Just five years ago on June 24, 2021, the Champlain Towers condominium building in Surfside collapsed without explanation, killing 98 residents. This was the first and only major building collapse with no known cause: it was not an explosion, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, sinkhole, or blown up on purpose. Now five years later, we have an explanation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
On June 22, the NIST investigative team released its findings: “The team has concluded that the collapse began in early June 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed. These initial column failures caused cracks to grow and loads to redistribute in the pool deck over the next three weeks, resulting in the transfer of their loads to adjacent slab-column connections that were not strong enough to support them. This led to the larger catastrophic collapse on June 24.”
“The low margins against failure were primarily caused by two factors. First, severe and widespread deviations in the building’s original structural design from the codes and standards of the day, but also some limitations in those codes and standards. And second, deviations in the building’s construction from the design drawings.” Loads added to the structure over its lifetime — including pool deck modifications further diminished the margins against failure, as did long-term degradation from corrosion.
The report contains two videos that help explain the NIST findings.
The loss of 98 lives, along with others losing their homes when the condo had to be torn down, was certainly tragic.
Sadly, the state legislature passed four condo laws in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 to “ensure there will never be another Champlain Towers collapse in Florida.” However, all the legislation was based on assumptions versus factual information on why the tower collapsed, and none of the regulations and added costs to associations would have prevented this collapse. All the legislature did was attack and encumber associations with unjustified requirements. And the vote on the four bills was unanimous – in both the state house and state senate. All Republicans and Democrats voting yes.
None of the new laws addressed the cause: not built per the architect’s specifics and standards. Who built the building? Who issued the permits? Who inspected the work and signed off on the permits? Who gave their final approval for occupancy of the building?
Everyone seems to pretend no one knows.
