NIST Safety Team’s September Meeting Will Give Update on Champlain Towers Collapse

NIST will provide updates on its investigations of the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside at virtual meeting of the National Construction Safety Team (NCST) Advisory Committee on September 23 and 24. Photo Credit: NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will provide updates on its investigations of the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside and the impacts of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico during a virtual meeting of the National Construction Safety Team (NCST) Advisory Committee on September 23 and 24. 

During this public meeting, NIST will also provide an update on its Disaster and Failure Studies Program and detail its responses to the advisory committee’s 2025 recommendations. The NCST Advisory Committee advises NIST on investigations of building failures.

In June, the NCST released its technical findings on the Champlain Towers South collapse, which killed 98 people. The team, led by investigation co-leads Judith Mitrani-Reiser and Glenn Bell, concluded that the collapse began in early June 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed. 

These initial column failures caused cracks to grow and loads to redistribute in the pool deck during the next three weeks, resulting in the transfer of their loads to adjacent slab-column connections that were not strong enough to support them. This led to the larger catastrophic collapse on June 24, 2021.

“When building structures are designed and built to required codes and standards, they have margins against failure, meaning they should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” said Mitrani-Reiser in the team’s technical findings. “In the case of Champlain Towers South, however, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”

Anyone wishing to attend the NIST virtual meeting must register by 5 p.m. on September 16. Registered attendees who wish to speak during the public comment period may sign up to do so by selecting “yes” to the public comment question on the registration form. 

The full meeting agenda is available on the NIST website. All other previously released materials relating to investigations are available on the Hurricane Maria and Champlain Towers South websites.