Fire on surface of Gulf of Mexico is extinguished, but questions about pipeline leak remain
A massive fire that broke out on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Friday has been extinguished, but the incident is raising questions about the risks of undersea pipelines.
Videos of a swirling, orange mass of flames surrounded by ocean waves went viral after a gas leak was reported near a platform used for offshore drilling by Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company. The scene was made even more surreal by the presence of fire boats that were dwarfed by the inferno, but eventually succeeded at putting it out after about five hours.
Angel Carrizales, who heads the Mexican agency charged with regulating pipeline safety, said on Twitter that the incident “did not generate any spill.” That claim drew some skepticism, given that something other than water had to be present on the ocean’s surface in order for it to ignite.
Pemex said Friday that the company would “carry out a root cause analysis of this incident” and that no one had been injured. The company provided few other details about the leak.
On social media, many argued that the eerie and alarming scene of a burning ocean clearly demonstrated the inherent problems of allowing oil companies to tap into fossil fuel reserves from the ocean floor.
“Shocking new example of how dirty and dangerous offshore drilling is,” the Center for Biological Diversity wrote on Twitter, calling for a moratorium on new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico.
The fire took place in an area known as Ku Maloob Zaap, which is home to Pemex’s most productive oil fields. According to Reuters, an internal incident report stated that an electric storm and heavy rains had damaged key machinery before the early-morning leak. Workers used nitrogen to put out the flames, according to the report.
Although Ku Maloob Zaap produces more than 700,000 barrels of oil a day on average, Pemex has been seeing its overall output fall is roughly $114 billion in debt, according to Bloomberg News. As a result, the company has not been able to invest in new extraction technologies.
Two dead, 19 missing in Japan after unusually high volume of rain triggers landslide
Two are dead and at least 19 people are missing after a landslide caused by torrential rains tore through the Japanese city of Atami on Saturday.
Witnesses described watching whole houses be swept away by the fast-moving river of debris, and video posted to social media showed a driver barely managing to get out of the way as dark mud cascaded down one of the city’s steep hills. One 84-year-old man told Kyodo News that he had noticed a rotting smell, then looked up to see a torrent of mud and sand headed his way.
While mudslides are not uncommon during Japan’s rainy season, extreme weather appears to have played a role in the disaster. Atami has received more rain in the first three days of July than it usually does in an entire month, the BBC reported. Experts believe that climate change may be responsible for more intense rains, because the warmer atmosphere stores more moisture.
A coastal resort known for its hot springs, Atami is located roughly 60 miles southwest of Tokyo. As search-and-rescue efforts got underway, residents of several surrounding prefectures were urged to evacuate due to the high risk of additional landslides and flooding.
“Please continue to pay attention to evacuation information from the local government and take actions to protect your own life as soon as possible,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said in a statement.
By Saturday evening, authorities were estimating that as many as 80 homes in Atami had been crushed, buried or washed away by the landslide. The two people who died had been swept into the sea, where their bodies were found by coast guard, Heita Kawakatsu, the governor of Shizuoka prefecture, told reporters.
Developer of luxury condos offered next-door Surfside building $400,000 amid complaints over construction, documents show
The developer of a luxury Miami Beach high-rise next to the Surfside condominium building that collapsed last week was offering to pay $400,000 to the condo association of the older, smaller building two years ago, at a time when some homeowners were complaining about the proximity of the new building, the impact of vibrations and drifting debris, documents obtained by The Washington Post show.
The Eighty Seven Park building is seen behind Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., on June 30, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Octavio Jones
Construction of Eighty Seven Park, which was finished in 2020, came “uncomfortably close” to the city boundary that bordered Champlain Towers South, the site of the catastrophic collapse, Guillermo Olmedillo, a former Surfside official, said in an interview with The Post this week. Champlain Towers homeowners complained on multiple occasions of plastic foam and other debris falling into the pool in front of their building, email records show.
The Eighty Seven Park building is seen behind Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., on June 30, 2021.
Photo for The Washington Post by Octavio Jones
“We are concerned that the construction next to Surfside is too close,” homeowner and condo association board member Mara Chouela wrote in an email to Surfside building officials in January 2019, part of a set of emails from Champlain owners released by the town since the collapse. “The terra project on Collins and 87 are digging too close to our property and we have concerns regarding the structure of our building.”
Amid tensions in 2019, the board president of the Champlain Towers South condo association sent a notice to members sharing a draft of an offer from the luxury high-rise to settle with homeowners if they “reasonably support and not oppose (directly or indirectly)” the project as one of several conditions, the documents show.
Board correspondence reviewed by The Post shows that the law firm representing the condo association had flagged clauses in the proposal that would bar owners from criticizing the development and ban them from discussing any financial settlement under penalty of losing the payment – terms the firm did not consider enforceable.
The proposed agreement was never signed, Max Marcucci, a spokesman for the condo association, said Thursday.
8701 Collins Development LLC, which was set up by Terra Group and its partners to develop Eighty Seven Park, has previously stated that it is “confident that the construction of 87 Park did not cause or contribute to the collapse that took place in Surfside.”
In a statement replying to questions about the offer terms and the amount, the developer wrote: “8701 Collins Development, LLC is not commenting on matters unrelated to the tragedy of June 24, 2021. Any further inquiries regarding this document should be directed to the Champlain Tower South Condominium Association and its legal counsel.”
A representative for Becker & Poliakoff, the law firm for Champlain Towers South, did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Investigators tasked with identifying causes of last week’s collapse, which had killed at least 18 and left 145 unaccounted for as of early Friday, said they intend to scrutinize possible effects of nearby construction in their ongoing reviews.
Judith Mitrani-Reiser, a lead investigator from the federal National Institute of Standards and Technology, said Wednesday during a news conference that her team is looking at various possible contributing factors, including “environmental conditions that could have affected the structure” of Champlain Towers South.
Allyn Kilsheimer, a veteran engineer hired by Surfside, said he had yet to analyze the impact of Eighty Seven Park’s three-year construction process but “will eventually look at that.” Surfside’s mayor and two of its four town commissioners say they are also pushing investigators to examine whether Eighty Seven Park played a role, citing previous complaints about vibrations during the building process.
“When buildings are constructed, there are pilings driven into the ground,” Mayor Charles Burkett said. “We have to think about that. We can’t rule anything out, can we? Because clearly something here went very, very wrong.”
Sinisa Kolar, a structural engineer and vice president of the Miami-based Falcon Group, said he thinks it is normal for the development of a new high-rise to cause some shaking in adjacent properties, especially during the drilling of foundations. He said that proximity can influence the degree of vibrations and potential damage but that such vibrations are unlikely to cause an entire building to buckle. What happened at Surfside, he said, “is more likely a combination of factors than one big factor.”
Eighty Seven Park, at 16 stories, is the last building on Collins Avenue in the north end of Miami Beach. Champlain Towers South sits right across the municipal border, in Surfside, with 12 floors and a penthouse.
8701 Collins Development in 2013 paid $65 million to acquire the three-acre plot at 8701 Collins Ave., which was separated from Champlain Towers South by a 50-foot-wide street called 87th Terrace, public records show. The next year, 8701 Collins Development reached a deal with the city of Miami Beach to acquire the 18,042-square-foot plot that contained the public street in exchange for a $10.5 million “voluntary donation” to Miami Beach, part of which would go to revamping a city park.
Thomas R. Mooney, planning director for Miami Beach at the time, told city officials in a 2014 memo that “vacation of this [right of way] will not affect the parking or infrastructure needs of adjacent properties” or negatively affect the surrounding neighborhood. But Olmedillo, Surfside’s town manager at the time, said Miami Beach officials never reached out to Surfside to discuss the sale of the street, even though it hugged the side of Champlain Towers South, a Surfside residence.
Mooney did not reply to requests for comment.
In a recent interview, Olmedillo said he was so surprised when developers put up a fence blocking off 87th Terrace that he sent Surfside code enforcers to the site. He said he also called the land-use attorneys and surveyors associated with the project, asking whether it had crossed the municipal boundary – they told him it had not.
“It struck me as strange that they would close the street and sell it. … It brought things uncomfortably close,” Olmedillo said. He added that he was offended at the time that Surfside officials were not notified beforehand about the closure of 87th Terrace, which had public parking for residents and served as one of the beach access points for town police.
“It was like, ‘Oops, sorry, we forgot about you,'” Olmedillo said. “When the fence came up, I saw it and said: ‘What the hell? What’s going on?'”
Photos by Surfside residents and satellite images show how, from 2016 to 2020, the open space narrowed between the 12-story Champlain Towers and the 16-story project next to it, which included an underground garage, two pools and a private garden. As construction got underway, homeowners raised complaints.
“Our pool is full of styrofoam,” another homeowner and board member, Anette Goldstein, wrote to the Champlain South building manager and local officials in February 2019. “Please call the building supervisor next door and remind them in no uncertain terms that they were supposed to clean it every day.”
Speaking after the collapse, Ellen Friedman, a Champlain Towers South homeowner, said that “there was dust, there was noise, there were vibrations” caused by the construction project.
From 2016 to 2019, Miami Beach officials received dozens of noise complaints from the construction at 8701 Collins Ave., city records show. The developers were also fined for excessive noise at least eight times. In April 2019, members of the Champlain Towers South condo association took pictures of plastic foam that had drifted from the construction site.
“Can you send these pictures to the person we are in contact with at Terra?” wrote board member Nancy Levin, who is among those reported missing in the collapse. “They should see this while they decide on our compensation.”
Board meeting minutes from October 2019 recount a contentious debate over the settlement, with the board initially indicating it would accept a deal and a group of upset homeowners hiring legal counsel to demand the release of more details.
In late October, then-board president Graciela Escalante sent an email containing a “Term Sheet for proposed settlement with CTS Association.” It said Eighty Seven Park developers would offer payment of $400,000 if homeowners agreed not to publicly oppose the project, accepted expanded hours of construction and “entered into a strict confidentiality agreement.” The Becker & Poliakoff law firm advised the association not to accept the deal, because it contained “an unenforceable confidentiality clause and a monetary penalty for any breach,” Escalante wrote to told members.
Further, she added, the Terra Group had decided not to move forward with the proposal, because it had heard that condo owners opposed it.
A compensation proposal from a developer is unusual when a project is already underway, said Miguel Brizuela, a Miami-based construction attorney. Developers typically ask for the support of neighbors when they are seeking permits, not in the middle of construction. An exception, he said, is if the developer suspects there could be “a non-frivolous claim for damages for bodily injury or property damage” caused by construction.
The document sent to the condo association “requires so much context to understand what prompted it,” said Mary Ann Ruiz, a Miami-area condominium attorney, including “whether it is the extended hours of construction and the nuisance involved or whether there were other more serious concerns brought forth.”
Published : July 03, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Rebecca Tan, Tik Root, Beth Reinhard
When Jarrod Ramoss younger sister took the stand this week to testify in his sanity trial, she said it was the first time she had seen her brother in person in seven years.
Of their immediate family, Michelle Jeans said Ramos had kept in touch with her the longest, sharing updates on his poker-playing hobby, sending postcards from his nine-month hike on the Appalachian Trail and sometimes joining her at concerts or movies. But Jeans said Ramos also sent her emails about the harassment charges he faced from a high school classmate. And he ranted for hours by phone, Jeans testified, about his fixation with the legal fight against the woman’s supporters, including the author of a column in the Capital newspaper.
That behavior concerned her, she said, but she handled her criticism cautiously.
“When people upset him, he will disown them or remove them from his life,” Jeans said. “I didn’t want to upset him.”
But sometime in the mid-2010s, he cut her off, too – just as he’d done to their mother, father and grandfather. Then on June 28, 2018, she saw the news: A mass shooting at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.
Jeans’s testimony this week, which spanned two days, focused on her recollection of her brother’s life and behaviors leading up to the day he walked into that Annapolis newsroom with a shotgun and killed five people. A defense expert witness – neurologist Thomas Hyde – later tied together Jeans’s observations and his own clinical assessment to explain how he diagnosed Ramos with autism and how that impacted his behavior.
Together, their testimonies painted the picture of a man who never had close friendships or romantic relationships, who preferred to be alone from a young age and who harbored delusions about people he perceived as out to get him.
On cross examination, prosecutors questioned the integrity of Jeans’s testimony and the validity of Hyde’s analysis, which was based on three hours of interviews with Ramos and a one-hour interview with his sister.
Prosecutors insinuated, because of Ramos’ card-playing hobby, that he was putting on a “poker face.”
Though Ramos, 41, has already pleaded guilty to 23 counts in the mass shooting, a jury will now determine whether he is criminally responsible for the attack – or whether, because of a mental disorder, he lacked the ability to understand the criminality of his behavior or conform it to the requirements of the law at the time of the shooting.
His sanity trial began Tuesday and is scheduled to continue through mid-July.
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During her testimony, Jeans described a fairly normal childhood in Maryland that was punctuated by a few formative years living on a military base in England, their parents’ separation and the family’s eventual estrangement from her brother, who she said became reclusive and obsessive in the years after the harassment case.
Ramos told his sister all about it, she said, explaining that he had emailed and exchanged Facebook messages with a woman he attended high school with but did not know. When she stopped responding to him after growing uncomfortable, Jeans testified, he messaged her abusive language, took screenshots of Facebook posts that included her and alcohol, and sent them to her boss – with the intent of getting her fired.
The woman eventually reported his behavior to authorities, and he pleaded guilty to harassment.
Then in 2011, a journalist at the Capital wrote a column titled: “Jarrod wants to be your friend.”
The column said that Ramos’s messages to the woman included “‘[expletive] you, leave me alone’ though she hadn’t written him in months.”
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That, Jeans said, was her brother’s breaking point. He insisted he never said that, and became fixated, she said, on the idea that this factual inaccuracy made him sound “crazy.”
This began his years-long court battle against the journalist who wrote the column, the Capital Gazette news organization and the Maryland judiciary.
He exhausted his appeals options and created burner Twitter accounts to share information about the litigation claiming he had been defamed.
By then, the only family member he was communicating with was Jeans, she said. But most of their conversations were consumed by his court battle.
“That was just his life,” she told the jury. “One hundred percent of the time was the court stuff.”
Before he stopped speaking to her, too, Jeans said she tried to have conversations with her brother about the harassing behavior.
On the stand, Jeans said life always seemed harder for her brother and got emotional speaking about how she wanted to help him.
But during cross-examination, prosecutors homed in on the interview Jeans did with police the day of the shooting in 2018, when she called authorities to say she believed her brother was the shooter. She told police about his tweets.
“He would post stuff that made him look like a psycho,” she said. “. . . And he would say, that’s what I want them to feel, for this lawsuit, I want them to think that I’m crazy.”
Jeans also said she tried to talk to her brother about his physical appearance in court – where he acted as his own attorney but dressed in hiking pants, hiking boots and outdoor button-up shirts.
Jeans testified that she offered to buy him a suit, but he turned her down, saying his wardrobe was a reflection of who he was and that if he dressed up, any jury would know it wasn’t authentic.
When he took to the stand Friday afternoon, Hyde – one of the defense’s expert witnesses and the chief medical officer at Lieber Institute for Brain Development – listed some of the same information Jeans testified to as supporting evidence for the autism diagnosis he gave Ramos.
The man, Hyde said, exhibited little “social emotional reciprocity,” that he had fixations throughout his life and that he wore the same outfit to grade school every day, no matter the weather – all patterns of behavior in people with autism.
But Ramos’s case, Hyde said, is “mild to moderate” and “clearly not severe.”
The trial will resume next week, where the defense will continue to present its case before Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney, Anne Colt Leitess, calls her own expert witnesses. She is expected to argue that, at the time of the shooting, Ramos was not impaired to the point that he could not distinguish right from wrong.
Published : July 03, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Katie Mettler, Emily Davies
John Potter, first director of Georgetowns Lombardi Cancer Center, dies at 95
John Potter, a surgical oncologist and longtime medical school professor who was the founding director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, died June 29 at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, where he worked and taught for decades. He was 95.
The cause was pneumonitis, said his daughter Tanya Potter Adler.
Dr. Potter began his medical studies at Georgetown shortly after World War II and, except for brief periods, was associated with the university for more than 60 years.
In 1970, he became the first director of Georgetown’s cancer center, which was later named for football coach Vince Lombardi, who died that year of colorectal cancer. Potter was among the physicians treating Lombardi at Georgetown University Hospital.
“In my day, cancer was treated in a multi-factoral way,” Potter said in a 2018 video about the Lombardi Center, “and I wanted to get a center established that would meld all of these disciplines into one united whole.”
It became the country’s 16th Comprehensive Cancer Center, a designation by the National Cancer Institute denoting a facility that is a leader in cancer research as well as treatment. It is the only such center in the immediate Washington region.
“There can be no question that without John Potter, there would be no Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center,” current director Louis Weiner said in an online appreciation.
Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia said in 2018 that Potter “represents the very best of this university.”
Potter directed the Lombardi Center for almost 20 years while also maintaining a surgical practice, conducting research and leading the surgical oncology division at Georgetown’s School of Medicine.
He was a proponent of providing psychological support for cancer patients and in the 1970s helped develop a facility with a homelike atmosphere where patients could have favorite meals and visits from relatives. The Lombardi Center also initiated one of the country’s first “life counseling” programs for children with cancer.
Potter was author of more than 60 studies in medical journals and in 1988 published a book for the general public, “How to Improve Your Odds Against Cancer,” outlining ways to protect against and cope with cancer.
John Francis Potter was born July 26, 1925, in New York City and grew up in Scarsdale, N.Y. His father worked for the company that made Crayola crayons; his mother was a homemaker.
Potter graduated from Regis High School, a selective Catholic boys’ school in Manhattan, and attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. He served as a Navy corpsman during World War II.
After graduating from Holy Cross, he entered medical school at Georgetown. He graduated in 1949 and won an award for his research thesis. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War, then spent much of the 1950s as a resident at Georgetown and as a researcher at the National Cancer Institute. He became a full-time professor at Georgtown’s medical school in 1960.
Potter taught at Georgetown well into the 1990s and had an advisory role with the medical school until 2015. He performed more than 10,000 surgeries while serving on the staff of the university’s medical center.
He also helped launch the U.S. Military Cancer Institute, which was later merged into the John P. Murtha Cancer Center at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He was president and board chairman of the Association of American Cancer Institutes and served on the board of regents of the Defense Department’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He was a longtime resident of Potomac, Md.
Survivors include his wife of 66 years, the former Tanya Kristof of Potomac; three children, Tanya Potter Adler of Potomac, Muffie Potter Aston of New York and John Potter of Belvedere, Calif.; and four grandchildren.
Potter said his aim at the Lombardi Center was to provide not just the finest cancer treatments but also to address the general well-being of patients.
“When you’re caring for cancer patients,” he said in 2018, “you have a daily reminder that there’s an awful lot more that has to be done, and that must be done, to save lives and to prolong lives.”
Widespread ransomware attack could affect hundreds of businesses
A supply-chain ransomware attack that hit hours before the beginning of a holiday weekend has already affected more than 200 businesses, researchers said.
On Friday, information technology company Kaseya sent out a warning of a “potential attack” on its VSA tool, which is used by IT to manage and monitor computers remotely. Kaseya urged customers to shut down their servers running the service.
“Its critical that you do this immediately, because one of the first things the attacker does is shutoff administrative access to the VSA,” the company said.
It was unclear late Friday how disruptive the attack might be on U.S. businesses. More than 40,000 organizations use Kaseya products, the company says, which includes VSA and other IT tools.
Researchers said cybercriminals were sending two different ransom notes on Friday – demanding $50,000 from smaller companies and $5 million from larger ones.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency urged companies in a statement to follow Kaseya’s advice and said it is “taking action to understand and address the recent supply-chain ransomware attack.”
Huntress Labs, a cybersecurity software company which has clients that were affected by the attack, said they believe hacking group REvil is behind the ransomware attack. That’s the same group that the FBI said was responsible for the attack on JBS Meats, which resulted in the company paying REvil $11 million in ransom.
Huntress Labs said they had found eight Managed Service Providers – companies that provide IT services to other companies on a contractual basis – that had been hit by the attack. Around 200 businesses that are served by these MSPs have been locked out of parts of their network, Huntress Labs said.
“It is absolutely the biggest non-nation state supply-chain cyberattack that we’ve ever seen,” Allan Liska, a researcher with cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said Friday. “And it’s probably the biggest ransomware attack we’ve seen, at least the biggest since WannaCry.”
He noted it could be the largest number of companies one ransomware attack has hit. The companies affected could be a wide range of small to large firms, and many are likely to be small to midsized businesses that use managed IT services. Kaseya also counts a number of state and local governments as customers, Liska said.
The WannaCry computer worm affected hundreds of thousands of people in 2017. The National Security Agency eventually linked the North Korean government to the creation of the worm.
Ransomware attacks increased significantly in frequency and severity during 2020. A report from a task force of more than 60 experts said nearly 2,400 governments, health-care systems and schools in the country were hit by ransomware in 2020. Organizations paid attackers more than $412 million in ransom payments last year, according to analysis firm Chainalysis.
After a May attack on Colonial Pipeline – which spurred panicked lines at gas pumps and empty fuel stations – the U.S. government increased its emphasis on addressing cybersecurity issues, and urged corporate America to strengthen its computer security.
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Ransomware attacks have been on the rise as hackers band together and form cybercriminal gangs to extort companies for payment. The attacks are often carried out by attackers in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Hackers gain access to a company’s computer system using tactics such as sending “phishing” emails, which are designed to trick employees into inadvertently installing malware on their computers.
Once inside, cybercriminals will lock down parts of the companies’ networks, and demand payment to release them back to the owner. Hackers often also steal private company information and threaten to leak it online if they are not paid.
It is still unclear exactly how attackers gained access to Kaseya’s system. The company has been a popular target of REvil, Liska said, likely because it serves so many other organizations as customers.
The attackers included a ransom note directing victims to a website to pay a ransom, though Liska said the site had been down all afternoon and evening.
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Kaseya spokesperson Dana Liedholm said its investigation of the incident is ongoing, and pointed to the company’s earlier statement.
The late Friday attack is unlikely to be a coincidence – such big attacks take planning and preparation, Liska said.
“The timing of this is definitely around knowing that it’s the Fourth of July weekend,” he said.
Published : July 03, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Rachel Lerman, Gerrit De Vynck
Condominium near Surfside collapse deemed unsafe, under evacuation orders
NORTH MIAMI BEACH – The city of North Miami Beach ordered immediate evacuations for a condominium building north of the Surfside collapse on Friday evening, after officials said the structure was deemed “structurally and electrically unsafe” amid an urgent citywide review.
“It’s just the right thing to do during these times,” City Manager Arthur Sorey III told reporters as people exited the building about a 20 minute drive from the ruined Champlain Towers South, where rescuers have spent a week searching for victims and survivors. Local authorities have scrambled to check other buildings after the condo’s sudden collapse, which left at least 22 dead and 126 missing.
Crestview Towers – a 10-story, 156-unit building built in 1972 – is the first tower to raise alarms after the deadly Surfside collapse led North Miami Beach to launch a review of all condo buildings over five stories, checking their safety and compliance with the local 40-year recertification process. As the sun fell, residents from the building were still trickling out, pulling luggage, stuffing pillows and bicycles into their car trunks as Floridians prepared for Hurricane Elsa to potentially come their way.
“Upstairs, the neighbors are crying,” said Karina Sobrino, 45, who owns two units in the condo building and helped her 70-year-old mother evacuate. “Because a lot of them don’t have families. Don’t have a place to stay.”
Officials said the building was closed out of “an abundance of caution” while a full assessment is conducted. Crestview Towers should have been in the recertification process, Sorey said, but “hadn’t complied” and submitted the problematic report dated Jan. 11 to the city on Friday afternoon.
“A lot of residents are upset. But everyone does understand why we have to do this,” Sorey said. “In light of the hurricane headed our way, at least we know people are going to be safe,” Sorey added.
Mariel Tollinchi, an attorney representing the condo association, said the group is not convinced that the report deeming the building unsafe is accurate and has requested a second review.
The board, made up a group of residents, thought the January report was submitted to the city by the engineer who wrote it and didn’t find out the building was not in compliance with the recertification process until the audit following the Surfside condo collapse, Tollinchi said.
She said they have been making repairs for the past two years, and the recommended fixes would cost about $10 million, which they view as unreasonably high.
“There’s just no way a homeowner is going to cough up $100,000 to make repairs to their home while they’re not even living in their home and having to incur the expenses of living outside,” Tollinchi said.
The city of North Miami Beach started an audit of all buildings on June 29, Sorey told The Washington Post. City employees found that Crestview Towers had failed to get both its 40-year and 50-year recertification, and requested that the condo association submit a safety report within 30 days.
At 2 p.m., Sorey said, the city received an engineer’s report, dated January 2021, that indicated the building was not safe to be occupied. By 5 p.m., he added, police officers were on-site, knocking on doors.
The city is working with Red Cross and a local homelessness organization to house those unable to find other shelter; nobody will be allowed to reside in the building until it is deemed safe, he said.
Sorey told reporters he is not yet sure how many live in the condo, located at 2025 NE 164th St. Authorities are hoping to get people out in a couple of hours, he said, but will be there all night.
The city manager said he is not sure when repairs might start and added that the condo association is responsible for bringing the building up to code.
Asked about evacuations at a Friday evening news conference, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the city of North Miami Beach has “taken the steps that we recommended to review to make sure that the recertification process was being done on a timely basis.”
Denasha and Kesha Alceus, 15 and 21, leaned over the back of their car Friday evening, talking to friends over the phone. Denasha said she had just woken up from a nap and was on her way to work when a man in a suit came knocking on their apartment on the fourth floor.
“They said we weren’t safe,” she said. “Nobody knew about this. Nobody even knew it was going on.”
Sobrino’s mother, who was sweating as she stacked boxes and luggage into a car, would be staying with her children in other parts of Miami, Sobrino said. She said the complex was occupied primarily by Latino residents, some of whom were very elderly.
“They’re crying, they’re afraid for their future, afraid about what to do with the furniture,” she said. “But it’s better to take care of the building,” she added, shrugging. “Champlain Towers – it woke everyone up.”
At 8 p.m., Crestview residents were still milling on their balconies. Local officials said police had cleared two floors of residents; the rest would have to leave later Friday night.
“We’ve deemed the building unsafe. By law, they cannot stay,” said Michael Joseph, a North Miami Beach city commissioner.
Published : July 03, 2021
By : The Washington Post · Rebecca Tan, Meryl Kornfield, Hannah Knowles
Asean sees record new Covid cases and deaths, as situation worsens in Indonesia
The surge in Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia continued on Friday, while the death toll was the highest on a single day, collated data showed.
Asean reported 48,507 new cases on Friday, higher than Thursday’s 46,968, while 902 patients died, up from the previous day’s 819.
Total Covid-19 cases in the region crossed 4.98 million, while the death toll rose to 96,125.
Indonesia reported a new high of 25,830 cases and 539 deaths on Friday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 2,228,938 and the death toll to 59,534.
Medical experts were unsure if the country’s latest disease control measures from July 3-20 would be able to contain the spread as, they said, the measures still had many flaws.
Vietnam reported 545 new cases and three deaths on Friday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 18,121 patients and 84 deaths.
Meanwhile, Ho Chi Minh City is planning rapid tests on more than 100,000 high school students and staff before the final exam of this academic year.
Chinese historical drama “1921” tops box office on debut
Domestic historical drama “1921” led the Chinese box office chart on its debut on Thursday, pocketing 81.45 million yuan (around 12.58 million U.S. dollars), China Movie Data Information Network reported Friday.
The movie, which intends to provide a panoramic view of the founding of the Communist Party of China on July 1, 1921, generated a daily earning that accounted for nearly 70 percent of the day’s total.
Hitting the big screen on the same day, historical movie “The Pioneer” garnered 15.6 million yuan, ranking second on the daily chart. It revolves around the revolutionary deeds of the Party’s pioneer Li Dazhao.
Coming in third was romantic comedy “Man in Love,” which earned about 5.47 million yuan on Thursday.
Covid situation aggravates in Asean with nearly 47,000 cases and over 800 deaths
Southeast Asia reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths on a single day in months, collated data showed on Thursday.
Asean logged 46,968 new cases, higher than Wednesday’s 40,545, while 819 patients died, up from the previous day’s 731.
The number of Covid-19 cases in the region since the outbreak crossed 4.93 million, while the death toll has risen to 95,224.
Malaysia reported 6,988 new cases and 84 deaths on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 758,967 and the death toll to 5,254.
The government has imposed curfew in some parts of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor as infections in these areas have been rising continually.
Vietnam reported 713 cases on Thursday, bringing cumulative cases in the country to 17,576 with 81 deaths.
Ho Chi Minh City aimed to increase its active case finding capacity by testing 1 million people per day, using rapid test kits and Pool-PCR method to contain the outbreak.
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