Federal investigators on Monday announced the results of their investigation into the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Fla., finding that the failure had begun weeks before the building failed on June 24, 2021. File Photo By Gary I Rothstein/UPI | License Photo
June 23 (UPI) -- The June 2021 partial collapse of a Miami Beach oceanfront condominium tower that killed nearly 100 people began three weeks before the building completely failed, federal investigators announced Monday.
The four-decade-old Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Fla., collapsed June 24, 2021, prompting the deployment of first responders to scour the rubble for survivors. In total, 98 people were killed and many others were injured, making it one of the deadliest structural disasters in U.S. history.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which launched an investigation into the incident within days of the collapse, said Monday that it determined the collapse began in early June 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the building's 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," NIST said in a statement.
