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Surfside official told residents building was safe, despite engineer's warning

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Re: Surfside official told residents building was safe, despite engineer's warning

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It sounds boring and benign to most people but it’s the CPA equivalent of a red alert. Exactly. Joe Blow building manager is not a structural engineer. The comment about "major structural damage" at the end of report was probably not even read. The beginning of the document is about paint bubbles and 'the tile makes the rail too short'. That sets the context. The article casts a building department administrator as…

"An occupied building partially collapsed, killing multiple residents. But on the other hand, the report about its systemic structural issues was long and kind of a boring read" Are you for real?

It's not about the building. It's about the story casting aspersions on someone as if they were culpable when there is no indication they are. This was done by reading the document out of context.

Put yourself in the shoes of a building administrator responsible for oversight of hundreds to thousands of properties. You get a report like this, on a relatively young building and it looks very ho-hum.

But NPR is presenting it with hindsight bias and acting as if there was something ominous in the report. There simply wasn't... and the story is just gotcha journalism.

Re: Surfside official told residents building was safe, despite engineer's warning

#82

Having read the report, I am stopping my monthly contributions to NPR. This is straight up quote mining as far as I'm concerned. Nothing in the report would lead me to believe the structure was in imminent danger if I were a resident / board member / inspector etc. This is trash journalism. Edit: I would like to note the following for people following this story: The report author has stated: “among other things, our…

Way to take a stand "anonuser123456"

Re: Surfside official told residents building was safe, despite engineer's warning

#83

Having read the report, I am stopping my monthly contributions to NPR. This is straight up quote mining as far as I'm concerned. Nothing in the report would lead me to believe the structure was in imminent danger if I were a resident / board member / inspector etc. This is trash journalism. Edit: I would like to note the following for people following this story: The report author has stated: “among other things, our…

However, such language about 'safety of the residents' is not present in his report.

The NPR article was just simplifying. True, the original report didn't use those exact 3 words - but what it did say:

Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.

Is quite damning, and essentially in line with the simplified version given in the NPR article. And in any case directly at odds by the town's building official:

"Structural engineer report was reviewed by Mr. Prieto. It appears the building is in very good shape."

Which may explain why Mr Prieto is "no longer employed by Surfside".

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