Thread by @JustinHGillis

We walk into buildings assuming they will not collapse. But they do sometimes, even brand-new ones. One of the bizarre German metal + noise bands of the 1980s named itself after the phenomenon. That, of course, was Einstürzende Neubauten — "Collapsing New Buildings."

Many, many structures have collapsed over time. The most remarkable example in recent memory was an entire terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris that fell down in 2004, killing several people. Mistakes had been made.

Later that same year, an airport terminal under construction in Dubai collapsed. The architect of the Paris terminal had also designed the Dubai terminal. A fallow period ensued in his career.

The situation in Miami is horrifying, and I fervently hope the missing victims will be found alive. But, having worked as a newspaper reporter in Miami in the 1980s when condos like this one were being thrown up all over the place, I am not at all surprised.

In late 70s and early 80s, ideological fervor in Washington for "deregulation" demolished most of the rules governing savings & loan associations. An orgy of imprudent lending ensued, with the money paying for things like speculative condo construction. South Fla. was a hotspot.

It all ended badly when the S&Ls went belly-up, ultimately costing federal taxpayers $125 billion for bailouts. But the empty condos & shiny office towers were still standing (at the time) and eventually filled up.

The whole of Florida in that era had weak building codes and very weak enforcement of them. The folly was exposed in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew tore through southern Dade County.

The powerful winds blew apart entire neighborhoods, rendering 60,000 families homeless overnight. But, mysteriously, a few neighborhoods stood up to the onslaught with minimal damage.

Subsequent investigation by The Miami Herald, led by the great muckraker Jeff Leen, exposed the shoddy practices and failure of code enforcement behind the calamity. In the turmoil, Florida laws were tightened considerably.

The neighborhoods that survived turned out to have been put up by conscientious developers who spent extra to do the right thing, like securing roof trusses with hurricane straps. But: no fast buck in doing the right thing, so that was unusual.

We need to wait for official report on collapse of condo in Surfside, Fla., vintage 1981. But it won't be surprising if poor construction allowed salt water and spray to infiltrate the concrete shell and eat away at the steel holding the structure up.

Already, The New York Times is reporting that engineers issued a strong warning about the condition of the building, though evidently they did not cite an imminent risk of collapse. nyti.ms/3qu0Kzk

Knowing as much as I do about past Florida construction standards, I suspect we are going to learn that hundreds of billions of dollars of work needs to be done on Florida buildings from the 20th century.

With sea-level rise already flooding some of these buildings at highest tide, are the residents going to fork over 100 to 200K per unit? Will banks finance? Apparently, repairs in Surfside were slowed by residents fighting the hefty special assessments needed for the work.

I guarantee you these homeowner associations, which pinched pennies for decades and failed to do the maintenance work they ought to have done, are going to go crying to Washington for bailouts.

Harsh as it sounds, we have to say no. We have to stop socializing the costs of doing stupid things, like building huge condominiums feet away from an ocean that is rising at an accelerating pace due to human-induced global warming. nytimes.com/2016/09/04/sci…

To fortify yourself for the painful choices to come, maybe play some Einstürzende Neubauten music, filled with screams, screeches and metallic clangs. I can especially recommend their first album, "Kollaps."