Building had been vulnerable before it collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in 2021
The deadly destruction of a Florida beachfront condominium actually started weeks before it collapsed into a pile of rubble in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in 2021 – but the building had been vulnerable from the start, federal investigators found in a final report issued on Monday.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said in the report that two connections between garage columns and the pool deck started to fail around early June. The combination of a structure design that did not meet building codes and alterations made to it over its 40 years meant that the other parts of the pool deck weren’t strong enough to withstand the extra load, leading to the type of slow-motion collapse.
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