The Champlain Towers condo association manager complained just days before the June 24 collapse that delays by the city of Surfside, Florida’s building department were “holding us up” from making needed repairs on the building, emails show, according to a report.
“We need to get to answers to these questions,” Scott Stewart, the condo’s building manager, wrote June 21.
Surfside’s building department failed to respond to the condo association’s request to approve a temporary parking plan for construction for more than a month, the emails show, according to the Miami Herald.
The director of the building department, Jim McGuinness, replied June 23 with a series of questions just 14 hours before the building collapsed, according to the Herald. His email went answered.
McGuinness had reportedly also been on the roof of the building documenting repairs the day before the collapse and later said, “There was no inordinate amount of equipment or materials or anything on that roof that caught my building official’s eye that would make it alarming as to this place collapsing,” he said, according to The Palm Beach Post.
BUILDING INSPECTOR WAS ON ROOF OF FLORIDA CONDO HOURS BEFORE COLLAPSE
The planned repairs included a concrete slab under the pool deck and planters that experts have linked to the collapse, the Herald reported.