez held a town hall meeting Thursday at which she accused some residents of stirring panic after the Surfside collapse and spreading “inaccurate” information. She said residents should have come to the building with any concerns instead of sharing photos on social media or speaking with reporters.
“I think that when people take a horrific incident like what happened in Surfside and then use it to sensationalize and alarm a community of residents and the building, it’s a shame on them. They’re not the type of people that we would even want in our building,” she said at the event, a recording of which was obtained by the Miami Herald.
Sanchez told the Herald that unflattering images of the 50-year-old building don’t necessarily mean the structure is at risk of failure. She used the example of a hard-boiled egg: The shell may be cracking, but the yolk remains firm inside. And she said, statistically, the buildings in South Florida are largely safe.
“We don’t have buildings falling all around us,” she said.
But for residents of the Maison Grande, problems with the building are hard to ignore. A red tag from the city hangs outside the front door advising the public of an “unsafe structures” violation there. The citation was first issued last November for unpermitted work, a city spokeswoman said.
“We use a red placard when a building violation is posted, which provides the language ‘unsafe structure’ per the County Code,” spokeswoman Melissa Berthier said. “This does not necessarily mean the building is unsafe or in imminent danger.”
The building, which was constructed in 1971, applied for a recertification permit in May and has 90 days to submit an inspection report to the city, she added. The city did not respond to a request for comment about possible permit delays Sanchez said were holding back her project.
A 2019 engineering report commissioned by the building, first reported by WPLG Local 10 News, found that the conditions of the parking garage and pool deck “have reached the end of their useful life and require repair, replacement, a combination thereof. ...”
“Everybody has to understand that just because it doesn’t look pretty doesn’t mean that you have an interior integrity issue,” Sanchez said.
The Maison Grande isn’t the only condo association combating negative press after complaints about maintenance in their buildings. The Towers of Key Biscayne demanded a retraction Wednesday after a popular Instagram page shared a video of a long crevice along the ceiling of its garage. The post, which received more than 24,000 likes, referred to it as a “RED FLAG.”
No, it isn’t, says architect Jeffrey Zephir, who visited the garage Wednesday at the request of the condo association. The mark running along the ceiling is not a crack, but an expansion joint, he said, a component which is meant to absorb thermal expansion in buildings. Zephir’s memo was later posted to the Instagram page, along with a statement from the Towers of Key Biscayne:
“We are disappointed that someone posted anonymously a video implying a structural problem at Towers of Key Biscayne without first asking the building’s management about it,” the statement reads. “The video shows a picture of an expansion joint, not a crack in the concrete, that is designed to allow the building to expand and contract.”
Key Biscayne Village Manager Steve Williamson, who met with the property manager after the video went viral, said the village formed a task force Monday to field similar reports and work with building managers to ensure everything is above board.
“Whoever filmed it really filmed it close, so you didn’t get the whole context of what it is,” Williamson said. “It was a poor cement job, nothing structural.”
Since the Surfside collapse, some local governments in Miami-Dade and Broward counties have called for a sweeping review of some older buildings. Municipalities have sent inspectors to check on buildings or sent notices to property owners asking for inspection reports.
The city of North Miami Beach on Friday ordered the Crestview Towers Condominium to close immediately, displacing dozens of residents. City officials said a January inspection report found that the building was not safe for occupancy due to structural and electrical issues.
The 1972 building appeared to have missed or skipped its 40-year recertification, which would have been due in 2012, said Willis Howard, chief of staff to City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey. The inspections that led to the January report began last August.
The 40-year recertification is a county rule that requires building owners to submit reports from licensed engineers or architects certifying a building’s safety or documenting needed repairs after 40 years. Recertification is required every 10 years after that.
“It had been pending for years,” he said, adding the association was fined for every year that it missed filing the report.
“They were seeing how long they could kick the can down the road.”
Miami-Dade’s homeless agency said it would house dozens of the residents in a makeshift shelter in a county-owned pavilion on the grounds of the Youth Fair complex off of the Florida Turnpike and Coral Way.
FROM MIAMI TO BROWARD, RESIDENTS WANT GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT
For Sherman Rattner, president of the tenants association for the Stanley Axelrod Towers in Miami, government action can’t come quickly enough.
The Axelrod towers, a 270-unit affordable housing project for seniors at 1809 Brickell Ave., was due for its 40-year recertification in 2016 and still hasn’t completed it. Now Rattner and other residents are questioning whether their building is safe.
The building, which was constructed in 1967, was issued three three separate citations by the city in the past few years: an Unsafe Structure citation in 2015, a citation for failing to obtain a 40-year recertification in 2016, and a third citation for failing to address issues with its seawall in 2018.
“We keep telling the building’s owners and the city that these conditions are unsafe,” Rattner said. “There are documents to back this up. And now after the Surfside collapse, I can’t stop thinking that this could so easily have been us.”
Nearby, at the Isola Brickell Key condominiums, residents have reported that their basement floods, there are cracks in the concrete and metal supports now hold up the ceiling of the garage.
Jose Guerrero, who lives at the relatively new bayfront condo, said the conditions at the building remind him of the Champlain Towers South.
“The funny thing is that the condo is making improvements changing the carpets and repainting instead of urgently looking into this problem,” he said.
Neither developer Paulo Tavares de Melo, who owns the Stanley Axelrod Towers, nor representatives for the Isola Brickell Key responded to requests for comment.
David Haber, a construction law attorney with Haber Law, said that in his experience working in South Florida, political infighting in condo associations often leads to construction delays and worsening conditions of disrepair.
He said elected board members shouldn’t have sole control over whether life-safety repairs are completed on time, or at all. More accountability and legal safeguards should be enacted in the aftermath of the Champlain Towers collapse, he said.
“The boards are elected, so it’s a political process within the ownership group,” Haber said, adding that the political process often gets in the way of getting things done, especially when repairs are costly and therefore not very popular with some condo owners. “So you can be a really good board member and say, ‘We need to assess everything, we need to do this and that,’ and you’ll be off the board in three minutes.”
North of Surfside, in Hollywood, complaints against the Sea Air Towers, 3725 S. Ocean Dr., are coming both from condo owners and members of the board.
Two members of the five-person board at the oceanfront condo sent a memo to owners days after the collapse on June 27 showing photos of what they said were cracked columns, rusty steel beams and water in the garage from a leaking pool deck above. The condo was built in 1971 and will soon be due for its 50-year recertification.
They said they would “seek intervention” from Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy if the building does not hire a structural engineer to determine if the building is safe to inhabit.
“I want to know as a condo owner and board member if it’s safe to live here,” Judy Wilkerson, a board member and former president of the condo association, told the Herald.
Broward County, like Miami-Dade, has a recertification program for buildings 40 years and older. In a message to Hollywood residents, Levy said Saturday that the city will seek new fines of up to $5,000 for buildings that repeatedly violate the recertification rules. A new Recertification Taskforce will be formed in Hollywood to get all buildings to comply, especially those on the water. The city will also provide Broward County with a list of all compliant properties.
“As you may expect, the building collapse in Surfside has caused local governments to audit their building recertification programs ...” he wrote. “The city’s goal is to be evermore proactive in order to have life safety concerns identified and addressed.”
The Sea Air Towers memo said a September 2020 report by Epic Forensics listed several
“high priority” life-safety repairs the building needed to begin, including garage repairs, waterproofing and expansion joint replacement at the pool deck, roofing work and concrete restoration along the building’s façade.
The board was on track to begin work when an election happened, and the current majority on the board terminated Epic Forensics and hired a new firm to focus on the garage alone, according to the memo. The building has prioritized “beautification efforts” over the required work, the memo says.
“While we both appreciate the beautification efforts...we are deeply concerned that necessary repairs classified as critical for ‘life safety’ have been set aside,” the memo says. “We believe that priorities need to shift from beauty to safety.”
In a statement to the Herald, Board President Anna Reed said the board would hold a meeting Saturday to select a contractor to perform the work in the garage. The building is also preparing its 50-year certification, she said.
“The association is aware of the issues with the building’s garage, and we had previously obtained six bids from contractors to perform the repair work,” she said. “We recently completed all riser pipe replacements, as well as replacing all common-area glass doors with impact ones, though the garage repair remains the highest priority item for the board. This is why there has been shoring in place in the garage since late 2019. This issue has been closely monitored by the building’s engineer, ArbaEngineering. The shoring is periodically adjusted to ensure the residents’ safety. And the association presently has a line of credit with sufficient funds available to make all necessary repairs.”
Juan Pla, a unit owner whose mother also lives in the building, told the Herald that his family is “really nervous” about the conditions of the building and said it was frustrating that whether construction moves forward or not depends on the will of elected unit owners.
“By the time you get a little bit of consensus or money to fix these issues, a new board is elected,” he said. “They have their own agenda. There’s no government oversight over any of this stuff.”
Pla, who lives in New Jersey and sublets his unit, said he would like to see legislative action to strengthen protections for condo owners. If something doesn’t happen soon, he fears it may take a second collapse to spur reform.
“Two, three years down the road, nothing’s going to change and people are going to forget what happened in Surfside,” he said.
THE CITY OF NORTH MIAMI BEACH ON FRIDAY ORDERED THE CRESTVIEW TOWERS CONDOMINIUM TO CLOSE IMMEDIATELY, DISPLACING DOZENS OF RESIDENTS.