5 Years After Deadly Surfside Collapse, Investigators Say Building Failure Began Weeks Prior

Five years after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building that killed 98 people in Surfside, Florida, federal investigators have new information on the timeline of events.

The columns holding up the pool deck, long believed to be the likely cause of the incident, began failing weeks before the June 24, 2021, tragedy, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The NIST team, which began its investigation the day after the collapse, said two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed in early June 2021, causing cracks to grow and loads to redistribute in the pool deck. This led to the transfer of loads to column connections that weren’t strong enough to support them.

Three weeks later, investigators — who are now writing the final report with recommendations for changes in standards, codes and practices — said the pool deck fell onto the underground parking garage in the middle of the night, causing two-thirds of the 12-story building to collapse, burying nearly 100 people under tons of rubble.

Judith Mittani-Reisner, who co-led the investigation with Glenn Ball, said in a video released Monday that buildings are supposed to be designed with margins against failure. That wasn't the case with the Champlain Towers.

“They should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” Mitrani-Reiser said. “In the case of Champlain Towers South, however, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”

There had been concerns about the structural integrity of the building, built in 1981. Morabito Consultants, which was ordered to pay $16M to the victims of the collapse in 2022, reported that it had significant structural damage in 2018.

“The failure did not begin three weeks before the collapse,” Martin Langesfeld, a Miami real estate broker who lost his sister and her husband in the tragedy, said in an email. “That is when the building was already breaking down.

“This failure began 40 years earlier, when the building was designed, approved, built, inspected, and allowed to stand with problems that should have been caught and prevented.”

Following the collapse, Florida lawmakers passed Senate Bill 4-D in 2022, requiring buildings at least 30 years old and three stories or taller to conduct structural inspections every 10 years and fully fund reserves for major repairs.

The legislation was designed to prevent another tragic building failure, but it has caused severe ripple effects for the owners of aging condos.

Owners in buildings constructed before the 1990s, often retired and older adults on fixed incomes, have been grappling with skyrocketing association fees and insurance premiums. Many associations that complied with the law have faced multimillion-dollar repair bills, with some opting to sell their building as a result.

But the majority were slow to adapt to the new rules. Plus, the threat of special assessments and insurance hikes thrust many older buildings into a financial “doom loop,” with owners forced to drop prices to sell their units, lowering values for their neighbors.

Units in buildings 30 years or older made up 86% of the 19,000 active condo listings by the beginning of 2025, and values plummeted, in some cases by more than 30%.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is increasingly blacklisting aging units from using Fannie Mae mortgages if they don't increase their reserve ratios and secure more robust insurance policies. Some engineers, who are needed to conduct the legally mandated inspections, have avoided taking the jobs due to litigation and liability fears.

The environment has been so grueling that condo owners began increasingly turning to developers for buyouts as a way out. At the same time, developers have grown wary of condo terminations after a handful of holdout owners successfully sued the buyer of their Edgewater building and blocked its demolition plan.

But some, like Langesfeld, still don't think enough has been done to keep current buildings and new buildings safe. He is calling for more scrutiny and enforcement on condo associations, as well as developers, inspectors, engineers and contractors.

“Without that, this is another collapse waiting to happen,” he said. “These failures start from the day the shovel hits the ground, when corners are cut and no one is held responsible.”

The Surfside site was acquired in October 2021, just three months after the collapse, by Damac International, the international arm of Dubai-based Damac Properties, for $120M. The proceeds were used as part of a $1B settlement fund for victims' families.

Damac planned a 15-story luxury condo building with 27 units, which it described as “mansions in the sky,” starting at $15M. After launching sales in January 2025, not a single unit has sold. The firm has weighed selling the site and is looking for a partner to handle day-to-day development moving forward, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Damac declined to include a memorial to the victims on its site, so land across the street was set aside. But five years after the collapse, victims are still waiting for a memorial.

The town voted in April to reduce the cost of the project from $5.5M to less than $3.6M to avoid a voter referendum. The project is still being modified to stay within the commission-approved budget, the Miami Herald reported.

“Five years later, families are still fighting for accountability and for a memorial,” Langesfeld said.