Engineer found ‘major structural damage’ at condo 3 years before collapse

SURFSIDE, Fla. — An engineering consultant warned of “major structural damage” at the lower level of the condo tower in Surfside, three years before the building’s collapse this week.

No additional survivors were found overnight at the collapsed tower, but the rescue effort is continuing, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Cava said Saturday morning. Smoke from a persistent fire continues to hamper the work.

The number of missing remained 159, although officials have said some of the people unaccounted for may not have been in the building. The confirmed death toll remained at four.

A 2018 report to the condo association by Morabito Consultants said “failed waterproofing” below the pool deck and entrance drive at Champlain Towers South had led to significant deterioration of the concrete. Replacing the waterproofing would be “extremely expensive,” the report stated, because it would require removal of the concrete slab above it.

“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” said the report, which was signed by Frank Morabito, the company’s president.

The report was posted on the Town of Surfside’s website, along with inspection reports and other documents on the collapsed building. It’s unclear whether the damage identified in the report was addressed by the condo association or whether it had anything to do with the building’s collapse, which experts have said will require extensive investigation and may involve multiple causes.

The report identified a “major error” in the building’s construction that left it open to water damage. The concrete slab beneath the pool and entrance drive was not sloped, which allowed water to pool on top of it until it evaporated.

Permits posted on the town’s website gave no indication that any work was done to address these defects.

At the Saturday morning news conference, Cava said the county wasn’t aware of the warning in the engineer’s report.

“We are obviously very interested in all of the evidence that’s coming to light and we’re going to be including it in what happens after the rescue,” she said. “In the meantime, we’re taking actions to make sure other buildings are safe.”

Miami-Dade County will conduct an “audit of all buildings at the 40-year point and beyond” over the next 30 days, she said. She and DeSantis said a sister building to the one that collapsed stands in Surfside, having been built by the same developer.

Despite the lack of results overnight, Cava said the rescue work would go on.

“We are continuing our search and rescuers because our first responders believe there’s still a possibility,” she said. “There are crevices, so there is air. They’re able to pick through. But right now obviously we’re trying to stabilize the situation because of the fire and the smoke.”

Using heavy machinery, microphones and search dogs, exhausted rescue workers labored under heavy rain to find survivors in the rubble of the Champlain Towers South condo.

At a family reunification center set up at the Grand Beach Hotel, the crowd was noticeably smaller than it was Thursday.

“I believe in God’s faith and miracles and the power of prayer,” said Magaly Ramsey, whose mother, Magaly Delgado, is missing, outside the reunification center. “And I have so many family and friends praying. I hope for the best, but at the same time, if she has left this earth, she’s in peace and in God’s arms, and that’s a good outcome in that way and she didn’t feel anything.”

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, speaking at a Friday evening news conference, said the death toll remained four and the number of people accounted for climbed from 120 to 127. The number unaccounted for remained 159, although this does not necessarily mean they had been in the building at the time.

Cava said search-and-rescue teams have experienced some encouraging signs so far, including “knocking sounds.” These teams have found people in other tragedies still alive in rubble for a week or so after the event, Cava said.

“They see fissures that they could go in. They see places that they could break through,” Cava said.

Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said the search and rescue teams are continuing to use video cameras, sonar equipment and dogs to find any potential survivors. Large cranes to help remove debris are being brought in starting Friday night, Cominsky said. One crane will be set up Friday night.

The first victim to be identified was Stacie Fang, 54, whose son had been rescued after being heard yelling from under the rubble, according to WSVN-Ch. 7, which cited the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner. She died at Aventura Hospital from blunt force injuries.

Outside the family reunification center, Sergio Barth waited for news of his brother Luis, Luis’ wife Catalina Gomez and their teenage daughter Valeria, who were visiting the U.S. from Colombia. They had been in a second-floor apartment when the tower collapsed.

“We were really close,” he said. “That was my only brother and my only niece.”

All he can do, he said, is hope.

“Trusting in God,” he said. “Any miracle, not only for me, for all the families suffering the same.”

The crowds at the site swelled Friday evening, with volunteers distributing water, peanuts and sandwiches to police officers, journalists and onlookers.

Two prayer groups assembled, among them an eight-member contingent from Calvary Chapel Miami who came to offer encouragement to the rescuers.

“We’re very blessed to be there to pray over the officers and fire department detail,” said group member Erica Sommer.

Rabbi Laivi Forta of Aventura Chabad synagogue said Friday afternoon he was “praying for a miracle” with seven members and relatives of members still missing.

“Just tragic, tragic, tragic,” Forta said. “Devastating.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis said the residents and the people of Florida deserved to know how a building could just collapse.

“We need a definitive explanation for how this could have happened,” he said Friday in a news conference near the site. “And that’s an explanation that needs to be an accurate explanation. It’s an explanation that we don’t want to get wrong, obviously, but at the same time I think it’s important that it’s timely.”

President Joe Biden said he spoke with DeSantis and that the federal government is providing all help possible.

“We’re doing to stay with them with the disaster declaration we made, provide for everything from housing to God forbid, whether there’s a need for moratoria for the bodies to be placed,” he said at event in Washington. “It’s a tough, tough time. There’s so many people waiting.”

FEMA deployed an incident management assistance team to Florida and is sending building science experts, search and rescue technical experts and a mobile command center, the White House said. FEMA national urban search and rescue system teams have been placed on alert.

Cava said at a Friday morning news conference that rescue crews were working at “extraordinary risk” of injury from debris in the hope of finding survivors, she said.

“We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope there are people alive,” she said.

The cause of the building’s collapse remained a mystery, although theories included the instability of the slowly sinking land on the site.

The first lawsuit over the collapse has been filed, on behalf of Manuel Drezner, owner of a 10th-floor condo, who was not in the building at the time, according to Brad Sohn, one of his lawyers.

Records show Drezner shared apartment 1009, a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, with his wife.

“He wasn’t there at the unit — which saved his life,” Sohn said.

Sohn said he is likely to add other clients and claims.

The suit cited public statements made Thursday by condo association attorney Ken Direktor, who told the New York Times that an engineer hired for the condo’s 40-year inspection had spotted damaged concrete and rusted steel. But Direktor also said there was no suggestion those problems prompted the collapse.

Direktor did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Condo association lawyer Donna DiMaggio Berger told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the Champlain Towers South condo was undergoing roof work at the time of its partial collapse after an engineer who conducted its 40-year inspection made it a priority because the 2021 hurricane season began.

“The roof was the first because we’re in a hurricane season,” DiMaggio Berger said. “If the roof flies off, we’re not having a building.”

Berger said a preliminary report from the building’s inspection had been compiled by the engineer and submitted to the City of Surfside, which had not indicated that any additional testing was needed.

There is no indication that the roof work had anything to do with the collapse, DiMaggio Berger said.

She denounced a lawsuit filed Thursday against the associated as “despicable,” saying the association’s vice president is still missing and the president narrowly escaped the building alive.

Referring to Sohn, she said, “So Mr. Brad Sohn has managed to figure out what’s going on — even though FEMA doesn’t know and the county doesn’t know? But he has somehow figured this out?”

Rescue workers are listening for sounds from the rubble that could indicate survivors, said Raide Jadallah, assistant Miami-Dade County fire chief.

“It’s not specifically human sounds,” he said. “It could be tapping, it could be steel twisting, it could be debris raining down.”

“We have hope,” he said. “And every time that we hear a sound, we concentrate in that area. So we send additional teams utilizing the devices, utilizing K-9, utilizing personnel.”

Anguished family members entered a second day of waiting, as hope diminished of finding many survivors.

“I’m really, really hoping they’re just under the debris, and they’re maybe unconscious or maybe they just need medical attention, obviously,” Jenny Urgelles told WSVN-Ch. 7, as she awaited word of her parents, Mercy and Ray Urgelles. “I’m holding onto hope. I really am. I’m hoping that even if it takes them a couple hours, a couple days, they do find them, and I’m very just desperate to know what’s happening.”

Rabbi Raphael Tennenhaus, director of the Chabad of South Broward in Hallandale Beach, was praying his wife’s sister and her husband would still be found alive. “We are praying that God Almighty delivers big miracles,” he said.

Among the missing are the owners of Fiorelli, an upscale men’s clothing store in Weston. They include Angela Velasquez and her husband, Julio, as well as their daughter Theresa Velasquez.

At the family reunification center, volunteers distributed free water and kosher meals, which helped Jewish family members who didn’t want to leave the center.

“Someone who doesn’t eat kosher can eat kosher, but people who eat kosher can’t touch food that is not kosher,” said Joe Zevuloni a Broward County business owner who helped mobilize the volunteer effort.

One woman pulled her teenage daughter from the wreckage on Thursday, despite having broken her pelvis, according to CBS4 Miami. Angela Gonzalez fell from the ninth floor to the fifth floor along with her 16-year-old daughter Devon, but was able to rescue her child. They were taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Several groups have set up web sites to raise funds for the victims. Among them are theshul.org/8777 and supportsurfside.org, sites that were shared by Cava and DeSantis at their Friday news conferences.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district includes Surfside, said the White House would grant all of the requests for resources for families and the local governments.

Clean-up costs, housing assistance and funeral services are all expenses the federal government is ready to pay, the White House and Wasserman Schultz said. Since many residents came from other countries, Wasserman Schultz said officials are working to get visas processed quickly for family members overseas.

The missing include at least 34 Jewish people, in a part of the Miami coast that’s within walking distance of five synagogues. It includes nine Argentines, according to the Argentine Consulate in Miami. It includes six citizens of Paraguay, including siblings of that country’s first lady, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay.

Israeli media said the country’s consul general in Miami, Maor Elbaz, believes that 20 citizens of that country are missing.

Argentines Dr. Andres Galfrascoli, his husband, Fabian Nuñez, and their adopted 6-year-old daughter, Sofia, had spent Wednesday night there at an apartment belonging to a friend, Nicolas Fernandez, according to the Associated Press.

Galfrascoli, a Buenos Aires plastic surgeon, and Nuñez, a theater producer and accountant, had come to Florida to get away from COVID-19 in Argentina and its strict lockdowns.

“Of all days, they chose the worst to stay there,” said their friend, Nicolas Fernandez . “I hope it’s not the case, but if they die like this, that would be so unfair.”

Also missing was Arnie Notkin, a retired Miami-area elementary school physical education teacher, and his wife, Myriam, according to AP. They lived on the third floor.

“Everyone’s been posting, ‘Oh my God, he was my coach,’” said Fortuna Smukler, a friend who turned to Facebook in hopes of finding someone who would report them safe.

“They were also such happy, joyful people. He always had a story to tell, and she always spoke so kindly of my mother,” Smukler said. “Originally there were rumors that he had been found, but it was a case of mistaken identity. It would be a miracle if they’re found alive.”

(Sun Sentinel staff writers Susannah Bryan, Angie DiMichele, Lisa J. Huriash, David Lyons, Anthony Man and Yvonne H. Valdez and photographer Susan Stocker contributed to this report.)

———