Frank Morabito: What we know about structural engineer who worked with Champlain Towers South condo
When board members for the Champlain Towers South condominium building were looking for someone to oversee a massive and urgent repair project in late 2019, they turned to an engineer already familiar with the building’s problems: Frank Morabito and his firm Morabito Consultants.
“He is the only Engineering Firm that already knows the Building,” Graciela Escalante, who chaired a committee focused on the project, wrote to the board on Sept. 13, 2019. She recommended it hire Morabito. “Bottom line; He can hit the ground running.”
Morabito’s knowledge of the Surfside, Fla., condo building that collapsed last month gave him a prime vantage point to detect any visible signs that the building’s integrity was in doubt, according to a Washington Post review of board minutes and other documents. He had performed a 2018 inspection that found “major structural damage” to a concrete slab under the pool deck and entrance drive and been hired to help the board select and oversee a construction company to address that and other issues in an estimated $15 million project.
His oversight role left him still intimately involved with the 12-story, 136-unit building — drawing detailed plans, pursuing permits from town officials and attending condo association meetings. Yet work on the most serious problems identified in his report — including concrete restoration — had not begun when the building fell, killing 28 and leaving 117 unaccounted for as of Monday night.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/07/05/morabito-engineer-condo-collapse-florida/
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