Hundreds of residents of a Miami apartment building were forced to evacuate for “insecurity”

Hundreds of residents of an eight-story building in Miami received the evacuation order after authorities called it “dangerous,” and more than six weeks after the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside collapsed, leaving 98 people dead.

The occupants of the 137 units of the building located near Miami airport They received the notification on Monday evening and immediately started packing and putting personal effects in their vehicles, as local media showed on Tuesday.

The order, which sets the deadline for the evacuation of the building on Tuesday morning, comes after local authorities met with residents on July 26 to discuss the condition of the structure, which was on a list of “dangerous” buildings taken by the authorities in May.

According to the newspaper Miami HeraldThe day after the meeting, and after an inspection, officials ordered the garage to be closed due to structural problems.

Although they did not provide a plan to fix the failures or request permits to undertake work, local officials received a notification last week in which they were told the building was safe to live in given the repairs in progress.

The inspection made on Monday determined that said repairs “were not adequate” for the reinforcement of the columns and ordered the evacuation of the building.

“The structural integrity was degraded by the contractor who carried out repairs for which he was not authorized,” Asael Marrero, a Miami city official, told local NBC Miami.

The owners’ assembly had received a notification on July 7 for several regulatory breaches, and had not gone through the mandatory recertification process as it is a structure that is over 40 years old.

“If this building is demolished, our property and all our memories of growing up here will be gone,” resident Mya Ncastanedo told WSVN on the local channel.

Local authorities work with residents to ensure that find temporary shelter.

The evacuation process joins other similar orders issued to Miami-Dade and issued following the collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in the coastal town of Surfside, which collapsed on June 24 for causes that make still under investigation.

Source: EFE