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KANSAS CITY, Mo. – When it rains outside in Kansas City, Mo., it also rains inside the rickety underground garage at City Hall, where parking spaces for the Mayor and City Manager are located under rebar and crumbled concrete that moldy stormwater can easily seep through.
The decay of the garage had long been evident to the Kansas City rulers. After all, they park there. But fixing it was not an urgent priority until nearly 100 people died last month in a condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida. Since then, the pedestrian plaza above the town hall garage has been fenced off, dozens of city workers have been told they need to park elsewhere soon, and officials have discussed how to identify and repairing other decrepit structures in the city.
Across the country, local officials nervously looked at their own horizons and wondered if a crisis could loom. Since the Florida tragedy, plans to step up inspections, enforce existing rules, or crack down on problematic properties have emerged in Los Angeles County, Washington, and Jersey City, NJ.
“There is a real structural and, I think, vital threat to not solving the basic infrastructure problem,” said Mayor Quinton Lucas of Kansas City, who said the Surfside collapse had it. makes you think more deeply about the implications of parking in a garage in difficulty. “I just don’t think we think of dangerous buildings in a broad enough way.”
Code compliance and structural engineering rarely animate voters the way taxes or crime, or even street paving, so building safety is often relegated to the fringes of municipal governance, with little attention and insufficient funding.
Many places have rigorous inspections and permit requirements for new structures, but follow-up is often limited in the decades after construction is completed. Supervision of existing structures is delegated to a mosaic of local and state governments and condominium boards. And even when rules are in place – like in Kansas City, where private parking lot owners are expected to file periodic inspection reports with the city – compliance and enforcement are often lacking.
“I just think it’s been a blind spot for states and cities for a long, long time,” said Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, who proposed an ordinance that would require facade inspections every five years and structural inspections every 10 years for – gets up. “We are constructing a lot of buildings without continuous security checks after a reasonable period of time. “
Although large, occupied buildings rarely collapse in the United States, except in the event of an earthquake, terrorist attack, or other triggering event, a major building failure can be catastrophic.
Mr Fulop said that in the days following the Florida collapse, as news emerged that the Surfside Tower’s structural problems had been worsening for years, his office began receiving emails from residents of Jersey City worried about the postponement of maintenance of their own buildings.
Mr Fulop said his office became aware of a condominium association that had racked up nearly $ 50 million in deferred maintenance, meaning each owner could be billed hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix the structure. . The high price tag and lack of enforcement, he said, made the situation worse.
“Obviously, if you let these condominium boards make their own decisions all the time, there are competing interests when it comes to affordability that sometimes compromises safety,” Fulop said.
But requiring more inspections can also increase costs for homeowners. And without follow-up, even the most thorough inspection won’t prevent a collapse. Although the cause of Surfside’s collapse is still under investigation, a consultant had urged owners three years earlier to repair “major structural damage.”
“The toughened inspections will be helpful if they don’t inspect the superficial aspects – there’s a crack here, so plug the crack,” said Abieyuwa Aghayere, professor of engineering at Drexel University. “If cracks are occurring, why is the crack occurring?” Why is the crack there? If they only send inspectors, who may not be engineers, I’m afraid that’s just another kind of creative project.
The proposals that have emerged across the country since the Surfside collapse vary widely in scope and specificity. Some changes have already been enacted while others are still in the early stages of policy development.
In the Los Angeles area, county supervisors have requested inspections of high-rise buildings in Marina del Rey, where some residents are concerned about the safety of their buildings. In Washington, where a condominium building under construction recently collapsed, Mayor Muriel Bowser imposed city-wide permit and inspection requirements, which she described as an “early warning system.” early ”for hazardous buildings. And in New York City, lawmakers urged the state government to require inspections of coastal vessels.
Frequently Asked Questions
It could take months for investigators to determine precisely why a significant portion of the building in Surfside, Florida, collapsed. But there are already clues to the potential reasons for the disaster, including design or construction flaws. Three years before the collapse, a consultant found evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab under the pool deck and “heavy” cracks and spalling of the columns, beams and walls of the pool. parking garage. Engineers who have visited the wreckage or viewed photos say the damaged columns at the base of the building may have less steel reinforcement than originally intended.
Condominium boards and homeowner associations often struggle to convince residents to pay for necessary repairs, and most Champlain Towers South board members resigned in 2019 due to their frustrations. In April, the new council chairman wrote to residents that conditions in the building had “deteriorated considerably” in recent years and that construction would now cost $ 15 million instead of $ 9 million. Residents also complained that the construction of a massive residential tower designed by Renzo Piano next door was shaking Champlain Towers South.
Entire families have died because the collapse happened in the middle of the night, while people were sleeping. The parents and children killed in Unit 802, for example, were Marcus Joseph Guara, 52, a fan of the rock band Kiss and the University of Miami Hurricanes; Anaely Rodriguez, 42, who has embraced tango and salsa; Lucia Guara, 11, who found astronomy and outer space fascinating; and Emma Guara, 4, who loved the princess world. A floor-by-floor look at the victims shows the extent of the devastation.
A 15-year-old boy and his mother were rescued from the rubble shortly after the building fell. However, she died in a hospital and no other survivors were found during the two-week search and rescue mission. It was hoped that the demolition of the remaining structure would allow rescuers to safely explore voids where someone might have survived. But only bodies were found. There were 97 confirmed casualties up to July 14.
“It’s scary not to have information on the condition of our buildings” State Senator Todd Kaminsky said, a Democrat from Long Island.
Kansas City officials said they didn’t think the City Hall garage was in danger of collapsing, nor did they think the City Hall itself, which was built there. is over 80 years old and towering 29 stories above the city center, was in danger.
But in recent years, pieces of concrete have fallen from the garage ceiling, endangering cars and pedestrians. Engineers were concerned enough about the risk of heavy loads on the ceiling that they recently asked crews to fence off the grassy expanse just above the garage, long a favorite site for press conferences, lunch breaks and events. Even the fountains in the square have been emptied.
“There’s just the fear that there are areas we can’t see until we remove the top where the concrete could break through if there were a lot of people in a compact area,” said James Freed, the city’s architect.
The citizens of Kansas know firsthand the consequences of technical failures. Forty years ago this month, 114 people died when walkways collapsed at a Hyatt hotel, one of the deadliest accidental construction failures in modern American history.
Mayor Lucas is seeking approval of a plan to inspect Kansas City buildings owned or leased by the city, with the option of eventually extending it to private skyscrapers. Downtown Kansas City, which experienced a revival in the years leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, is dominated by a mix of aging office towers, booming industrial buildings that have been converted to lofts, and newer ones. skyscraper with glass walls.
As for the town hall garage and the plaza above, the town is awaiting estimates on the millions of dollars it could cost to make the area safe. Then it will be up to the city council to decide whether to repair the structure for a few years or pursue a more complete reconstruction that could be solid for decades.
“Now is the time to invest in things like this, to do it right for as long as possible,” said Brian Platt, City Manager. “Unfortunately, sometimes it takes an event like the one that happened in Miami to push people in that direction.”
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