The Real Cause of Champlain Towers South Collapse
People all want to know why Champlain Towers South (a condo building) in Surfside, Florida collapsed at 1:30 AM on June 24, 2021. I think I have found the real cause of the collapse.
The collapse has divided the building into two parts, the collapsed part and the still standing part. The collapsed part of the building is the eastern part of the building, and the still standing part of the building is the western part of the building. I also want to divide the foundation into two parts, the eastern part of the foundation and the western part of the foundation, the eastern part of the building was on the eastern part of the foundation and the western part of the building is still on the western part of the foundation.
The problem was on the foundation, the western part of the foundation was harder, the eastern part of the foundation was softer, so the eastern part of the foundation had been sinking faster than the western part of the foundation, and finally the eastern part of the building collapsed.
It’s very simple, the condo building is on a long small island running north-south, and obviously the building is on the eastern slope of the island. I think the original topography of the building site must have been a relatively steep slope, so the western part of the foundation is harder, and the eastern part of the foundation is softer.
The eastern part of the foundation had been sinking faster than the western part of the foundation for all of these past 40 years.
The western part of the building started to lift the western end of the eastern part of the building as soon as the eastern part of the foundation sank more than the western part of the foundation did, that lifting is actually a kind of shear force, that shear force had become bigger and bigger as the eastern part of the foundation sinking more and more than the western part of the foundation (year after year), that shear force finally (at 1:30 AM on June 24, 2021) became big enough to crack all the beams connecting the west part and east part of the building, so the western end of the eastern part of the building started to collapse, and then the entire eastern part of the building collapsed finally in seconds.
I got information recently from CBS News that this building had been sinking at a rate of 2 mm a year, (I’m 100% sure that the eastern part of the foundation had been sinking faster than the western part of the foundation,) and that this building was constructed on reclaimed wetlands, (that means the designer might have ignored or been unable to check the original topography of the construction site — — the topography of that slope.)
So the ignorance of the original topography of the construction site is the real cause of the collapse.
By the way, I want to say, the west part of the building will not collapse soon, we needn’t to be too worried about this part of the building. We need to inspect other buildings’ foundation on the slopes of such small islands.
Wenbin Zhao
Email: wenbinzhao65@hotmail.com
