The Collapse of Champlain Towers

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A few years ago, engineers sounded alarm bells about Champlain Towers, a residential building in Surfside, Fla. Last week, disaster struck and the towers collapsed. At least 11 residents have been confirmed dead and 150 more are still unaccounted for. What caused the building to fail, and why are so many people still missing?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is Adali.
0:07.0	Today, the collapse of a residential tower in Surfside, Florida, which killed at least
0:17.9	11 residents, has raised two urgent questions. What caused it? And why is it that so many
0:26.9	days later, 150 people are still missing? I spoke with my colleague, Miami Bureau Chief,
0:36.5	Paddy Mise.
0:41.5	It's Tuesday, June 29.
0:48.7	Hey, Paddy.
0:52.4	Hey.
0:53.4	Are you in your car?
0:55.4	Yes, I am. And it's actually raining pretty hard right now.
0:59.8	And where exactly are you right now in your car?
1:03.2	I am a few blocks south of the Champlain towers, building that collapsed. There's a lot of
1:10.5	road closures. They've sort of expanded them as the days have gone by. So every day we've
1:15.0	been able to get less close to the building.
1:18.0	And can you describe, I don't know if you can see it from your car, but can you describe
1:22.2	the state of the towers right now, what they look like?
1:28.0	Imagine a 13 story building with more than 130 units that has had about half of it sheared
1:37.0	off and just crumbled into the ground. It's a jumble by the beach side of concrete and
1:46.4	metal and furniture. And you can see straight into these exposed apartments frozen in time,
1:53.1	people's homes, their beds, their office chairs, their linens just sticking out and waving
1:59.4	in the wind with the whole recovery operation around them and the big cranes and the rescue
2:05.2	workers everywhere.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New York Times, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.