The city of North Miami Beach ordered residents of a five-story, 60-unit apartment building to evacuate Monday after receiving an engineer’s report that said it was “structurally unsound.”
The report dated April 1 said elevation points taken that morning at 3800 Northeast 168th Street by a general contractor had found that “the deflection in the slabs is exceeding” guidelines by the American Concrete Institute. The engineer, Brownie P. Taurinski, wrote that the building “must be evacuated immediately.”
City Manager Arthur “Duke” Sorey told the Miami Herald he had just learned of the report Monday morning. He said city officials received the engineer’s report in an email after working hours on Friday and didn’t see it over the weekend.
Since July, the building known as Bayview 60 Homes had been undergoing repairs as part of its 50-year recertification, the city said in a press release.
Residents will be evacuated within the next 24 hours, Sorey said Monday afternoon.
The city said residents would be able to return later in the week to gather belongings and the property owner will refund rent and security deposits for April. The city also created a hotline for residents who have questions at 305-646-9101.
“They have to find somewhere to go for now,” Sorey said.
The apartment building is located in Eastern Shores, a neighborhood north of Oleta River State Park that consists of several man-made canals.
This is the second building that has been ordered evacuated due to safety concerns in North Miami Beach, following the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside that killed 98 people last year. In July, North Miami Beach ordered the evacuation of the 10-story Crestview Towers Condominium and residents have not yet been allowed to return to the building, Sorey said.
Abieyuwa Aghayere, a Drexel University engineering researcher, said after reviewing the engineer’s report and drawings, the “deflections” — a term that refers to vertical “sagging” in a slab — appeared to be large and concerning.
“I can understand why the engineer wrote the letter that he wrote,” Aghayere said. “When you have deflections that are larger than what the ACI code prescribes or expects, it means that there’s something happening in the structure, the structure is more flexible than it should be.”
