NIST finds Surfside Champlain Towers initiated at pool deck due to critically low margins of safety by design

Nearly four years after the tragic collapse of the Surfside Champlain claimed 98 lives, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has released a preliminary report that concluded that the pool deck began to collapse approximately seven more minutes before the building fell to the ground.

The detailed report reads:

“It is more likely that the collapse initiated in the pool deck than the tower. At the time of the failure, the pool deck’s slab-column connections had critically low margins of safety. The bulk of the critically low margins of safety was caused by design understrength and misplaced slab reinforcement. The structure had low resistance to progressive collapse, allowing the collapse of the pool deck to spread into and throughout the middle and east parts of the tower.”