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The Florida apartment building that partially collapsed on Thursday had been reportedly sinking for decades — and was undergoing a structural inspection, according to officials and a research study.
The 12-story beachfront condo in Miami-Dade County was built in 1981 — and had been sinking into the ground since the 1990s, according to a 2020 study conducted by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor at Florida International University.
“I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” Wdowinski told USA Today on Thursday.
Wdowinski’s research focused on which parts of Miami were sinking, in an effort to determine what areas could be most impacted by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.
His team found that the Champlain Towers South in Surfside had been sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s, the report said.
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“We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” Wdowinski told the outlet.
However, the study focused on flooding hazards, not engineering concerns — and mention of the “12-story condominium” appeared in only one line, USA Today reported.
“We didn’t give it too much importance,” Wdowinski said, adding that he didn’t believe anybody in the city or state government would have been aware of the study.
Surfside town officials on Thursday said the high-rise had been undergoing a county-mandated 40-year recertification process, which involves electrical and structural inspections.
City Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer told Miami TV station WPLG that the process was believed to be proceeding without issues — and that a building inspector may have been on-site as recently as Wednesday.
“I want to know why this happened,” Salzhauer said. “That’s really the only question. … And can it happen again? Are any other of our buildings in town in jeopardy?”