A major part of this unfolding story has revolved around the question, "How did this happen?" along with the corollary, "How many other seaside properties are at risk?"
Many news outlets have been noting that there were all kinds of warning signals being flashed these past few years. The condo owners, when informed, were not made to feel endangered. As we often do, we put things off and distract ourselves with "more urgent" concerns.
Today's Wall Street Journal has a story titled, "Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals." It notes how that an engineer's report states that "the building's design was flawed from the start." This is probably something not readily observable from a layperson's perspective.
The title of the piece notes that the signals were there but unclear. When leads me to the thought I had after reading about this tragic event during the past week.
My first thought had to do with a publisher who suddenly found himself in the hospital for nine days and recovering for weeks from a health issue. I saw him at a writer's workshop shortly after he was recovered and asked what he learned from his experience. He said, "Don't ignore the signs."
Those words have rattled through my head for two years now. The applications are many. In my case, I think of my health. And most interestingly, the WSJ article compared this building collapse exactly to that. Or rather, someone they interviewed did.
Jiann-Wen Ju, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes in construction defects, likened it to someone who has a slow-moving, underlying chronic condition, that then suddenly manifests as something serious, such as a heart attack.
“That person at some point just collapses,” he said.*
I believe the event has still broader applications. Marriages, cars, businesses and even nations flash signals for years before the singular moment that makes the doom permanent. Collapse doesn't happen overnight.
How's your health? Have you been ignoring signs that you might need to look into?
How about the health of our nation? Solzhenitsyn's massive multi-volume series The Red Wheel details the decline and fall of the Russian empire from which the Soviet Union emerged. The two decades preceding WWI revealed a foundation with plenty of cracks.
Events in recent years have been flashing warning signs about the health of our own nation today. How alarmed ought we to be?
Such were my thoughts this past week. And so it goes.
* Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals, Jon Kamp, Scott Calvert and Deborah Acosta, Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2021.
Yes Ed, that's true our health is not warranted... Your article makes me think about all the peope who are still against vaccination in those pandemic days. In this case when you feel the signs it's already too late.... But when you know what the signs are like, let's act preventively, let's have a vaccination. Today I'll have my second shot of MODERNA!
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