MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The town of Surfside says they are waiting on Miami-Dade County to conduct their own investigation into the collapse of the Champlain Towers South.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett says the county has done a great job helping Surfside during the search, rescue and recovery efforts, but now needs them to allow the town to find out what went wrong.
The town has engineers ready to go and they want to get this done to protect nearby residents.
“We need to find out what happened now – because we can’t afford another repeat of this collapse,” said Burkett.
A letter sent to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava from Mayor Burkett on July 23 reads, in part:
“Surfside officials have attempted, on multiple occasions and through multiple avenues, to address with county officials our urgent need to examine the existing conditions of the Champlain Towers South site – and do it immediately.”
The town says that letter has not received a response.
“Given we don’t know why that building fell down we can’t tell those other people what they want to hear and that is that their building is safe,” said Burkett.
Surfside wants to do its own full forensic investigation of the collapse site to understand and to see if action needs to be taken at other ocean front buildings, including the Champlain Towers North.
“We’ve got the preeminent expert of building collapses here in surfside he’s been here on the ground, he’s been available,” said Burkett.
That expert is Allyn Kilsheimer, a structural engineer who is now serving as a consultant for Surfside.
“We’re ready to roll when we get the right to roll,” said Kilsheimer.
Kilsheimer is backing the mayor’s frustrations, saying he can only do so much without going to the actual site.
“We can’t do any determination of the foundation system, the dirty underneath the building, we can’t do any material investigation into the strength of the reinforcement steel and concrete,” said Kilsheimer.
The plea from Mayor Burkett is also on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ radar.
The mayor and the governor met Tuesday morning in Surfside.
“The governor is carefully watching this whole thing and he believes as I do that, we need an answer now, we need to find as to why this building fell,” said Burkett.
CBS4 News reached out to the Miami-Dade mayor’s office for a response, but is still waiting to hear back.
Leave a Reply