New video from federal investigation shows ‘astronomical’ corrosion in collapsed Miami condo

Pictures show what engineers have called shocking levels of structural damage to the building

New video from a federal investigation shows “astronomical” corrosion in the Miami condo that collapsed last June, experts say.

The footage, released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), shows what engineers have called shocking levels of structural damage to the building, including severely corroded concrete and highly overcrowded rebar reinforcements.

Dawn Lehman, an engineering professor at the University of Washington, told the Miami Herald that one of the most corroded columns was at the building’s foundation.

“The corrosion on the bottom of that column is astronomical,” Ms Lehman told the newspaper. “If there’s that amount of corrosion, this should have been fixed.”

The building, Champlain Towers South, suddenly collapsed on 24 June, killing 98 people. Since then, NIST and other groups have begun investigating the cause of the condo’s disintegration.

“We’re trying to understand how this building failed,” Judith Mitrani-Reiser, the engineer leading the NIST probe, says in the new video. “We would like to reconstruct this failure, and in order to do that, we need as much information as possible, so one aspect is this physical evidence.”

Engineers say some of that evidence, as shown in NIST’s video, is deeply disturbing.

Abieyuwa Aghayere, an engineering researcher at Drexel University, told the Herald he was horrified by the “homogenous,” “powdery” concrete in the building’s columns, which normally should be a mix of different stone-like materials.

“The white colour just stuns me,” he told the paper. “It doesn’t look like normal concrete to me. What’s going on?”

Engineers say a new video from NIST shows ‘stunning’ levels of concrete corrosion and overcrowded rebar at Champlain Towers South (NIST)

Mr Aghayere was also aghast at the building’s rebar reinforcements, which in the video appear densely packed and tangled together. The engineer says such overcrowding risks weakening the rebar’s bond with the concrete.

“There is no reason there should be that kind of bar congestion,” Mr Aghayere said.

Since the collapse, multiple contractors and engineers who had worked at the condo have come forward to describe structural damage they believe they saw at the building.

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” one anonymous pool contractor told the Herald in June. “I thought to myself, that’s not normal.”

Jason Borden, an engineer who inspected the building’s garage, told CNN he saw “cracks and deterioration of the garage and plaza level.”

On Wednesday, NIST announced the specific team of experts who will be leading its investigation, but warned that a final report could be a long way off.

“Because of the amount of evidence and information that must be examined thoroughly, the investigation could take multiple years to complete,” the federal agency said in a statement.