Today marks the fifth anniversary of the tragedy that’s come to be known simply as “Surfside.” The partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo claimed 98 lives, in one of the deadliest building failures in U.S. history.
In the course of WLRN’s reporting on the tragedy and its aftermath, there are moments our staff will never forget.
Five years on, morning news anchor Christine DiMattei, investigative reporter Daniel Rivero and former senior economics editor Tom Hudson went over their memories of the event and its consequences.
For the newsroom, that day started with a phone call and voicemail that DiMattei still carries on her cell phone.
"Mass casualty event"
DIMATTEI: It’s not very often that I get a direct call from NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. But in the early morning hours of June 24, 2021, I woke up to a voicemail message left by a producer at NPR's Newscast Division.
He said that they had received word of a "mass casualty event" in Miami Beach where an apartment building had collapsed.
At first, I had to replay it a few times, as I just couldn’t grasp what it was telling me. After all, how does a building in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in South Florida just collapse?
I rang our news partners at the Miami Herald who confirmed what NPR had told me.
My next call was to our news director here at WLRN — and after stammering out what little info I had, I ended the call with three words: “This is bad.”
The sunrise reveals a horrific sight
Rivero was one of the first journalists on the scene that morning.
RIVERO: When I first pulled up in the vicinity, I got as far as a block or two south of where the collapse had happened. There was a police tape rope-off. We could not see what was going on.
I got there around 4:30 a.m. And then my colleague, Verónica Zaragovia, arrived and we were both kind of wondering what to do.
We still didn't have a visual of what was going on. And it went through my mind that I had gone to many drum circles that they hold on Miami Beach on the full moon, and I knew the area very well. I knew there was actually a hole in the fence at the park just south of where we were.
So I said, "Verónica, let's go through the hole in the fence and then go through the park so we can get to the beach side."
So we got to the beach, and then the police had taped off the beach area so you couldn't cross. And at some point I said, "No, we're going to run through that police tape."
And then just as the morning sun was rising over the beach, we saw a visual image of what happened. And I said, "Oh. My. God."
Searching for survivors
CD: And for the first few days, it was a full search and rescue mission.
DR: This was a round-the-clock thing. There were international eyes on this incident. Rescue crews came down from Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. They came in from Israel and Mexico.
And a few days after the initial collapse, officials imploded the rest of the remaining building because the remains of the structure were actually making the search and rescue operations more difficult because it was so unstable they had to keep pausing.
So two weeks after the collapse, the effort was then changed officially from a search and rescue mission to a search and recovery mission.
CD: The victims ranged in age from a one-year-old infant to a 92-year-old grandmother.
DR: That's right. And there were 98 total victims representing 14 different nationalities from the U.S. and Cuba to Paraguay, Italy, Australia. A really tremendously diverse community, just like the area that surrounds it.
As investigation begins, scrutiny spreads
CD: A federal investigation into the collapse began the very next day. Five years later, what do we know about what might have caused this disaster?
DR: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) did immediately start an investigation. We're still waiting on the final report.
But the initial preliminary reports that have been released already have identified the pool deck area as the source of the physical collapse. They have also identified lapses in maintenance done by the condo board.
CD: And in the weeks and months following the disaster, there were several South Florida municipalities starting to look at their older buildings with a very critical eye, a very apprehensive eye. This led to emergency evacuations and quite a few buildings being condemned.
On a larger scale, it led to a major reform of Florida's condo safety laws.
READ MORE: Surfside collapse happened slowly over several weeks, probe finds
New laws reshape condo market
DR: There were across the board calls for major reform from Democrats, Republicans, Independents.
CD: WLRN's Tom Hudson has been following the effect the reforms have had on Florida's condo market. Tom, how did state lawmakers first respond to the disaster?
HUDSON: Relatively quickly after the collapse, the first legislative response that we had at the State House was passed unanimously.
Among the things it did was have inspection procedures and deadlines for the entire state. Most buildings, three stories and higher, had to be inspected after 30 years and then ten years after. If you're closer to the coastline, it was after 25 years of construction and then every ten years.
And then there were reserve requirements, which is a fancy way of saying the savings accounts for these condominium associations. They initially had to have money in the bank by New Year's Eve of 2024 to pay for the necessary repairs that were found during these structural inspections.
CD: And you've said that it led to a tectonic shift in how condo owners and condo associations approach reserve savings accounts.
TH: For a long time, a Florida condo was thought to be relatively low-cost living. And one of the reasons was because condominium associations kept those monthly fees artificially low.
And here it is, this special assessment that's been foisted upon you, which is part of that risk of being a condominium owner. There have been several legislative processes to try to lessen the financial blow.
Plans for a memorial
CD: For the last five years, the loved ones of the 98 people killed in the Surfside disaster have been working hard for a permanent memorial. How is that going?
DR: There is not yet a permanent memorial. There have been many temporary memorials set up around the perimeter. But the town of Surfside does say there are plans underway to create a permanent memorial for the 98 victims in the years to come.
