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Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 12 60

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A snippet:

"We see a privately owned collapsed building in Florida and a publicly owned collapsed bridge in Minnesota as two distinct problems, but in a fundamental way they are not. In one case individuals sweep pronounced problems under the rug and show a moderate cost savings. In the other case an entire nation falls trillions of dollars off the international pace of infrastructure investment and meanwhile creates a tax incentive so a hedge fund can erect a pencil-shaped skyscraper in Manhattan with a $100 million penthouse and plumbing that leaks because the building sways in the jet stream."

The Surfside Condo Collapse: A Brief Forensic Study of Missing the Point Entirely
 
I read the article Optical98 linked to. Leaving out the over-dramatic quote that doesn't appear to make sense, it does have some good points. However, casting structural engineers as the last of the under-paid thoroughly honest and competent group anywhere (also an over-dramatic line) leaves out that Surfside allowed the SE on the job to also be the building inspector on the job (as I recall). And, at best, he seems to me to have done both jobs poorly.

Also. On the failed bridge he mentions: wasn't that a straightforward mistake of fabricating the gusset plates out of thinner than specified steel? Quite the contrast to the condo.


spsalso
 
I went down to the Champlain Tower South collapse site today and shot some interesting video of the rapidly changing site that NIST was not showing us on their quick updates. This has to be costing millions, there are cops everywhere preventing you from getting past the property line.

I also got some video across the street from the Champlain Towers N building, which is 3 buildings north. I basically duplicated the famous tourist video in the daylight, and got to see a much better brighter view of the columns in the afternoon light, as well as unobstructed views of the columns when a car came out and the gate went up.
 
Jeff Ostroff (Electrical)3 Sep 21 23:11 said:
I went down to the Champlain Tower South collapse site today and shot some interesting video of the rapidly changing site that NIST was not showing us on their quick updates.
I'm not kidding. Next time you go, schedule a visit to 87 park to see about an apartment for your daughter who will be attending the most expensive university in Miami. She'll want a unit on the North (shady) side of the building. You have to take some video off the deck to show her....
Then go to the hotel and ask the staff to show you a unit on the south side (overlooking the pool?) shoot some video and tip them well ($1 bills don't cut it anymore)
Looking forward to seeing the results on YouTube!


SF Charlie
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I can tell you that being an investor and remodeler myself who has bought and sold many condos over the years, every time there is a major event, hurricane, catastrophe, financial meltdown, etc., something big changes in the paperwork that has to be done sometimes even to sell your unit.

For example, in 2012 they passed a law requiring condominium boards to take out fiduciary bonds, which protects us condo unit owners if people from the board of directors take off with the money or siphons away cash.

And in one of my condos where I was trying to sell the unit, the deal fell through, because the lender for the buyer asked for that proof of fiduciary bond and did not get the proof of a fiduciary bond. Then we found out that there was no bond and we were furious that the president of the HOA had not secured any of that insurance. But luckily the buyers brought in a third buyer and paid cash for the unit which ultimately saved the sale for me.
 
The police presence points to a criminal investigation. I am wondering is a suicide driver was involved. the whole scenario is too weird.
 
Jeff Ostroff (Electrical) 4 Sep 21 00:41 I can tell you that being an investor and remodeler [u said:
Can you post the pics?
Did you any bomb sniffing dogs?[/u]
 
ChiefinspectorJ said:
I am wondering is a suicide driver was involved. the whole scenario is too weird.

If you go back five or six threads, you can review the discussion about a car hitting a column. When you review the Collapse Witness Timeline, you can see that we know that the following people used the garage immediately prior to the collapse:

<1:15 Nicolas Vazquez and Gimena Accardi (who were in the elevator when the deck collapsed)
~12:50-1:00 Eric Zion
~12:30 Sarah Nir and Gabe Nir

What we do and do not know:[ul]
[li]No one has volunteered any information about seeing or causing damage in the garage at the time they were there. No interviews to date have included questions about the garage.[/li]
[li]No one has volunteered that they heard any knocking sounds (which were heard in 111 from 11:00 PM on) while in the garage. Vazquez does say they heard a couple loud cracking sounds several seconds before they got on the elevator.[/li]
[li]We do not know what parking spaces any of them used. Depending on where they parked, it is possible for damage to have occurred outside of their lines of sight.[/li]
[li]There may also have been other garage users we don’t know about.[/li]
[/ul]

Basically, at this point, unless new information is revealed, any speculation about a driver hitting a column is just that…speculation.
 
Yes, the car into the column scenario is another failure mode in search of evidence.
I will tell you today I got video outside Champlain Towers North of the view that tourists video was shot, but mine is in the daylight, the gate was open and we can see all the columns, where they should be, and it will put to rest all arguments people have on the tourist video as to which columns are where and what is missing.

I won't be posting my Champlain Tower pics or video that I shot today until I upload the final produced video onto my YouTube Channel, to prevent other channels from stealing my photos and video and getting a first-mover advantage on it, or run around trying to claim it was their work like we have witnessed lately.

I am also miffed the NYtimes appeared to use a lot of my early work and deductions without giving me credit I know they said: “some engineers said”…. It seems they were doing a research paper based on other's work, they even gave Miami Herald credit for their Aug 8 article but not the rest of us.
As far as I know, my channel was the first to offer a minute-by-minute timeline in video form on my first How IT collapsed video, which got 5 million views and a few press interviews for me, so I know they were watching my content.

Then Maud came along and did that awesome spreadsheet of the timeline which I now use because it has much more granularity and clickable evidence links to back up data points. Very well done Maud. It was obvious they referenced that spreadsheet but I did not see the credit to Maud.
 
Jeff Ostroff (Electrical)31 Aug 21 00:13 said:
the tourist video showing approximately where they were seeing all the debris landing on the garage floor.
Jeff, is there an established time for the tourist video? I'm trying to place it in time relative to seeing the (valet parking) cars in the basement.

SF Charlie
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SFCharlie said:
I had read an article where the lady who shot the video said it was 1:18 AM when she shot the video based on the time stamp on the video file in her phone. There is also another video she shot which most people don't know exists, it shows her and her husband after the collapse they got into the elevator in her hotel across the street, and you can see their lags were pretty banged up and bleeding from the rubble when the condo collapsed, and small chunks shot all the way over to the hotel pool.

This aligns exactly with 911 calls, from 1:22 AM you can hear the building collapsing in the background.
 
BTW folks I don't know if this has been brought up or not, but I confirmed when I was inside at CTN today:

But, the Champlain Towers North and South are NOT carbon copies. Many people think they are the same because many framing plans are the same. But Champlain South has 12 units per floor, and Champlain North has only 10 units per floor. The floorplans of the units are different, even though the pool deck, and balconies, and look of the buildings are pretty close. I got photos of the drive-up porte-cochere and the above-ground parking deck, and the pool gate from the parking deck. The pool is now closed indefinitely as they do their 40-year inspection.
 
SFCharlie said:
… is there an established time for the tourist video?

ABC News quotes the 1:18 AM timeline. This is in the Data tab in the Timeline spreadsheet.

Edit: This one is actually better. NBC News states the Before video was time stamped 1:18 AM, and the After video was time stamped 1:27 AM. I just added this to the Notes in the timeline.
 
Jeff Ostroff (Electrical)4 Sep 21 03:18 said:
As far as I know, my channel was the first to offer a minute-by-minute timeline in video form
Thanks for calling my attention to this image:
Diagram_of_apparent_order_in_which_building_collapsed_architects_journal_architects-journal_s1gcs9.png

Max building fail in Miami
This is consistent with what I saw in my frame by frame analysis. I find it difficult to explain the strange angular brake to the east of the stairwell shear wall, but it appears to be what happened.

SF Charlie
Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies
 
The reason I support the car collision premise, is that there is a missing column. It did not punching shear. It was missing prior to collapse.

Its really simple, car hits column, its attached at the top by a beam from the direction of impact. It has every reason in the world to bottom shear. 40km/h is enough to take out pool deck column 12x8 inch.

Were any bodies recovered from inside cars?
 
I feel like we're going round page 7 again here but ... People heard noises that indicate something was happening well before the final collapse. At least three people were in the garage after those noises were going on, and none of them reported a crashed car. And if we're talking about M11.1 as the 'missing column', well, that's immediately at the bottom of the parking ramp, there's no way people entering the garage wouldn't have noticed a crashed car and broken column there.

As far as I know the only 'evidence' for this column being 'missing' is the TikTok video? If you look at that video, you also can't see M12.1 - but we know that column did in fact stand up and the slab fell around it, hiding it from the camera. I don't believe you can be sure that the same isn't true of M11.1. In the cleanup videos you can see that the bottom rebar for M11.1 is there after column and debris removal, and doesn't look any different from that of the other columns nearby.

> @Jeff - Champlain Towers North and South are NOT carbon copies

In particular according to some people in previous threads, the slab step at the building side of the pool deck isn't there. I'm not sure the M9.1-M11-1 beam is either. But the column layout is the same so it should be good for the parking ramp video if you've lined it up correctly.
 
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