Residents of a 14-story oceanfront building in Miami Beach have been forced out of their homes by an order to evacuate.
The city posted an unsafe structure notice at the Port Royale condominiums in Miami Beach.
The 164-unit structure was forced to be evacuated due to a structural engineering report. The report said that an engineer discovered that a main support beam had shifted and that a crack in the beam had expanded.
A renovation contractor who lived in the building for more than six years said the damage was beyond a single support beam.
Markaj said he has seen the issues for a long time. He tried to report the issues to the building management and the city's building department, but he was unsuccessful.
He said that he felt unsafe in the building and that the way the building's maintenance was handled made him feel unsafe.
Inspection Engineers said in a letter to the city that it is working to get a city permit so that comprehensiveshoring can be installed in 10 days. The building was constructed in 1971
During an inspection about 10 months ago, engineers found areas of concern that they designated as a priority to be repaired.
Repairs began about four weeks ago after the building's association chose a contractor. The firm that inspected the building was asked to supervise the work and this week noticed that one of the main beams in the garage had experienced a structural deflection of approximately 12 inch.
A group of condo residents went back to the site Friday morning to see what was happening and one of them was a woman who had lived in the building for 15 years. While walking her dog, she swung by. She said work on the building had been going on for a few weeks.
Flores said that they had to leave all of a sudden.
Condominium owners who rent out their units are responsible for paying for temporary housing for up to three months or until the building is usable again, according to Miami Beach officials.
Samy Bosch lived in the building for nine years and said the residents were not given much time to leave. At 5 p.m., they were informed. They had to leave by 7 pm.
We can't stay because we don't know what's going on Bosch was back on a scooter to watch the scene on Friday morning.
98 people were killed in a collapse of a condo building on Collins Avenue in Surfside, Florida, in June of 2021.
Rescue crews from across the U.S. and as far away as Israel joined the search for victims of the Surfside condo building disaster.
Since the Surfside collapse, other buildings in South Florida have been emptied.
The disaster focused attention on the structural integrity of aging condominium towers throughout Florida, and the state has since strengthened laws requiring inspections and periodic re-certification of buildings.
When the Surfside building collapsed, it was only the first time that it had to be re-certified.
New state rules signed into law in May require buildings to have their first re-certification after 30 years if they are within 3 miles of the coast.
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