大象传媒

"Buildings in America don't fall down like this."

When the Champlain Towers collapsed in Surfside in Miami, Florida, the engineering community was left in shock. How could an apartment block, built only 40 years ago, just fall down?

One of the people tasked with investigating the cause is John Pistorino. He was an engineering consultant for Miami-Dade County when the Drug Enforcement Agency building collapsed in 1974, killing seven people.

Following this, he helped develop the current standard which requires recertification for buildings after 40 years.

He explained to Newsday how this investigation will proceed in such an unusual case.

"Except for the building that collapsed in 1974... this just hasn't happened before... These buildings are built to withstand hurricanes of 185 miles an hour. They're built to withstand storm surges and high water tables. They have deep foundations which go hundreds of feet into the ground and so they're built to last 100 years or more... That's why it's so unusual for anything like this to have happened."

(Photo: Rescue workers sift through the rubble of the collapsed building. Credit: Reuters)

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