The legacy of the Surfside collapse

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+ Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Embedded Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics The legacy of the Surfside collapse It's been nearly five years since a beachfront condominium collapsed in Surfside, Florida, killing 98 people.

+ National The legacy of the Surfside collapse June 21, 20265:13 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Debbie Elliott The legacy of the Surfside collapse Listen &middot; 7:51 7:51 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed "> <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5791638/nx-s1-9818952" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript It's been nearly five years since a beachfront condominium collapsed in Surfside, Florida, killing 98 people. The tragedy raised questions about how the state regulates structural safety. Sponsor Message PIEN HUANG, HOST: It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News, I'm Pien Huang. It's been five years since a beachfront condominium collapsed in Surfside, Florida, killing 98 people and displacing hundreds of residents. The disaster prompted tough questions about building safety and oversight in Florida. NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.

+ (SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING) DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Just around the corner from where the Champlain Towers South building collapsed five years ago, there's a makeshift memorial to those killed - a banner strung up on a wood frame with the names of all 98 victims, ranging in age from a year-old infant to a 92-year-old grandmother. MARTIN LANGESFELD: It's an unfortunate reminder of how big this tragedy was. And it's more than just names. It's stories. It's families. My name is Martin Langesfeld. I lost my sister, Nicky Langesfeld, in the Surfside building collapse, and her husband, Luis Sadovnic. ELLIOTT: Two-thirds of the 12-story beachfront condo collapsed just after 1 a.m. on June 24, 2021. It started when the pool deck caved in, and seven minutes later, the tower began to fall. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: Is anybody there? Is anybody there? Police. ELLIOTT: Many of the occupants were sleeping at the time, but the security guard didn't sound the alarm. Four people and the guard escaped. Three others were dramatically rescued from the rubble. Search crews then evacuated the residents in the part of the condo left standing. Since the collapse, Martin Langesfeld has become an activist, pushing to improve what he sees as a lax system of building oversight. He locates his sister's name on the temporary memorial. LANGESFELD: Here's Nicky, 26 years old, and her husband Louis, 28 years old. They got married just a few months prior to the collapse, and she moved in with him. A dream place - home where you feel you're safest, is where they were killed. ELLIOTT: Langesfeld is frustrated that there's no permanent memorial honoring the victims. Yet, a new luxury condo is going up on the land where Champlain Towers once stood. LANGESFELD: It's been almost five years, and there's no development for the memorial, and the development for the new building is very well underway. ELLIOTT: Langesfeld says the new construction should wait until there's a final report from federal investigators looking into the cause of the collapse. Preliminary findings point to a failure that started in the pool deck slab due to poor construction and oversight. To date, no one has been held criminally responsible. But in a complex civil lawsuit, more than 30 defendants contributed to a $1.2 billion class action settlement reached just a year after the collapse. It addresses wrongful death, personal injury and property loss claims. That was a significant achievement, says Coral Gables attorney Rachel Wagner Furst, co-lead counsel representing the Surfside victims. RACHEL WAGNER FURST: I think what was apparent to all parties, legal parties, is that it was an enormous loss, enormous loss. ELLIOTT: None of the settling parties admitted wrongdoing, but Wagner Furst says the litigation pointed to many factors contributing to the scope of the disaster beyond the initial lawsuit that singled out the condo board for deferring repairs on the 40-year-old building. WAGNER FURST: Companies and individuals who had serviced the Champlain Towers South condominium building in the years before the collapse that had arguably or allegedly failed in some way to provide proper maintenance advice or counsel on repairs, including the security company that had staffed the front desk of the building and was on duty at the time that the alarm ought to have sounded. ELLIOTT: The Surfside collapse was a wake-up call for condo associations and regulators around the country. In the immediate aftermath in South Florida, some two dozen properties were evacuated for safety concerns. Most eventually were able to return after repairs. The state responded by passing more stringent regulations, including new mandates for structural inspections and requiring condo associations to maintain a minimum level of reserve funding for structural upkeep. DONNA DIMAGGIO BERGER: The Florida legislature pushed the burden to create safe housing stock in Florida onto the people who are least able to bear it, which is the Florida consumer. ELLIOTT: Fort Lauderdale attorney Donna DiMaggio Berger specializes in condominium law. She says developers should also share in the burden. DIMAGGIO BERGER: If we wind up with the safest housing stock in the country, bravo, well done. But at the same time the Florida legislature was saying you need to have periodic engineering, mandatory reserves, they were also entertaining legislation to reduce statutes of limitation to pursue developers and contractors for defective construction. Safe buildings start with the people who build them and repair them. ELLIOTT: No matter how well-intentioned, the building reforms could have unintended consequences, says Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA: A lot of buildings have now been taken over by people who want to redo them and make them more expensive, luxurious homes. So there's tremendous pressure. People can't afford these things, and so they're forced to sell. ELLIOTT: There's a name for it. LEVINE CAVA: We call it condo vultures, and it is at our peril. We're grateful that people want to live the good life here. We know we live in paradise. We also know that we need to have people of all means in our community. ELLIOTT: That's long been the conundrum in Florida, and it's evident here in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach. (SOUNDBITE OF CARS PASSING) ELLIOTT: It's becoming a wealthy enclave, with a wall of condos lining the Atlantic and more under construction. The Champlain Towers South property itself is soon to be home to the latest luxury development, The Delmore, billed as expansive mansions in the sky, with units starting at $15 million. Developer Jeffery Rossely shows the layout on a scale model in a posh sales gallery. JEFFERY ROSSELY: Each penthouse has its own private pool, gets the view of the ocean. ELLIOTT: So how many penthouses? ROSSELY: Two with pools. ELLIOTT: He's with DAMAC Properties, a Dubai-based firm. This is the company's first residential project in the U.S. ROSSELY: It was obviously a tragic opportunity, but the courts had already ordered the sale of the property. The money was required to compensate the victims. ELLIOTT: DAMAC was the only bidder, with a $120 million cash offer, but the project has not received a warm welcome in Surfside. Rossely says they didn't expect the hostility. At town meetings, they were accused of having blood on their hands. In retrospect, Rossely says, this project needed a different approach. ROSSELY: We should have spent a bit more time on due diligence on community reaction rather than on the physical property itself. We went through what I would call the traditional due diligence. Maybe we should have gone through emotional due diligence as well. ELLIOTT: The question now is whether people will want to live here. There are no buyers yet in the presale phase. Meanwhile, a remembrance ceremony for the 98 people killed in the collapse will be held just outside the project's fence on Wednesday. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Surfside, Florida. Copyright &copy; 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. 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