A House Built on Sand ...
by John Lawrence
There is the parable in the Bible about the person who built their house on a rock. The floods came, the rain fell, the wind blew and the house still stood. But as for the person who built their house on sand, it couldn't withstand the floods, rain and wind and it came tumbling down. Pretty much an exact analogy to the fallen condo in Florida. They even had a 3 year old structural engineer's report of the dire consequences of not acting to immediately shore up the structure. Evidently, the condo owners were too cheap to spend the money immediately with dire consequences. This high rise structure was built right on the beach close to salt water that can corrode concrete and steel. Sunny day flooding in Florida results in salt water coming up through the ground even on sunny days as the ocean water permeates under the structures. In addition the area was subject to subsidence which means that the ground was sinking. Since the building was supported by pillars, if the subsidence was uneven, some pillars would be supporting more weight than they were designed to support. "This collapse is a classic column failure. Which means the building itself was supported by a series of pillars. If the pillars fail, everything fails," said Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer and California Seismic Safety Commission chairman.
Climate change and sea level rise are threatening not only this but a multitude of other beach front and seaside properties not only in Florida but all over the US. Multi story properties should not be built except on bedrock. There should be only shacks and houses built on Miami Beach real estate, but the fact that it so valuable means that developers want to capitalize on the value of the property by building multi story properties. As climate change continues to increase flooding, wind and rain, all these structures are at risk especially structures built on pillars where all the weight is concentrated in only a few places instead of spread out over the whole footprint of the building. If even one of these pillars fails or subsides unevenly, the whole structure is at risk.
Sunny day flooding puts all these buildings at risk. Sunny day flooding takes place because of climate change. According to NOAA:
"Coastal communities across the U.S. continued to see record-setting high-tide flooding last year, forcing their residents and visitors to deal with flooded shorelines, streets and basements — a trend that is expected to continue into 2021. The elevated water levels affected coastal economies, tourism and crucial infrastructure like waste and stormwater systems, according to a new NOAA report.
"High-tide flooding, often referred to as "nuisance" or “sunny day” flooding, is increasingly common due to years of relative sea level increases. It occurs when tides reach anywhere from 1.75 to 2 feet above the daily average high tide and start spilling onto streets or bubbling up from storm drains. As sea level rise continues, damaging floods that decades ago happened only during a storm now happen more regularly, such as during a full-moon tide or with a change in prevailing winds or currents.
“America’s coastal communities and their economies are suffering from the effects of high tide flooding, and it’s only going to increase in the future,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, acting director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “NOAA is committed to working with coastal communities to provide the information and data they need to tackle the problem of high tide flooding, both now and in the coming years as sea levels continue to rise.”"
The owners of the Champlain Towers South condos would have had to foot the very expensive bill for structural repairs to the condo. They weren't renters; evidently, they were owners. They could have proceeded with those repairs and a concomitant increase in their HOA dues immediately after the 2018 structural engineer's report, but they didn't. So there is really nobody that can be sued over this situation. No one is at fault except the condo owners themselves. NBC News reported:
"One condo owner sued the unit association for failing to fix the cracks in the outside wall of her unit in 2015, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County. The condo owner, who could not be reached for comment, said the cracks led to water damage that cost $15,000. The court documents noted that because the cracks were a structural issue the building association was liable for the expense. Americans have built approximately $3 trillion worth of property on barrier islands and coastal floodplains, according to “The Geography of Risk,” a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Gilbert Gaul that analyzes the real estate investment in beach communities over the past century."
The whole Miami Beach barrier island community which contains trillions of dollars of real estate is a house built on sand. As climate change increases the likelihood that these expensive high rise condos are at risk of collapse, the developers themselves might be at risk of a law suit. At the very least insurance rates are going to go up. The best bet now is that there will be a flurry of activity by structural engineers examining in detail every building in the area. The best advice is for the owners of these condos not to hesitate if defects in the structure of their condo are pointed out.