- Hey everybody, Jeff here,
and welcome back to the channel,
where we're continuing our series
on the Champlain Tower South condo collapse
down in the Miami township of Surfside, Florida.
So in today's video,
we're going to offer up a couple of more things
to think about here,
possible stressors or contributing factors here.
I don't wanna say "root cause" or "smoking gun"
because there really isn't going to be one smoking gun.
I think there's going to be several smoking guns
in this whole root cause analysis
by the time it's all said and done,
by the time the professional PEs come in and they've...
They're finished with their core samples and their analyses.
And just a reminder folks, when you're watching our videos,
you can make it go by a lot faster
by coming down here to "Settings."
You click that, and you click "Playback Speed"
and set it to double, and it will play back twice as fast.
Just remember to set it back when you're done.
I also want to show you, right now,
my detailed, current root cause analysis
of what I think is causing it.
Before we get to that, I wanna remind you,
like I do on most of my videos now on this topic,
about if you want to help the Surfside victims,
make sure you're using the vetted websites,
the two that I've got here for you.
And I wanna make sure that these
are the only two that you use
because there's a lot of scams going on out there right now.
So the first one here is the supportsurfside.org website.
Then after that,
GoFundMe has that one section on their site for Surfside,
where those are vetted pages
that they have confirmed are real from the families.
And those are really the only two
you should be contributing to.
All right, so I'll put links to both of those
down below for you.
Okay, so this is my official root cause
of what I think caused it.
Now that the site has been cleared,
we can see everything that was going on
and where the outline of the building was.
So these columns along here are...
Most engineers agree that this is where...
Along this line, where they failed,
and it caused the front edge of this building
to just start collapsing down on itself.
But we do know that the pool deck collapsed
right along this kind of line here,
just to the left of the pool and back into here.
Okay, so there's where it collapsed first.
And we think that it took down this column when it happened
because it...
Remember, we're basing everything here
off of evidence that we've seen.
And we know that the tourist video
were shot from right over here at the pool,
at the hotel across the street,
looking down the ramp,
and they saw the pile of debris at the bottom of the ramp,
which would be right in this area.
So I think that the slab here
sort of started to disintegrate down into the garage,
and it took out this column with it.
And this column has a beam connected
to space number 27's column right there.
And we think that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
We still don't know why yet, but here's my theory on why.
Okay, now first I wanna...
I wanna clarify a few misconceptions that people have.
A lot of people fail to understand
exactly the relationship of what's going on here.
The pool deck right here sits right over a parking garage,
and the pool deck continues on
and is one continuous slab along with the first floor,
so that the building sits on top of all of that.
Forget about all of this.
I just slapped it all together.
That's not really, you know,
completely accurate to the architectural drawings.
This is not meant to be an architectural drawing.
The other misconception people have
is a lot of people think the pool
was put on top of the garage, but it wasn't.
The pool, everybody, is sitting on the floor of the garage,
and it was built up from there.
So if you're on the ground level right here
and you jump in the pool,
you're actually down, theoretically, in the garage,
and you can see the wall of this in the garage
from our friend Fiorella's video from...
That she took in the garage last year.
And you can see the walls of the pool inside the garage.
Nd in fact, there's parking space number 37 here,
right next to the pool.
See on...
So here's our map that I had created
based on the engineer Moribido's parking map here.
But you can see, there's space 37 here,
right next to the pool,
where the column is that I think failed first,
that column M10,
which I think pulled down this column here,
which started the whole house of cards.
Okay, so now that we have
all of the confusion out of the way,
let me show you how it's supposed to work.
The way the architect designed this
is you have the quarter-inch per foot slope,
and all water that lands on the deck
is supposed to slope down and go into the drain
where it goes off into the plumbing
and it gets sent off, probably, to the city
or some other storm runoff.
And I still don't think that the planters
had anything to do with it,
even though some people have said that's what I'm saying.
I think the planters were just along for the ride.
I think there was many smoking guns
that we're going to show you here.
So this is how the building was originally built.
Now let's take a look at the changes
that were done to the property.
So 1996 rolls around.
A contractor comes in,
and I don't know if they added waterproofing.
I just put it in here
because this is the way I think it should be done,
with a waterproofing membrane first.
But they came in and probably put in about an inch of sand
and then put in these pavers on top.
And then of course,
they had to redo the drain and reraise it and everything.
And so that's what you're looking at.
So my question all along, folks, has been,
"Can the pool deck support this extra weight?"
Sand weighs quite a bit.
Bricks weigh quite a bit.
And if you're not convinced about that,
let's add some more weight onto it.
So here you can see...
See this blue shaded region that I added here?
This is all the rain water that comes in,
and it now builds up through the sand
and it builds up to the top of the bricks here.
And in some of the real estate photos,
we showed you pooling water.
So remember,
the aggregate total weight of all of the water
that's sitting in the sand
waiting to percolate through and get down the drain.
And remember, the drain's up here now.
Did we forget about that, huh?
So how is it gonna drain there
unless they put weeping holes in here, like a French drain?
See, I don't think they did that.
So I think that's gonna come back to bite them in the butt
because, remember,
the drain is now up on the top of the bricks now,
when it used to be down here.
So that's an automatic obstruction to any water.
So you have water in the sand,
you have water in the cracks between the bricks
rising up to the top,
and the aggregate weight of all of this water, folks,
is 8.33 pounds per gallon,
on top of the sand on top of the weight of the bricks.
You have all of that sitting on there.
The damaging thing,
since we know from the engineering report,
that this waterproofing was either compromised
or not there at all,
that the water can get right through the concrete,
and it gets to the rebar,
which is only an inch and a quarter down into the concrete.
Makes the rebar corroded, and it starts to expand,
which causes all of that spalling that we saw,
and it causes even more of the cracks
that the engineer in 2018 said was a botched repair job,
with the epoxy that they left in there.
They had stalactites coming down out of the ceiling,
which is disturbing because the stalactites
means all of the calcium carbonate
is coming out of the concrete.
And he said that the cracks were getting worse.
To me, it was just a matter of time until it collapsed.
But even then,
no engineer would have walked in that garage and looked up
and said, "Yeah, this building's coming down tomorrow."
Nobody would've figured that.
It just...
It doesn't make sense.
All the PEs out there are still scratching their heads,
trying to figure out how could this deck collapsing
cause everything here to come apart
and have the whole house of cards come down?
Well, let's take a look.
Now, this is a gross overgeneralization,
so don't take this literally.
You know, people have come in and tried to correct me.
"Well, this wouldn't happen because, you know,
these would have been in pieces here," and blah, blah, blah.
It's just a gross overapproximation of what happened.
But what I'm trying to illustrate here
is that when this deck did his punching sheer
and came down on all of the rest of the columns,
it is likely that it broke in pieces in this area,
as we saw from the tourist video that was looking this way
and saw all of this rubble at the bottom of the ramp,
including the planter.
We think that planter landed in one piece,
or at least mostly intact.
It would tend to either rotate
or maybe pull this column down at an angle.
And remember, at this point,
you only have a 12 by 16 column.
And this column, if it gets ripped away
and nothing's holding up this end of the beam here,
the beam is gonna go down and possibly rotate
and tear this particular column out of the way.
And then it starts the whole house of cards coming down.
So this is, sort of in a nutshell,
what my theory is of what took this building down.
And of course, everybody has their own opinions of it.
And this is not guesswork.
This is not me just pulling this out of the sky.
I spent two or three weeks up 'til three or four o'clock
every single morning.
There wasn't a morning that I went to bed before 3:00 AM,
where I looked through 200-300 pages
of the architect's floor plans.
I looked through building permits.
I looked through code violation notices.
I looked through HOA meeting notes.
I looked through proposed drawings, 911 calls,
witness testimony, videos from outside the property,
and I based my forensics on all of those topics
pulled together.
This is not something I just pulled out of the sky.
And of course, as an engineer, I'm always asking questions
when I see something that doesn't add up.
So for example,
here's a photograph of the palm trees
that was taken by Google Maps in 2015.
And the one thing I couldn't help but notice
was over here, look at this...
Let's zoom into the corner here.
And why are there these two orange cones?
This is right outside the fitness center,
which takes up this area right in here,
right up in the corner.
So why do they have these cones here, folks?
Is it because of the step-down?
There's step-downs and step-ups all over the place.
Was it because water's pooling, and they're...
They need to warn people?
Just isn't normal for a condominium like this
to have orange cones out there on the pool deck.
Just more things that make me wonder.
Okay, now here's something else we need to think about too.
When this building was built in 1981
and they had all of these calculations
and they figured static loads and dynamic loads,
they were loads, at the time,
based on the way they were building
apartments and condominiums and stuff like that time.
But what about all the changes
that have been made over time?
Let's take a look at some of that.
Okay, so this right here is a photo
of one of the units that was for sale
there in the Champlain Tower South.
And this is about as close to original as you can get,
except for the floor.
I'm pretty sure they came back in,
and this is either marble or travertine floors
that they added in the kitchen.
But these are the same old stank, ugly
Formica particle board cabinets
that the builders used to give you
back in the seventies and eighties.
Even the dishwasher here looks pretty original.
And the coil stove top, this all looks original.
And the same old ugly fluorescent lighting
behind the plastic overlapping.
Oh, I just hated that.
That's the crap that the builders used to give you
back then.
So people that think that these were luxury units,
they really weren't.
When I was a kid,
I lived in condos that looked just like this.
I call those "grandma style" lighting
'cause everybody's grandmother lived in a...
When I took over a lot of my foreclosure units,
I would take over units like this one here,
you see, with that ugly grandma-style fluorescent lining,
and I would go to town with it,
just gut it and turn it into this.
So this is what I ended up with
in this particular unit here.
Completely redone and nice and modern and everything.
Back in the day, carpet was the norm.
They gave everybody carpeting back then.
So I don't even know if these units had tile in them
from the builder.
They might have, but nine...
Nine times out of 10 back then,
condos came with carpeting in them.
Everything was lighter in there.
Okay, so now you have people are coming in
and remodeling their places like crazy.
And look at what they're doing now.
Suddenly they're bringing in materials
that weren't in there decades ago.
They're bringing in these massive heavy
granite and marble dual size countertops.
These are so heavy.
These pieces take like three or four guys to carry them
because I do this all the time in my units.
And I have granite guys coming in all the time,
three or four guys to carry that.
And now look at this.
They're doing floors to ceiling marble on the walls
all the way around.
I mean, we never used to see that in the 1980s.
Take a look at this here.
This is what the builders were giving us
in the eighties and nineties.
You know, the standard, old, ugly, white,
eighth-of-an-inch thin ceramic tiles in the bathroom.
Now you've got people coming
and putting in these massive tiles
that are so heavy they can only fit six or seven in a box
because the box would be too heavy.
And then you're bringing in these massive
glass enclosures here.
All of that stuff adds up weight.
And same with the floor here.
Is that a contributing factor?
We don't know.
Maybe it was already calculated
that it can handle these kinds of loads.
We don't know,
but these are certainly things to think about.
Now, here's another one from the MLS
from February of this year.
You know, people were coming in
and having these massive closets put in.
And back in the day, you know,
the builders just gave you wire shelves.
Here, you're coming in with real wood,
and that stuff weighs a ton, man.
And here's a view of the lobby.
I mean, look at all of the marble
and the different types of tile
and marble all the way up the walls here in the lobby.
That stuff's not light.
I mean, just look at this stunning unit here.
And when you look at all of the new materials
that have been brought in
and replaced what was probably carpet back in the day
with nice marble
and the big fancy countertops and everything,
yeah, all of that stuff adds weight.
See, here's another great example here.
I'm sure that this bar
with all of this granite countertop...
And that's thick granite right there too.
That's double thick.
That's one and a half inch thick.
And then the marble floors here,
this stuff is not light, folks.
And I'm wondering what's happening over here with this door.
See, look at this MLS listing photo here.
So a lot of people added tiles
all around their massive balcony.
Some of these wrap-around balconies are just huge.
See, here it is right here.
I mean just massive amounts of tile everywhere,
and all that rain that gets blown in...
So here's what can happen out on the patios
of some of these people's units
when they put these patio tiles out there.
People think that concrete and mortar and grout
will stop water.
It doesn't; it just soaks right through.
And oftentimes,
because of the delamination that's going on with the water,
you can have your tiles pop loose.
It gets in underneath into the concrete,
where you have the water intrusion in there,
and it causes your rebar rods in there to rust.
And once they rust, they start expanding,
and it causes the concrete to crack.
Okay, so now I'm gonna show you a backup root cause.
So we have my official one already that I think is correct,
based on all of the evidence that we've looked at.
Supposing I'm wrong?
So I have a backup here for what could be
another potential root cause.
Let's take a look.
We've showed you in the past
how the ramp to the garage comes down here,
and it goes underneath Sarah Nir.
Now, she's the one that said that she went down
to go see the security guard here in the lobby
to complain about the noises she was hearing.
'Cause remember everything was falling apart
off the garage ceiling right below her unit,
so she was hearing the banging noise.
So yeah, she comes here to the security guard.
And while she's here in the lobby,
she's likely looking out these windows here,
in this direction.
Okay, so while they're standing in the lobby,
they're talking to the security guard.
They're likely looking out this way.
So this is that at grade, the ground level parking deck.
And in order for her to see the cars that would have fallen,
they would really actually be over here.
She'd have to be closer to these couches.
So let me show you that picture.
So here, if she's closer to the couches,
this is what she would see,
where you can actually now see
there's the gate and the wall to the pool deck.
And it would be these cars here...
All of these other cars remained intact.
So when she said she saw the parking garage
fall in or cave in, these...
This is all she saw.
There was nothing else over here.
And we've shown you this photograph
several times over the last few weeks.
So here you can see, 1, 2, 3, 4 cars over here
that collapsed down.
And here's the other photo that was taken the night of.
Gives you a better view here,
showing where the fourth car ended, see.
So the shearing ended right along
the side window of the lobby here.
See how it had a perfect shear right along space number 48?
And let's take a look at where that is.
So here's space number 48 right here, see,
and this is where...
This yellow shaded area
is the part of the deck that collapsed.
And it sheared perfectly right along this line right here.
And here's our view from underneath, inside the garage, see.
And there's the column for 48 right there.
Oh, there's where it sheared, right up along the top.
Here's where the deck was, see?
This was up top here, and it just dropped.
So remember, we're actually a few feet off the ground here.
This is probably sitting on other cars.
See, so looking back here in the lobby shot,
it sheared right along just outside this window here, see?
So all of the cars right up until this point...
I think it was pretty much to this column over here.
That's where it sheared.
And here's another sky view taken
immediately in the morning,
early in the morning, after the collapse.
You can see the pool is still blue.
It still has its water, and hardly any debris landed in it.
But there's where it collapsed there, see?
There's your cars.
1, 2, 3, 4.
And there's right along pole number 48 for space 48 there.
And the other cars in the parking deck here,
you can see, are still intact.
So what is our backup root cause for this condo collapse?
Okay, so if you remember that now famous garage tour video
that was shot by our lady friend Fiorella Terenzio,
she's the FIU professor...
I took from her video
and wherever we saw water in that garage,
we plotted the puddles of it
all over here on the parking garage map.
So by looking at all of the areas where we saw the water,
it's no surprise, folks, that this part,
which is where the cars were that collapsed right here...
It's no surprise that this area had quite a bit of water.
So that says to me that this deck
was probably leaking quite a bit of water
down into the garage.
And we've showed you this a few weeks ago before
in our other videos, folks.
But you recall that, at some point last year,
the engineer told the contractors
to do some discovery cuts into the pool deck
and also into the ground level parking area
to see the condition of the slab.
And we were shocked to discover that they think
that there was no waterproofing protection underneath,
and you know that this could cause the concrete
to absorb more water and weaken the concrete
and even allow the water to leak down through,
into the garage.
And so this could have also softened the concrete slab here
and made the cars fall through as well.
So this could also be another root cause failure point,
or this in conjunction with the area
that we had mentioned over here.
So remember, this is directly below the building
that survived the collapse.
This is the building here.
And the lobby, you should be somewhere right around here.
So they would be looking across the lobby
and out the windows
to see these cars that collapsed right in here.
Okay, now, do you remember the day after the collapse,
when I was down there on the beach and I took this picture
and I went live and I showed you folks
everything that was going on from the beach side?
You might remember pointed out to you
that now famous bunk bed
that's sitting up there on the penthouse floor there.
See that just hanging right by the edge,
and how everybody gasped, wondering,
"Oh man, I hope they're okay."
And I think we found out later that, you know,
luckily, there weren't any kids there.
That was the grandmother's place.
And here's another view of it I took further down the beach
with a telephoto lens.
Here's the 87 Park,
that controversial building that everybody's talking about
that they think may have been a contributing factor
to the collapse.
But here, I think I had a much better,
clearer view of that bunk bed there.
But look how that thing just barely was sitting in there.
And it actually did get a little bit damaged.
You can see.
Well, I got a little surprise for you.
So check this out.
Okay, so here is that room now with that bunk bed.
This was in the MLS system last year
for the penthouse unit here.
So that has that famous bunk bed
before the collapse happened.
A little bit of trivia for you.
We will keep you up to date
as we get more evidence and more videos.
And meanwhile,
if you missed any of our previous videos in this series,
look at this playlist right here.
And then don't forget to check over here,
this other playlist,
for bathroom remodeling videos.
So thanks for joining us tonight, folks,
and we'll see you on the next one.