Nearly five years after the disaster at the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, federal investigators on Monday released their technical findings on what caused the collapse of the building that killed 98 people.
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In an hour and seventeen-minute video released Monday, the lead investigators from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s National Construction Safety Team explained how it began in early June, just weeks before the collapse on June 24, 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed.
“When building structures are designed and built to required codes and standards, they have margins against failure, meaning they should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” co-lead investigator Judith Mitrani-Reiser said. “In the case of Champlain Towers South, however, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”
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Cracks grew, and loads were redistributed in the pool deck over the next few weeks, transferring their load to other structural elements that were not strong enough to support them due to the original design and construction of the building, investigators said.
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That ultimately led to the larger collapse at approximately 1 a.m. on June 24.
Check back with NBC6 for updates.