9:09 p.m. ET, June 30, 2021
2018 photo shows a crack in the concrete of the pool equipment room of Champlain Towers South building
From CNN’s David Shortell
2018 photo shows a crack in the concrete of the pool equipment room of Champlain Towers South building
Tom Henz
A newly obtained 2018 photograph shows the earlier stages of a crack in the concrete of the pool equipment room in the Surfside, Florida, building that collapsed last week, contrasting an image of the same room that was reportedly taken just days before the collapse and has emerged as a key piece of evidence for experts working to determine the cause of the tragedy.
The 2018 photograph, shared with CNN by Tom Henz, a mechanical engineer whose firm did an electrical and mechanical inspection of the Champlain Towers South building that year as part of its 40-year recertification process, shows a crack around the edge of a beam running along the top of the room.
Engineers and experts consulted by CNN said it appears the same crack is visible in the 2021 photograph of the room, which was published earlier this week by the Miami Herald, although its condition appears worse in the more recent photograph.
The cause of the deterioration is not clear.
After inspecting the building in 2018, engineer Frank Morabito wrote in a report that “failed waterproofing” below the pool deck was “causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas” and warned that failure to replace it in the near future would cause “concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.”
A 2021 letter to the building residents from the condominium association’s president confirmed that the exponential deterioration had indeed taken place in the interim years.
“The concrete deterioration is accelerating,” wrote Jean Wodnicki, the association president. “The observable damage such as in the garage has gotten significantly worse since the initial [2018] inspection.”
The experts CNN spoke to said that the progression seen in the crack between the two images could be an indication of the deterioration caused by the waterproofing problem described by Morabito. Or, some said, the concrete around the crack could have simply fallen off during the three-year gap to reveal the deeper fissure seen in the 2021 photograph.
“It could be beneath the surface. Sometimes you have a spall and all it takes is a small wind or somebody tapping on it and it just comes right off. It's hanging by a hair basically," said Greg Batista, a Florida-based structural engineer and construction manager.
In the days since the building’s collapse, which has left at least 18 people dead and 145 others unaccounted for, the tower’s base has emerged as a potential point of failure. In addition to the Morabito report, two witnesses have also claimed to see the collapse begin by pool deck.
On Tuesday, a resident of the tower who escaped just before its collapse told CNN she saw the garage, which sits in part beneath the pool deck, fall first before the rest of the building. The account mirrored that of another woman, Cassondra Stratton, who told her husband in a phone call from a condo in the tower that she saw a sinkhole where the pool used to be, her husband told the Miami Herald.
Spalling, or cracking, can occur when steel reinforcements inside concrete begin to rust and expand due to exposure to air and water. Its spread is often compared to a cancer.
“Once deterioration like this starts, it’s insidious, it just continues. Unless you do something about it, the whole thing is going to fall apart, all of the concrete is going to fall apart,” said Matthys Levy, a consulting engineer and author of books including "Why Buildings Fall Down."
The engineers consulted by CNN were not in agreement that a failure in the area of the pool equipment room or around the pool deck could have caused the building’s collapse, but many noted that the damage seen in the room was likely indicative of poor maintenance throughout the whole building.
“It just generally shows what a crappy condition the concrete was in. You can draw whatever conclusions you want — that maybe the rest of the concrete was just as bad,” Levy said.