Lax Enforcement Let South Florida Towers Skirt Inspections for Years

[Zorro]

The collapse of Champlain Towers South has prompted a review of hundreds of older high-rises. Some buildings ignored or delayed action on serious maintenance issues.

Out of the smoke and cinders of a city convulsed by race riots and an immigration crisis, the towers kept rising, each new development remaking Miami’s skyline in the early 1980s and marking an ambitious bet that the battered community would turn itself around.

Over the next 40 years, high-rises like Champlain Towers, in the sleepy, beachfront enclave of Surfside, stood witness to Miami’s remarkable rebound, luxurious, multistory symbols of endurance — of booms and busts but also the harsh South Florida elements: scorching sun and driving rains, battering winds and slashing saltwater.

Florida’s high-rise building regulations have long been among the strictest in the nation. But after parts of Champlain Towers South tumbled down on June 24, killing at least 24 people and leaving 121 unaccounted for, evidence has mounted that those rules have been enforced unevenly by local governments, and sometimes not at all.

Miami-Dade County officials said last week that they were prioritizing reviews of 24 multistory buildings that either had failed major structural or electrical inspections required after 40 years or had not submitted the reports in the first place. But the county’s own records show that 17 of those cases had been open for a year or more. Two cases were against properties owned by the county itself. The oldest case had sat unresolved since 2008.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/04/us/south-florida-condo-maintenance-violations.html

[brush]

1. Hmmmm? I wonder if money has crossed an inspector palm or two over the years?

[XanaDUer2]

2. It's Miami

grew up there in the 70s and 80s. Very corrupt. Cops were on drugdealers' payroll.

The Magic City