But solving the problem of water leaking down from the pool area into the garage was going to involve major work and cost millions of dollars. Brad Sohn, a lawyer representing at least one resident who has filed a lawsuit against the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association, said on Saturday that residents were facing assessments ranging from $80,000 to as high as $200,000.
Mr. Sohn said he was still trying to understand why repairs had not begun immediately after the 2018 report outlining the major problems with the building.
“There is no acceptable answer to that question — period, full stop,” he said.
Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer who represents the resident-led association that operates the building, said on Saturday that while the report outlined problems to fix, the condo board had no warning that there was a major safety risk.
“If there was anything in that report that really outlined that the building was in danger of collapse, or there was a hazardous condition, would the board and their families be living there?” she said. She noted that one board member, Nancy Kress Levin, was missing in the collapse, as were her adult children.
The association had taken out a $12 million line of credit to pay for the repairs and was going through a careful, step-by-step process to get them done, Ms. Berger said. She said that such a process could seem more like moving a commercial tanker than a speedboat, always involving pushback and debate as board members decided on what to tackle first and how much of a cost to impose on homeowners. “Nobody likes a special assessment,” she said.
Documents released by the city include 84 pages of detailed schematics and repair plans, dated from two months ago.
Eliana Salzhauer, a Surfside commissioner, said that while the cause of the collapse was unknown, it appeared to her that the problems identified by the engineer in the 2018 report could have contributed to the structural failure.