AP — The deadly destruction of a Florida beachfront condominium actually started weeks before it collapsed into a pile of rubble in the middle of the night, killing 98 people in 2021, but the building had been vulnerable from the start, federal investigators found in a final report issued Monday.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology said in the report that two connections between garage columns and the pool deck started to fail around early June. The combination of a structure design that did not meet building codes and alterations made to it over its 40 years meant that the other parts of the pool deck weren’t strong enough to withstand the extra load, leading to the type of slow-motion collapse.

“When building structures are designed and built to required codes and standards, they have margins against failure, meaning they should be able to support much more load than they are expected to bear,” Judith Mitrani-Reiser, who co-led the investigation, said in a video accompanying the report. “In the case of Champlain Towers South, these margins against failure were too narrow from the start.”

The report underscores findings that have trickled in since the 12-story beachfront condominium catastrophe, which showcase weeks of building distress and deeper-seated problems.

Most residents were asleep when the building in the tiny town of Surfside, Florida, a few miles north of Miami, collapsed into a huge pile of rubble at 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021.

The dead included members of the area’s large Orthodox Jewish community, along with the sister of Paraguay’s first lady, her family, and their nanny. A Miami........

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