WASHINGTON — A former National Institute of Standards and Technology director said the federal investigation into the Champlain Towers South collapse will likely begin providing the public with updates on the probe in a matter of months, even though the formal inquiry is almost certain to take years to finish.
Dr. Walter Copan, a chemist who led NIST under President Donald Trump from 2017 until January 2021, said the agency will hold public meetings and release interim reports while work continues on the full investigation. He compared the process to a “mystery story” where each chapter is published as it’s written.
“Generally, there will be an initial summary within three to six months to provide a status update to the public,” said Copan, who led an ongoing NIST investigation into Hurricane Maria that began in 2018. “NIST’s job, first and foremost, is to brief the public regularly within NIST’s lane of technical analysis and root cause of the failure.”
In the case of Hurricane Maria, NIST did not launch a formal investigation until May 2018, eight months after the storm. By August 2018, NIST made public the three areas of study for its Maria investigation: the effects of winds in Puerto Rico, the performance of buildings during the storm and the performance of emergency response systems along with the public’s reaction to them.
On Wednesday, NIST said it accrued enough evidence in Surfside to launch a formal investigation.
“We are going in with an open mind,” Judith Mitrani-Reiser, associate chief of the materials and structural systems division at NIST, said at a Wednesday evening news conference blocks from the Surfside collapse. “With any building collapse, we would want to understand how the building was designed, constructed, modified and maintained.”
President Joe Biden said Thursday during a visit to Surfside that there’s no consensus on why the 12-story condo building collapsed suddenly.
“I don’t think at this point there is any definitive judgment about why it collapsed and what could be done to prevent it from happening and what other buildings may have to be inspected to see if they have the same problems,” Biden said.
Biden also instructed NIST to help determine what should be done with the remainder of the building that is standing after structural concerns prompted rescue crews to stop working on the rubble pile early Thursday morning.
“The remainder of the building may collapse. We need to determine if it’s safe for first responders,” Biden said. “That’s being done right now and that’s why I asked the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, to investigate to see if it’s safe to go back and what caused the building to collapse in the first place. Because we’re committed not only to recover but restore safety across the board.”
NIST’s investigations are focused on scientific advancements and changes to building standards that can be discovered after tragedies like the Surfside collapse that are uniquely destructive. The agency does not have the power to assign blame or create new laws in response to the tragedy, but other investigations are likely to use NIST’s findings to inform civil or criminal proceedings.
“NIST’s subpoena authority will give them access to every piece of evidence on a technical basis to consider root cause,” Copan said. “NIST also has the authority to move evidence and take it from the site, but they will only go into the site when it’s safe to do so.”
NIST has an online data portal for the general public to upload photos, videos or other documentation to help inform the investigation.
Copan also said NIST, which mostly employs scientists that specialize in building materials, will likely involve other federal agencies and private institutions in its Surfside investigation. In the Maria investigation, that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a public health expert from the University of Utah and researchers from George Washington University who are investigating the causes of direct and indirect deaths attributable to the storm.
“It’s an embarrassment to the United States to have a building of that kind fail in such a catastrophic and sudden way,” Copan said, adding that the construction and concrete industries across the country and world will be watching for NIST’s recommendations.
He said that in the case of the World Trade Center collapse, where the NIST investigation began in 2002 and didn’t fully finish until 2008, the private sector used NIST’s interim reports to make changes to building designs and construction before the final report years later.
Current NIST Director Dr. James Olthoff said Wednesday that the Surfside investigation won’t overlap with criminal probes that have already started. Miami-Dade police’s homicide unit has responsibility for investigating deaths, and Miami-Dade’s state attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, said she would ask the grand jury to investigate Surfside.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she didn’t expect the county to wait for the final NIST report to consider local steps, but that they won’t need to wait for years to get helpful information.
“We learned that they hold regular meetings of their technical board that are open to the public,” she said. “So they will be discussing their findings as they go along, which I think could be very helpful.”
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district includes Surfside, said the nature of NIST’s work will have wide-ranging implications throughout Florida.
“There are millions of high-rise condo units like those in Champlain Towers all across Florida,” Wasserman Schultz tweeted. “The NIST investigation is a major announcement and will be key to learning not only the cause of the tragedy in Surfside, but the potential danger posed to other structures across FL.”
And while scientists at NIST who are experts in concrete don’t typically spend their time investigating building failures — the agency has investigated five disasters, including Surfside, in the last 20 years — their previous work could help inform the new investigation. In January, NIST began research to find a way to quantify the amount of pyrrhotite present in concrete. Pyrrhotite is a mineral that causes concrete to expand and crack, and is a persistent problem in homes across New England.
Copan said work like the pyrrhotite study will inform experts in Surfside.
“The goal is to provide technical information in real time when its ready,” Copan said. “The final report is the compendium of all the knowledge that’s been generated.”
(Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks contributed to this report.)
