Damaged condo beam ‘might support the entire building’? Miami Beach right to evacuate | Editorial

The order to evacuate the Port Royale Condominium in Miami Beach Thursday came as a shock to residents. They had to scramble to find temporary housing, carrying their belongings out of the aging building in hastily packed suitcases.

Relocating an entire building of people is expensive, traumatic and disruptive in the extreme, as a growing number of South Florida condo dwellers have been finding out. But after last year’s Surfside condo collapse that killed 98 and horrified a community, there is no room for hesitation. If engineers sound the alarm, officials have to act.

The Port Royale building is 51 years old. According to the Miami Herald, it had already been through its 40-year recertification and was undergoing repairs as part of a 50-year recertification required by Miami-Dade County. Work on the garage had begun about a month ago. Then engineers noticed a previously identified crack getting bigger and a half inch of “deflection,” or movement, by a main beam.

In a letter to the condominium association, the engineers wrote that the beam that had moved a half inch and others in the third-floor garage “might support the entire building structure.”

Those are chilling words for the South Florida condo community: In the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside on June 24, 2021, the garage and pool deck fell first, setting off a chain reaction that brought down the building.

Miami Beach, rightly, didn’t hesitate, ordering the 14-story building vacated immediately, and plans are under way to make the necessary fixes.

Residents may also get financial assistance. There’s a Miami-Dade ordinance, passed after Surfside, that requires building owners to provide up to three months of housing and associated costs if officials determine that the building was unsafe due to negligence. And Miami Beach just approved its own ordinance that goes further, saying building or unit owners have to pay for relocation costs for up to three months, regardless of who is at fault.

No one wants to move out without notice. Relocation is especially hard when you’ve lived someplace for a long time, as some residents had. And the costs can be prohibitive. It’s human nature to want to shrug off concerns about crumbling concrete or shifting buildings as overblown or alarmist.

But after Surfside, there is just no choice.