Surfside resident Robert Lisman lived next door to the Champlain Tower South when it collapsed and photographed the pool deck area right after the deadly incident in 2021.Photo: Courtesy: Robert Lisman, Surfside Resident
(Surfside, FL) -- Federal investigators say the collapse of a Florida condo that killed 98 people in 2021 was likely caused by a weakness in the pool deck not the 12-story tower.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology released its findings Tuesday on the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside.
The agency said it used structural testing and a computer analysis of video of the collapse to determine that it started in the pool deck beneath the tower, where there was a "failure" in a "slab-column connection."
Surfside resident Robert Lisman says he lived next door to the Champlain Tower South and was awake the night of the partial condo collapse. Lisman says he had a vantage point not available to the press and photographed the area right after the 12-story building fell.
NIST is working to identify who manufactured the steel and other building materials and Tanya Brown-Giammanco told the panel that none of the steel was from a foreign manufacturer.
Lisman says he would like to see the building inspector and others allegedly responsible for failing to foresee the collapse to be criminally punished.
She also says that NIST is looking at "what" was to blame, not "who." She says the investigation is looking for technical failures not criminal acts.
In total, nearly a billion dollars in settlements have been paid out in connection with the collapse.
The agency said a full report on the collapse will be released by in summer of 2026.