Look into that $15 million repair bill
Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Monday she’ll ask a grand jury to examine safety issues raised by the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo complex in Surfside.
That’s the right thing to do. We can think of no more critical an issue right now to this community than addressing the root causes of this horrific building failure, as we said recently in urging a grand jury review.
The Surfside disaster may become the deadliest accidental building collapse in U.S. history. There will be a lot for a jury to consider.
Jurors may want to start with this: a letter written by the condo association president to residents less than three months before the building fell down. The letter said that damage in the garage had gotten “significantly worse” since a 2018 report and that deterioration of concrete was “accelerating.” The president, Jean Wodnicki, explained in the letter, published by USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, that condo owners would have to pay $15 million in assessments for the extensive construction projects as part of major maintenance and repairs.
We don’t know yet if that maintenance work — the roof was undergoing repairs — or some other set of factors caused the condo to buckle. But that letter, as as well as photos published by the Miami Herald of standing water, cracking concrete and corroded rebar taken two days before the collapse, sure sound like there were grave problems at the beachfront, 1980s-era high-rise.
Florida has been marketed for decades as a place to go where life is easy — no income tax, no snow, sunshine every day.
Condo life takes that rosy image a step further: no more mundane exterior home maintenance. Someone else mows the lawn and paints the building. A condo association handles the bigger stuff.
Condo associations, though, have been notorious pennypinchers in this state. Many condominiums have residents on fixed incomes. Other owners, from the United States and
Latin America, use their condos as second homes. Condo owners often push back on expenses. Condo associations have also sometimes been less than transparent on basic matters such as disputes, finances and maintenance.
In the case of Champlain Towers South, the required Miami-Dade 40-year structural review was under way — and had even started early. The condo association had been moving forward with the repairs that had been identified. The association president seemed to be communicating with residents about the need for maintenance.
What else should have been done? Do we need more frequent inspections of older buildings? More vigorous ones? Should climate change speed up our inspection timetable?
Miami-Dade grand juries can investigate issues of great public importance — lax building practices exposed by Hurricane Andrew, for example — and they can do so swiftly. The first of two Hurricane Andrew grand jury reports was issued just four months after the storm and it helped shape building code reforms that followed.
The Surfside collapse is similarly urgent and likely to have long-lasting and broad ramifications, affecting condo owners across the state and perhaps beyond. For the victims and their families, a grand jury investigation is just the start of what they are owed.
As we continue the agonizing recovery of bodies and continue to hope for survivors, we must also lay the groundwork for all the investigations to follow.
A grand jury will be key to finding those answers. So will reviews of older condo buildings by the county and cities including Miami Beach. President Biden, who plans to visit Surfside on Thursday, has pledged to support an expansive federal investigation as well.
None of this alleviates the pain we feel in Miami at this terrible moment. None of it will help those who lost their lives or the families and friends suffering now. But as we wait and pray and agonize, we must also resolve to openly and fully investigate to make sure this never happens again.