BUILDINGS THAT SWAY, BUILDINGS THAT FALL

When I lived in Miami, I worked near the airport at a building which was fairly new back then. One day I felt something like a dizzy spell and I gripped the sides of my desk, waiting for the bad moment to pass. It did within seconds, but as I'd find out later, there was nothing wrong with me. It was the BUILDING that swayed whenever an airplane flew by. Putting a building so close to an airport is not a good idea, but nobody in there ever mentioned the swaying out loud, so of course, nobody on the outside knew about it. They probably still don't. The building had been designed by the yuppy sonny-boy of the company's general manager. It was a South American company and in true indentured banana republic fashion,when the building shook, the employees kept quiet. It's still standing, as far as I know. But now we hear that another building, a high rise condo, actually collapsed on itself in Surfside, a subdivision of Miami Beach. Miami-Dade County has done an impressive job of handling the catastrophe, but the death toll is in the dozens--and nobody knows exactly what happened. How did an entire building go pfffttt! in a matter of seconds? Was it because of a sinkhole? Faulty infrastructure? Lack of timely inspection and certification? All of the above? They say that years ago, tenants could feel the building vibrating from construction activity nearby, and that there was some evidence it was gradually sinking, before it went and sank

in one tragic shot. So who's to blame? Lackadaisical tenants? Maybe nobody wanted to hear that their costly, oceanfront pied a terre was seriously damaged and required even more money in repairs. Or was it the powerful Latino developers who practically run Miami? They have deep pockets, and rumors of past bribery attempts are afoot.Yet there had been plenty of warnings before the catastrophe. Three years ago,an engineer had reported structural weaknesses in the building, but was ignored. And only hours before the collapse, tenants reported hearing strange creaking noises. All signs of impending doom were shrugged off. And here we are. Ethnic resentments and finger-pointing are bubbling to the surface. The mayor of Surfside, all pale, tight-lipped indignation, declared that buildings don't normally collapse in America, only in Third World countries. The guy obviously needs to get a better grip on his bearings. (This is Miami, after all.) However, I do hope that on top of everything, we won't soon discover that someone's nephew designed or built the fallen structure and was allowed to cut corners while everyone else looked away.