A professional engineer and concrete repair specialist said he believes “concrete cancer,” a process that happens when steel rods in building structures rust and expand, might have caused the deadly partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condo in Florida on Thursday.
Search-and-rescue efforts by first responders are underway following the partial collapse of the 12-story building in Miami, which left four dead and as many as 159 unaccounted for. Building analysts and experts are seeking to determine the cause of the structural failure.
“Once the cancer spreads, the concrete breaks up and becomes weaker and weaker as time goes on,” said Greg Batista, who worked on planter boxes at the building’s pool deck in 2017.
The building’s proximity to the ocean might have been a driving cause of “concrete spalling,” when saltwater seeps into porous concrete and causes steel rods known as rebar in the support beams to rust and expand, Batista said.
AT LEAST THREE DEAD AND 99 MISSING AFTER PARTIAL COLLAPSE OF MIAMI CONDO BUILDING
His theory is only his “best guess,” he said, noting the process of concrete spalling will lead to expansion and breaking up concrete that weakens support beams. Batista has 30 years of experience working on older condominium buildings in the area.
“This building has a garage on the lower floors. If you have one column subjected to spalling, the No. 1 suspect here, it could fail. That one beam could bring down the whole building like a domino effect,” Batista added.
Other theories surrounding the deadly partial collapse include an environmental analysis of the incident, as some experts have pointed toward evidence that the land surrounding the building has been sinking since the 1990s.
A 2020 land and sea-level rise study identified the land subsidence near the tower between 1993 to 1999, said Florida International University professor Shimon Wdowinski, that land subsidence would not be the sole contributor causing the collapse.
“When we measure subsidence or when we see movement of the buildings, it’s worth checking why it happens,” Wdowinski said. “We cannot say what is the reason for that from the satellite images but we can say there was movement here.”
Champlain Towers South was built in 1981 and was developed by Champlain Towers South Associates. The project started after the developers paid the town of Surfside $200,000 in 1979 to cover half the cost for another sewer system after the previous one degraded.
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The Washington Examiner contacted Wdowinski but did not immediately receive a response. Batista declined to comment, citing scheduling conflicts.
