More: Collapsed Miami condo had been sinking into Earth at alarming rate since 1990s, researchers say
A Florida high rise that collapsed Wednesday night was determined to be
unstable a year ago, according to a researcher at Florida International University.
The building, which was constructed in 1981 on reclaimed wetlands, has been sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s, according to a 2020 study conducted by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University.
“I looked at this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” he said of the Champlain Towers South.
Wdowinski said his research is not meant to suggest any certainty about what caused the collapse of the condominium. The building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s, and the sinking could have slowed or accelerated in the time since.
In his experience, Wdowinski said even the level of subsidence observed in the 1990s typically results in impacts to buildings and their structures, such as cracked walls or shifting foundations. He believes that very well could have been the case for the Champlain building in the 1990s, based on his findings.
“It was a byproduct of analyzing the data. We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” Wdownski said.
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