meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
What Next | Daily News and Analysis

What Really Happened in the Miami Tower Collapse

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Daily News

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Champlain Tower South building in Surfside Florida collapsed early last Thursday morning, seemingly out of the blue. But reporting shows that the condo board members were aware the building was structurally unsound for years.


Right now the death toll stands at 12, with 149 people still unaccounted for. How did such a preventable tragedy take place?


Guest: Daniel Rivero, reporter for WLRN in Miami.


If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The south end of the Champlain Tower's condo complex in Miami collapsed in the middle of the night.

0:11.0

There weren't tourists milling around or people lounging on the beach to witness the tragedy or recorded on their phones.

0:18.8

Days later, that means piecing together shards of what happened that

0:22.7

night. You can watch security camera footage, eerily silent, showing the tower pancaking down.

0:30.7

You can listen to stunned cops responding on the police scanner.

0:34.6

This is going to be an entire building. One, two, three, four, five, six,

0:39.0

seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve to thirteen stories. Of shit, most of the building is gone.

0:46.4

They're going to make this a high hazard. None of this makes the collapse make any more sense.

0:52.5

Now, at some tennis courts about a block away from the building, family members have been

0:57.5

assembling their own remnants from the disaster.

1:00.4

Bits and pieces from the lives of 149 people, still missing in the rubble.

1:07.2

Danny Rivera, a reporter for the local public radio station, WLRN.

1:11.6

He's been there.

1:12.8

That area has really converted into a makeshift memorial.

1:17.5

There's like a green mesh on the fence, and people have just been slipping flowers into it, photos of the people that are missing.

1:31.0

The first responders have been going to, and some of the most heartbreaking things there

1:36.5

are some things that first responders have gathered from the debris.

1:42.6

Like they've taken little children's toys.

1:45.2

There's like a Winnie the Pooh just covered in dust that they recovered from the rubble,

1:50.8

and they put it there too.

1:55.1

Danny was one of the first reporters on the scene after this building came down.

1:59.5

He's been in the town of Surfside, which isn't too far from

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

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

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.