Okay, so this is new, an October 2020 report, and this is really bad. Should not Morabito have sounded the alarm to the town of Surfside and Miami-Dade County that Champlain Towers South be evacuated?
In a summary of work produced by Morabito Consultants on Oct. 13, 2020, the company reported it had discovered several issues, including potentially deep deterioration of concrete near the pool area.
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According to the October 2018 report that summarized work performed for owners of the 136 units, Morabito Consultants warned of major damage near the pool area.
This report outlined five areas the Morabito team had looked into. They included issues with the wall and edge of the swimming pool, a deteriorated stair column, core samples of the building's structural concrete slab, holes cut to investigate problems with soffits over the garage and demolition of deteriorated concrete in balcony soffits and stucco.
Morabito, did you see any drunk drivers? Seriously, the swimming pool area and the concrete structural slab are, to me, the two key most ominous findings in both of Morabito's reports. I look at the evidence, the photos of the pool deck, before and after collapse, the video of water pouring in from the parking garage ceiling, which was also the pool deck, I read the account of Cassie Stratton, per her husband, of a large hole opening by the pool, and why are we entertaining the possibility of a drunk hitting a garage post with his car for which there is NO evidence?
At the pool, Morabito reported it removed loose, cracked, spalled and deteriorated concrete at the edges of the pool, the wall next to it and in the pool's pump room.
Pool, pool, pool. Outside engineers: drunk, drunk, drunk. I don't get it.
The deterioration of the concrete likely was because of corrosion of the steel reinforcement. Corrosion results in expansion of the rebar, which damages the surrounding concrete.
“It’s expensive to fix, and you can’t simply repair damage that is this extensive – you need to replace the damaged reinforcement and concrete.”-Dawn Lehman, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Which is what Morabito reported out in 2018.
The report from October 2020 said repairs were not possible for multiple reasons.
One was that the images suggested damage extended into the thickness of the wall around the pool.
Morabito reported it couldn’t access the inside of the pool to do proper repairs as it was still being used and the aggressive excavation necessary to properly fix the areas could affect the stability of the remaining adjacent concrete constructions.
A commercial pool contractor who inspected the pool area on June 22 noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar under the pool as well as standing water in the pool equipment room, the Miami Herald reported.
Pool.
While the corrosion of the steel reinforcement and degradation of the concrete in the pool area could have contributed to the building’s destruction, on its own this deterioration is unlikely to be the sole cause of the collapse. The big missing piece is what initiated the collapse, said Lehman.
“There’s no way that a structural member that has sustained that amount of concrete degradation and corrosion has the intended structural integrity; its structural performance has been compromised. But that’s not the same as causing a building collapse,” she said.
Is this where the drunk driver enthusiasts are going? That bad as it was it still needed a nudge? If so, that's bullshit. Parking garage support posts are designed to withstand the myriad collisions and bumps and scrapes they take without collapsing the entire structure! Go into a shopping mall garage, the support posts look like a boxer's face after a bout, scraped, battered and gouged. THEY ARE REBAR REINFORCED CONCRETE! They are meant to take that. If they don't take that "normal use" the fault is not that of a ditzy driver, IT'S THE CONCRETE POSTS.
Morabito also reported doing what is known as “exploratory demolition” around the pool area to see if problems were being hidden by architectural but not structural portions of the building.
The report describes and includes photos of five sites where paving stones were lifted, concrete was demolished or landscaping was removed to access underlying areas.
In those, cores were bored more than a foot down to observe the status of the concrete structural slab beneath.
The report says that the work “yielded some curious results as it pertained to the structural slab’s depth.” What was curious about the results was not explained.
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Ross Prieto, then the town of Surfside’s top building official, received a different Morabito report in November 2018 along with an estimate for repairs of $9.13 million.
Prieto told the Champlain Tower South Condominium Association he reviewed the report and “it appears the building is in very good shape.”
What?! What is this about? Why would he receive a different report????
