Victims remembered 3 years after tragedy – NBC 6 South Florida

It has been three years since the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside claimed the lives of 98 people.

As friends and family continue to grieve their losses, overnight, the town of Surfside honored the lives of those gone too soon with a torch lighting ceremony at 1:22 a.m. — the exact moment of the collapse.

Surfside Vice Mayor Tina Paul along with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue came together to light the ceremonial torch.

Loved ones were also present as officials read the names of the 98 people who died on that fateful day.

“While many across our nation continue their lives as usual, our community is reminded of the pain of losing loved ones to an unprecedented and tragic incident that Surfside will never forget. In 2021, the condominium collapse claimed 98 lives, and although time passes, the void left in the hearts of countless families and friends remains,” said Rep. Frederica Wilson in a statement Monday. “June 24, 2021, is a day forever etched in the minds and souls of the entire Surfside community. However, that incident also demonstrated to the world the strength and resilience of our community as we came together. I’m proud to represent Surfside and to see the strength of Surfside firsthand.

On Monday, at about 9:45 a.m. the Miami-Dade Police Aviation Unit will have a memorial flyover at Veteran’s Park and after, family members and officials will share remarks and remember the victims.

Back in May, for the first time, engineers who investigated the collapse went public with the evidence they say points to where the first failure in the structure occurred just minutes before the building came down.

What led to the collapse?

Engineers form the Chicago-based national engineering firm Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates were hired by the court-appointed receiver for the condo association to investigate the collapse.

On May 21, they released a webinar on their website detailing their findings.

Matthew Fadden, a WJE associate principal in the firm’s Fort Lauderdale office, told the NBC6 Investigators the cause of the collapse could not be laid to one thing or person.

“No, no. There never is with anything like this, right?” he said.

The engineers agree with preliminary reports from federal investigators with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who have cited several issues: flawed designs that overloaded certain areas of the structure; construction that did not meet building codes; additions and modifications to the building over its 40 years that made matters worse; and the degradation of certain critical areas.

And, like NIST, the WJE team focused on the pool deck that witnesses said was the first part of the building to fail, some seven to 12 minutes before the first part of the tower collapsed at 1:22 a.m. June 24, 2021.

But the exact location of the initial failure has yet to be determined by NIST, which is expected to take another year or more to issue its conclusion.

In its webinar, and in an interview with NBC6 Friday, Madden laid out his team’s best conclusion.

“There were punching shear failures in the pool deck,” he said, “and that pool deck then applied loads to the building that then collapsed the structure.”

To demonstrate how punching shear works, he placed a pen beneath a sheet of paper and pushed the paper down – as gravity and loads would exert forces on a slab of concrete – until the pen punched through the paper, as a concrete column would in a punching shear failure.

And it was such a failure on the west edge of the pool deck where they think that the first failure occurred, pointing to two columns specifically: L-13.1 and K-13.1.

There have been many theories about the triggering event thrown around since the collapse — everything from a heavy object falling from the roof onto the pool deck, to a car hitting a column in the garage, to corroded steel reinforcement breaking away from where the pool deck met the south retaining wall.

But, aside from NIST, Fadden and his colleagues – in the unique position of working for what remained of condo association itself — have been closest to the evidence that led to their conclusion as of now.