Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 18 30

[SFCharlie]

A continuation of our discussion of this failure. Best to read the other threads first to avoid rehashing things already discussed.
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 02
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 03
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 04
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 05
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 06
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 07
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 08
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 09
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 10
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 11
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 12
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 13
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 14
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 15
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 16
Miami Beach, Champlain Towers South apartment building collapse, Part 17


SF Charlie
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[stcbus]

Matt Haiman from the alarm company sounds like a real "standup guy" though, when The MH called him. It's a very odd, immature, and overly defensive statement instead of answering the question. Only juvenile minds argue back "fake news" instead of proving something.

Hallandale Beach-based Premier Fire Alarms and Integration Systems installed the system in 2017.

In a brief phone conversation Friday and subsequent text messages, Matthew Haiman, Premier’s president, said that the company’s system had worked properly and threatened to sue the Herald if it published a story.

“We have the records,” Haiman said, although he said he would not show them to reporters.

“Go f--- yourself,” he added. “Print your fake news.”

The company has been issued a notice of subpoena in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of survivors, victims and their relatives, according to court records.

 

[stcbus]

An interesting point brought up in the video as well, is that the elevators we know were recalled. Matt explained only smoke alarms in front of the elevators would trigger that, but there wasn't believed to be smoke. Matt consistently mentioned their system performing "flawlessly" but he doesn't actually have that proof. Could the system have actually failed in other ways? It seems they dodged the voice alarm notifications for the parking garage and lobby area as well. I don't believe we heard it on the call did we?

 

[Jeff Ostroff]

But if you look at what The Miami Herald said about Matt, they're trying to make it look like he was the only company sued they said he was the subject and subpoena of a lawsuit. While every single contractor that ever touched that property including Bob's Backhoe who just delivered a backhoe, all got subpoenaed so Miami Herald was trying to make it look like he was singularity a guilty company. The Miami Herald had written a story about the alarm company saying their alarm company failed. That's why he was so upset with The Miami Herald. In fact, you're going to see in a future video that I'm working on The USA Today pissed off a lot of people with the fire department as well blaming them for faulty equipment that wasn't really faulty. When the press doesn't get want they want out of you, they vilify you and try to make you guilty of something.

Also near the end of the video during the Q and A sessions, Matt mentioned that the voice alarms probably did likely go off and the garage and on the 1st level which is the lobby, which would be why none of the residents heard it because there is no alarm in that building it's all voice and speaker is what he said.

Unlike the hotel next door, which had that loud standard fire alarm with a standard buzzer. that kept going off as we saw on the police bodycam videos released in August, 2021

 

[stcbus]

Also near the end of the video during the Q and a sessions Matt had mentioned that the alarms probably did likely go off and the garage and on the 1st level which is the lobby, which would be why none of the residents heard it because there is no alarm in that building it's all voice and speaker is what he said. Unlike the hotel next door they had that loud standard fire alarm is a standard fire lawn buzzer sound going on

Weren’t there people coming up the elevators in the garage at the time when they were recalled? Did they mention an alarm?

As far as the MH and Matt - I wasn’t saying he didn’t have a right to be angry but it doesn’t seem like he offered to explain or even defend anything and instead just argued and I tend to want to immediately dismiss people who use the Orange Man’s “fake news” tagline for things they don’t like.

 

[Nukeman948]

Well, the main theme of that video seems to be that fire alarm systems do not activate on seismic activity.
Matt stated that he believed that a crushed conduit may be responsible for the initial trouble and alarm notifications to the central alarm monitoring company. Perhaps the elevator smoke detector wiring was in that conduit. Since each floor would have had a separate circuit to feed it's speakers, it is likely that the circuit for the garage and first floor speakers could have also been in that same damaged conduit.

Hey Maud, since contact ID was not provided to the central station, and he doesn't think the CPU was saved, it can not be confirmed what devices were activated including which pull stations, if any. That means that the news media may have jumped the gun on pull station reporting. (I won't say "fake news" here but...) Hopefully NIST investigators saved the CPU before the implosion.

Hey Jeff, he did say that this system was set up to give "three tones" before the voice evacuation message was played. Speakers can mimic any type of horn alarm sounds as well as issue voice commands. Separate horns are not required.
Just a side note: every speaker alarm system I have installed was tested by playing Pink Floyd while we verified the function and decibel rating of all the speakers.

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[Keith_1]

Most Elevators in this type of building just had a battery with a relay that would return them to the lobby in case of
the loss of power.

 

[Jeff Ostroff]

Have you folks seen this photo before? It is the view from under the cabana tent on the pool deck of Champlain Towers South, taken around March 2020, facing the now famous planter that developed the serious cracks just weeks before the condo collapse.

 

[Sym P. le]

I don't recall seeing it. Do you have a full crop of the lower portion or should we admire the stripes?

 

[Sym P. le]

Is the pipe along the planter some type of mist cooling system?

 

[Jeff Ostroff]

No I believe that pipe was draining directly from the planter and down into the garage where it goes into some other main water collection point

 

[Sym P. le]

Have you noticed anything out of place in the photo? Where did you come across it?

 

[Jeff Ostroff]

The photo came from a March 2020 report on the HOA reserves. The pipe running along the front of the planter is definitely out of place to me. This says that maybe the as-designed drainage pipe underneath on the garage ceiling was not doing its job so they rigged this ad hoc drainage pipe to run along the front of the planter to bypass the old drain. That is my hunch.

 

[Jeff Ostroff]

finally finished my video on this fire alarm issue, worked on it for 5 days! I must say the webinar put on by that lawyer opened up more questions

 

[MaudSTL]

Thanks for calling out the Timeline corrections to me. As for hearing alarm announcements in the lobby, has anyone read a witness stating they heard announcements? I haven’t read anything myself, and we don’t hear them during the 911 calls…

 

[Jeff Ostroff]

I have not seen a single report. My understanding from the video with Matt is that there was no voice activation because CTS chose not to pay extra to have it automatic.

 

[MaudSTL]

No, I don’t mean an automated all-call announcement, which they did not have,

I understood that the system was designed to have an automated announcement on the floor where the fire alarm was triggered and also on the floor above. So if the fire alarm was triggered in the garage, you would expect to hear an announcement in the garage and on the first floor. None of the witnesses said that they heard this announcement in the lobby or in 111.

In the contractor video, the alarm contractor accuses Security Guard Shamoka Furman of shutting down the announcements while Sara Nir was telling her what to say and how to say it as she called 911. It is hard to imagine how someone in shock who has not been trained on the system could have accomplished this before her first 911 call. This alarm guy and Josh Porter both like to punch down.

 

[Nukeman948]

My understanding from the video with Matt is that there was no voice activation because CTS chose not to pay extra to have it automatic.

Listen to Matt on that video again. When the FACP detects a fire it was programed to give three tones and a pre-recorded voice message to evacuate for the floor that may be on fire as well as the floor above and below it.
This was an addressable system which means that each initiating device like a smoke detector or pull station is assigned a number.
When an initiating device activates, the FACP programing adds a description to the number it receives like "lobby pull station west" or "AHU 3 smoke" and displays that information on the screen at the annunciator panel at the security desk. At the same time it activates the signaling devices and alerts the central station that there is a fire in the building. The only part that was an extra cost option was that the description of what device was activated was not sent to the central station. That means that the firemen had to go to the annunciator panel to see where the fire may be, instead of getting that information from the central station.
Signaling devices like horns/speakers and strobes are divided into zones or in this case floors. As Matt said, they would give three tones and a voice notification to evacuate for up to three floors for any zone that has a fire detected.

Any emergency that required the evacuation of the whole building would need someone to use the "all call" function and give a voice message with the microphone. That was the part that was not automatic.

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[Jeff Ostroff]

Nukeman64, yes that is the subtlety that Miami Herald did not understand, and you still have to hear Matt say it a few times to sink in. what a terrible combination of cracks to fall through on this one.

 

[Nukeman948]

Paying the extra money for the device ID to be sent to the central station is often considered a waste of funds because when the fire commander arrives on scene they would immediately position themselves in front of the annunciator panel to asses the situation and monitor the spread of the fire. They would then radio commands to the firefighters from there.
Instead of pocketing that saved money, they should have spent it on proper employee training on how to use the system more effectively.
The biggest crack I see in the system is the failure to provide that training, but educated employees can demand higher wages and that cuts into profits.

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[MaudSTL]

Any emergency that required the evacuation of the whole building would need someone to use the "all call" function and give a voice message with the microphone. That was the part that was not automatic.

If the all-call did not have a recorded announcement, then I am not sure what one of the survivors from the west part of the building heard after the collapse. Maybe it was a fire alarm announcement triggered after the fact? I will try to find the exact quote.

>>>>>Edit: Here’s the verbiage I was recalling. It is from the Miami Herald ‘Lives would have been saved’: Fire alarm didn’t go off before Surfside tower collapse of Jan. 21, 2022.

“Albert and Janette Aguero rushed down 11 flights of stairs after the crash. They didn’t hear a single alarm, not in their unit or any other part of the tower. “It never went off,” Aguero said.”

“Two residents told the Herald they did hear an alarm — but only after the tower had already fallen at 1:22 a.m, which would likely have triggered the system again. “We heard [an] explosion that shook our apartment,” said Alfredo Lopez, who lived on the sixth floor. “The light went out and I heard the alarm go on. There was a siren from the [emergency] speaker in our unit. I believe it said, ‘Please evacuate immediately.’ “ Lopez said he didn’t remember hearing any other alarms in the rest of the building as he and his family fled to safety down an emergency stairwell.

Daniela Silva was falling asleep when the pool deck collapsed, waking her up. She said she heard no alarms at that time. It was not until around 1:30 a.m., she said, several minutes after the tower fell, that the emergency speaker in her unit went off and, following its instructions, she escaped. “It was very loud. A lady’s voice,” she said. “It absolutely would have woken me up [if it had gone off before].”

Police body-camera footage from several minutes after the tower collapsed appears to show a strobing light going off in the lobby and another in the garage. Albert Aguero said that flashing lights on fire alarms and exit signs helped him and his family navigate their way out of the building after the collapse. But the devices never produced sounds, he said.”