Video released by federal investigators shows more evidence of extensive corrosion and overcrowded concrete reinforcement in a Miami-area condominium that collapsed in June, killing 98 people. The video from the National Institute of Standards and Technology shows densely packed steel reinforcement in various sections of the building, along with extensive corrosion where one column met the building’s foundation, per the AP. “The corrosion on the bottom of that column is astronomical,” Dawn Lehman, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Washington, told the Miami Herald. She said that amount of corrosion should have been obvious and documented as part of the 40-year inspection that was ongoing when the building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed.
“If there’s that amount of corrosion, this should have been fixed,” she said. The images show beams, walls, and columns that appear to be overcrowded with steel reinforcement, which suggests potential weaknesses. “There is no reason there should be that kind of bar congestion,” Lehman said. The risk posed by “congested” vertical rebar in columns would have been even worse in spots where the rebar overlapped, which is known as “lap splice” regions, Abieyuwa Aghayere, a Drexel University engineering researcher who also reviewed the video, told the newspaper.
He said he was struck by how “powdery” and white the concrete in columns appeared in the newly released video. Stone-like aggregates used to strengthen concrete during construction typically remain visible but they were not in the images from the collapse site. “The white color just stuns me,” Aghayere told the newspaper. He added that instead of seeing aggregate material mixed into the concrete, “it’s just homogenous,” which is likely indication of saltwater damage. NIST also announced it will conduct a five-pronged investigation into the collapse that will be led by Judith Mitrani-Reiser, a Cuban-born engineer who grew up in Miami.
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