The Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, FL is one of the barrier islands just south of the iconic legend Miami Beach, partially collapsed killing four people and leaving a staggering number of 159 people unaccounted for. Governor Ron DeSantis (GQP — Florida) finally declared a state of emergency 17 hours after the collapse. The decree allows FEMA and other federal agencies to assist in the tragedy. It is unclear if DeSantis even talked to the president, states CNN.
Governor DeSantis is widely expected to run for the nomination to be the Republican candidate for president. DeSantis has been particularly Trumpian lately, restricting voting rights and attacking gay people. A meeting with Biden would not be helpful with the right-wing traitors who are determined to turn the country into a dictatorship to codify white supremacy. His State of Emergency was likely sufficient for the federal government to send in the cavalry without him needing to speak to the President.
The partial collapse of the 12 story building pancaked as it fell with concrete and twisted metal and piled outside the building making recovery of victims difficult.
It may take months before the cause of the building's collapse is known, as the recovery of survivors and the dead is the priority for local, state, and federal officials. One hypothesis gaining traction not only in the scientific community but with residents of Miami Beach is that subsidence and sea-level rise may have played a part.
Miami has experienced a six-inch rise of sea-level rise since the mid-1990s. The Capital Weather Gang mentions that Miami has seen a 320% increase in nuisance flooding since that time. Miami as you recall has limestone bedrock which is essentially a fossilized sponge. Seawater gurgles upwards due mostly to tropical cyclones and high tides.
Still, Albert Slap, president of Boca Raton-based RiskFootprint, said it can be invisible machinations — the push and pull of tides on limestone bedrock — combined with rising seas that can weaken a building’s integrity.
RiskFootprint provides assessments for private homeowners and business developments that includes looking at threats from sea level rise, king tides — so-called “sunny day” flooding — and storm surge.
“Even if when the building was built in 1981 the foundation was dry most of the time, with sea level rise pushing groundwater up to the surface, the foundation could be wet enough long enough to soften the concrete,” Slap said. “Many of these buildings with underground parking have sump pumps running and that means the foundation is in the water.”
A 2019 analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that high tide flooding the previous year broke records at more than a dozen locations, including Miami and Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast.
At the same time global sea-level rise is about 1 inch every eight years.
Florida International University’s Professor Shimon Wdowinski had found that this particular building has been sinking 2 millimeters per year for decades.
The area where a building partially collapsed in Surfside, Fla. showed signs of land subsidence in the 1990s, according to space-based radar data analyzed by an FIU professor.
The 2020 land and sea level rise study conducted by FIU Institute of Environment Professor Shimon Wdowinski identified the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium as the one place on the east side of the barrier island where land subsidence was detected from 1993 to 1999. But land subsidence in and of itself likely would not cause a building’s collapse, according to Wdowinski, an expert in space geodesy, natural hazards and sea level rise.
“When we measure subsidence or when we see movement of the buildings, it’s worth checking why it happens,” Wdowinski said. “We cannot say what is the reason for that from the satellite images but we can say there was movement here.”
Western Miami Beach saw subsidence over larger areas but that was expected because homes there are built on reclaimed wetland. Areas where land is subsiding are more likely to experience more serious effects of sea level rise, according to the study.
SNIP
In the 1990s, Miami Beach experienced subsidence at the rate of 1-3 millimeters per year, which could add up to a few inches of movement over a decade, Wdowinski said. It was significantly slower compared to other parts of the planet Wdowinski has studied. Mexico City, for example, is subsiding at a rate of 15 inches per year.
The researcher believes the same technology he used to detect land subsidence could be used to detect vulnerable buildings and help prevent future catastrophes.
The city of Miami has subsidence and sinkhole issues, if it is determined that saltwater is a contributing factor in this collapse it would be the first instance on the beach itself.
As Miami Keeps Building, Rising Seas Deepen Its Social Divide
The science of what is going to happen here — higher seas, increased heat, intensifying storms — is certain. Still, the developers, real estate agents, and many buyers continue to play a long con against the rising tide, pretending that all is well in South Florida, even though some 10 percent of its land area will be under water if the ocean rises just 2 feet. The irrational exuberance of the high-end real estate sector is fed, in part, by foreign investment seeking to park excess capital in luxury, high-rise beachfront condos.
To see why lower-income residents are likely to be on the losing end of the dramatic changes bearing down on Miami-Dade, you need to understand a little about South Florida’s inherent inequality. This is a place that has 35 billionaires — about 5 percent of the U.S. total — and a minimum wage of $8.56 an hour. If you look past the glittering skyscrapers and mega-yachts, you will see that the City of Miami has a relative rate of inequality similar to that of developing countries like Paraguay and Colombia. Forty percent of the households in Miami-Dade County — of which the City of Miami is part — are working poor, with little savings and few assets. Nearly one-fifth live below the poverty line.
Those economic divisions are also racial divisions. A 2019 study found “major disparities in wealth accumulation and income across various racial and ethnic groups in metropolitan Miami.” Predictably, non-Latinx white households are by far the most prosperous, with a median net worth of $107,000. The next-closest group, Cuban households, had a median wealth of $22,000.
Miami’s vast racial and economic divisions have been shaped by Jim Crow laws, discriminatory red lining of residential real estate, race riots, and freeways built over bulldozed Black neighborhoods. This created a city where the brownfield sites and urban heat islands are disproportionately concentrated in Black neighborhoods. The worsening heat preys on low-income and minority communities, which are less able to afford air conditioning and do not have as much tree cover as Miami’s richer neighborhoods.