Engineers may have identified at least 1 potential factor in Surfside collapse

Wreckage of Champlain Towers South.
(Image credit: Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

Forensic engineers are still in the early stages of their investigation into the cause of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex in Surfside, Florida. But Allyn Kilsheimer, who was hired by the city to examine the incident, confirmed to The New York Times that there are signs less steel reinforcement was used during construction than called for in the original 1979 design to connect concrete slabs below a parking deck to the building's vertical columns.

It's still unclear if an unsatisfactory amount of steel played any role in the collapse, which killed 24 people (124 others remain unaccounted for) but if that was the case, it was likely one of several factors, engineers told the Times, rather than the sole cause. Ultimately, "the most important clues to what happened are probably still buried in the rubble," the Times writes. "We have a whole bunch of issues that we think might be part of or the trigger of what happened," Kilsheimer said.

Meanwhile, demolition workers are set to begin bringing down the remaining portion of the condo before Tropical Storm Elsa potentially makes its way to the Miami area. Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.