From sinkholes to concrete-weakening saltwater intrusion, theories abound on what caused a Florida beachside condominium tower to collapse without warning.
The Champlain Towers South building in the town of Surfside was in the middle of its 40-year recertification process, which requires detailed structural and electrical inspections.
We need a definitive answer for how this might have happened
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said on Friday that he was not sure if the inspection had been completed. He suggested it may contain vital clues to the deadly disaster.
“It should have been a very straightforward thing,” Mr Burkett said. “Buildings in America do not just fall down like this. There is a reason. We need to find out what that reason is.”
The 12-storey tower’s collapse left at least four people dead, 159 missing as of Friday and numerous questions about how this could have happened – and whether other similar buildings are in danger.
Details of the Champlain Towers recertification inspection will be made public once they are completed, Surfside Town Clerk Sandra McCready said.
The engineer involved in the building’s recertification process, Frank Morabito, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on Friday that she saw no evidence of a sinkhole – much more common in other parts of Florida – or of something criminal, such as a bomb.
“I can tell you that at this time, they haven’t found any evidence of foul play,” she said.
Beyond that, much focus is on ocean water, which is rising in South Florida and elsewhere because of climate change.
Last year, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a measure that would require developers to complete sea-level rise studies before beginning publicly funded projects.
Like everyone else, the governor wants answers about the cause of the collapse as soon as possible.
“We need a definitive answer for how this might have happened,” Mr DeSantis said. “It really is a unique type of tragedy to have, in the middle of the night, half a building just collapse like that.”
Subsidence
Meanwhile, the land on which Champlain Towers sits has been gradually sinking, according to a study published last year by an environmental professor at Florida International University.
But the professor, Shimon Wdowinski, cautioned against blaming the collapse on the caving ground. The study used satellite data collected between 1993 to 1999 to examine the sinking of land in Norfolk, Virginia and Miami Beach.
Mr Wdowinski said his study found numerous examples of sinking earth, some leading to cracks in buildings – which he called “pretty common” in Florida.
“In most cases, these buildings just move,” he said, “there’s no catastrophic collapse like in the case in Surfside, which was very unfortunate.”
Another theory is that the saltwater in the area, which is subject to flooding during so-called King Tide events, intrudes into concrete supports, corrodes the steel-reinforcing rebar inside and weakens the concrete.
Regular flooding
Abi Aghayere, an engineering researcher at Drexel University in Pennsylvania, said determining if there was such deterioration could be one key to the collapse.
“Did a column fail by itself? This column has been carrying this load for 40 years, why would it fail now?” said Mr Aghayere, adding that it is rare for rebar to be corroded without anyone noticing. “You will have concrete popping out, falling out.”
Others have referred to frequent flooding in the building’s lower parking garage, including the possibility of water seeping up through the porous limestone rock on which the barrier island sits that includes Surfside and Miami Beach.
Surfside officials say roof work was taking place at the now-collapsed tower and have downplayed the possibility that work was a cause.
Barry Cohen, a lawyer who escaped the Champlain Towers building with his wife, said the roof work could be part of a “perfect storm” of causes that combined to bring down the structure.
“They were doing a new roof. And I think, all day long, the building was pounding and pounding and pounding. They’ve been doing it for over a month,” Mr Cohen said.
Another issue cited by some people is construction at a nearby building that might cause vibrations that weakened Champlain Towers. Mr Cohen said he raised concerns previously that the work was possibly causing cracked pavers on the pool deck.
The collapse is already drawing lawsuits, including one filed hours after the collapse by lawyer Brad Sohn against the building's homeowners association. This seeks damages for negligence and other reasons for all of the tower’s residents.
The association, the lawsuit contends, “could have prevented the collapse of Champlain Towers South through the exercise of ordinary care, safety measures and oversight”.
A lawyer for the association, Ken Direktor, did not respond Friday to an email requesting comment.
Oscars in the UAE
The 90th Academy Awards will be aired in the UAE from 3.30am on Monday, March 5 on OSN, with the ceremony starting at 5am
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The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbocharged and three electric motors
Power: Combined output 920hp
Torque: 730Nm at 4,000-7,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel consumption: 11.2L/100km
On sale: Now, deliveries expected later in 2025
Price: expected to start at Dh1,432,000
THE SPECS
Engine: 6.0-litre, twin-turbocharged W12
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 626bhp
Torque: 900Nm
Price: Dh1,050,000
On sale: now
WOMAN AND CHILD
Director: Saeed Roustaee
Starring: Parinaz Izadyar, Payman Maadi
Rating: 4/5
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Director: Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas
Three stars
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Pad Man
Dir: R Balki
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor, Radhika Apte
Three-and-a-half stars
ORDER OF PLAY ON SHOW COURTS
Centre Court - 4pm (UAE)
Gael Monfils (15) v Kyle Edmund
Karolina Pliskova (3) v Magdalena Rybarikova
Dusan Lajovic v Roger Federer (3)
Court 1 - 4pm
Adam Pavlasek v Novak Djokovic (2)
Dominic Thiem (8) v Gilles Simon
Angelique Kerber (1) v Kirsten Flipkens
Court 2 - 2.30pm
Grigor Dimitrov (13) v Marcos Baghdatis
Agnieszka Radwanska (9) v Christina McHale
Milos Raonic (6) v Mikhail Youzhny
Tsvetana Pironkova v Caroline Wozniacki (5)
Why it pays to compare
A comparison of sending Dh20,000 from the UAE using two different routes at the same time - the first direct from a UAE bank to a bank in Germany, and the second from the same UAE bank via an online platform to Germany - found key differences in cost and speed. The transfers were both initiated on January 30.
Route 1: bank transfer
The UAE bank charged Dh152.25 for the Dh20,000 transfer. On top of that, their exchange rate margin added a difference of around Dh415, compared with the mid-market rate.
Total cost: Dh567.25 - around 2.9 per cent of the total amount
Total received: €4,670.30
Route 2: online platform
The UAE bank’s charge for sending Dh20,000 to a UK dirham-denominated account was Dh2.10. The exchange rate margin cost was Dh60, plus a Dh12 fee.
Total cost: Dh74.10, around 0.4 per cent of the transaction
Total received: €4,756
The UAE bank transfer was far quicker – around two to three working days, while the online platform took around four to five days, but was considerably cheaper. In the online platform transfer, the funds were also exposed to currency risk during the period it took for them to arrive.
Martin Sabbagh profile
Job: CEO JCDecaux Middle East
In the role: Since January 2015
Lives: In the UAE
Background: M&A, investment banking
Studied: Corporate finance
UK’s AI plan
- AI ambassadors such as MIT economist Simon Johnson, Monzo cofounder Tom Blomfield and Google DeepMind’s Raia Hadsell
- £10bn AI growth zone in South Wales to create 5,000 jobs
- £100m of government support for startups building AI hardware products
- £250m to train new AI models
Soldier F
“I was in complete disgust at the fact that only one person was to be charged for Bloody Sunday.
“Somebody later said to me, 'you just watch - they'll drop the charge against him'. And sure enough, the charges against Soldier F would go on to be dropped.
“It's pretty hard to think that 50 years on, the State is still covering up for what happened on Bloody Sunday.”
Jimmy Duddy, nephew of John Johnson
