Pool deck pinpointed as starting point of 2021 Florida condo collapse, feds say

Devoun Cetoute, Miami Herald on Sep 9, 2025

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MIAMI — What officially caused the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse that killed 98 people is closer to having an answer, as federal officials on Tuesday announced a tentative end to their investigation and that they’ve homed in on a singular failure in the building’s infrastructure that triggered the tragedy.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology said it plans to finish its technical work by the end of 2025 and begin drafting its reports.

In the last four years, investigators initially had 12 hypotheses, which whittled down to three “higher-likelihood” scenarios. Now evidence is reinforcing that the building’s pool deck was where the start of Champlain Towers South’s collapse occurred and not in the tower itself.

“The investigation has also identified indications of the building’s distress that were visible in the weeks before the partial collapse of the building in Surfside, Florida,” the institute said.

Findings show the building was in distress in the weeks leading up to the tragedy.

A sliding glass door had fallen off its frame, a horizontal crack appeared in a planter wall and vertical shifting of a gate caused it to become inoperable.

“All of these issues were concentrated in a small area of the pool deck and street-level parking deck, which has been confirmed to have begun collapsing at least seven minutes before the tower,” the institute said.

Investigators had said previously that a slab-column connection in the pool deck failing was a possible trigger of the entire building collapse. That connection’s structural design did not meet building code standards and steel reinforcement was missing, misplaced or eaten away by corrosion.

A 2021 Miami Herald investigation looked into possible scenarios that caused the collapse of the tower, exploring many of the same scenarios the institute is investigating.

Collapse kills 98 people

Champlain Towers South, a 12-story, 126-unit condo building, came down at 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021, in Surfside.

Many of the victims, ranging in age from 1 to 92 years old, were sleeping. Only five people were able to escape from the collapsed area during the seven-minute gap between the time the pool deck caved in and the middle and oceanfront sections of the tower came down — a security guard and four people living in the building.

Weeks of search and rescue efforts ensued, but no one was found alive in the rubble.

However, the remains of all 98 of the victims were identified.

Among the deceased were retirees, newlyweds, elderly couples, young families and transplants from New York and Latin America.

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