Yes. Understood. I mentioned that I would sue the board (the town). They are the ones who allowed the development in the first place, which I personally think was in an unsuitable location.
Surfside is tiny. I haven't been down there in awhile but it is literally jam-packed with condos, other than in Indian Creek, which is some of the priciest real estate in the whole USA. I don't think the location was unsuitable when it was developed. I am not sure if it was a maintenance issue or an engineering issue.
I have a personal friend who is an architect. He's made a few interesting comments on this on another forum. His comments are below questions to him are in italics:
We used to do remedial work on a lot of the condo buildings in Dade county. One of the typical issues is that the steel for the balconies comes from the slab and has very little concrete cover right at the edge of the enclosed area / door threshold. Over time the salt air will corrode the steel and the small amount of concrete cover will spall away leaving very little structural support for the balcony which is typically cantilevered. I could envision a balcony slab cracking / breaking off sort of hinging down, and pulling or knocking the slab out of alignment and creating a kind of domino effect where the entire floor becomes unstable. Of course, if one floor collapses, the others will be collapsing in almost every case.
What was your experience with 20+ year old flat roofs in Dade? Many layers and soggy?
Typically back then (and in south Florida in general), the flat roofs are built up with gravel on top and yes, fairly soggy. The supporting deck was either concrete (pretty common on a condo), lightweight concrete over steel deck, or that crappy mesh stuff that I never used but commonly saw. It was like pine straw compressed into a mat and generally spans about 4 feet. I doubt the roof deck would have collapsed on its own. Usually they leak a lot and residents complain and the roof membrane gets fixed. Loading the roof could have caused a failure of it was deteriorated. 40 years old tells me the roof was likely at the end of its second life.
Anyone know of any material that could be used in place of steel cable (kevlar, maybe), rebar and beams? If this is a fait accompli for all of the buildings built on the shore within a certain set a building codes companies are going to make billions (?trillions) retrofitting them.
Nothing economical. You have to get good concrete cover and it is a challenge to have the workers that place the rebar and pour the concrete understand that idea. Especially in Miami where the language barrier is high and the worker skill and quality level is very low. The tide is rising anyway, so I’d recommend we stop building in places we know are going to be continually flooded within a few decades. Leave the buildings alone, and as the become unusable demolish them in place and leave them as a man made reef.
MODS: If this post needs to be deleted, I understand. Not trying to run afoul of any rules here. I can show you where I got these quotes and replies and even put you in touch with the architect. As I said. he's been a friend for years. I think his commentary adds some value to the situation.
