Newly obtained cell phone video sheds light on Florida condo collapse

Fox News correspondent Phil Keating has the latest on the rescue efforts in Surfside, Florida, on ‘Special Report’

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. 

The planned repairs included a concrete slab under the pool deck and planters that experts have linked to the collapse, the Herald reported. 

An oceanfront condo building that partially collapsed, resulting in fatalities and many people still unaccounted for, is seen in Surfside, Florida, June 27, 2021. (Associated Press)

After the collapse, the city released documents that showed a number of safety issues flagged ahead of the building’s required 40-year inspection. 

“We have been trying to move forward with getting the needed documents completed for our 40 year so we can hit the ground running when we are able to start work,” he wrote after Prieto had claimed the condo was in “good shape” despite the Morabito report, the Herald reported. 

The death toll in the rescue operation rose to 22 on Friday, officials said, with 126 still missing. 

The Surfside building department didn’t immediately respond to Fox News’ after-hours request for comment. 

Fox News’ Peter Aitken contributed to this report.

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