On June 24, 2021, a part of the Champlain Towers South condo apartments in
Surfside, Florida collapsed. This disaster resulted in nearly 100 fatalities and destroyed a dozen homes. A total of 98 people died.
Abbasi notes that the high mortality rate was partly due to the timing of the collapse shortly past midnight and that a NIST investigation developed 24 different hypotheses pointing to delayed repairs and water damage as risk factors. Ultimately, the author emphasizes that, while the immediate search-and-rescue efforts showed strong inter-agency coordination, the disaster exposed critical gaps in infrastructure monitoring and building oversight.