Miami condo deemed unsafe, residents ordered to evacuate

A Miami condo has been deemed unsafe and its residents have been ordered to evacuate the building.

Officials posted an evacuation notice on the eight-story building Monday forcing hundreds of residents to leave the buildings in a matter of hours, NBC Miami reported.

“We have a lot of elderly owners here that have no place to go,” resident Dmidry Asanov told the outlet. “Some have COVID, some can’t walk.”

There are organizations to help put these residents in hotels, according to city officials.

The evacuation notice was posted after a meeting between Miami’s Building Department officials and the Condo Association where an engineer said columns found “to be structurally insufficient,” the Miami Herald reported.

“We felt the building occupants were not safe,” city Building Director Asael Marrero said.

The building received an unsafe structure violation in May and the city met with residents “who were concerned about the condition of the building” at the end of July, according to the city.

The city told the building to submit plans to fix the issues immediately, but the city never received the plans.

An engineer on Thursday said the building was safe to live in during the repairs, but the construction started to be done on the building without a permit from the city. The city stopped the unapproved work with a work stop order.

Multiple buildings have been evacuated in Miami since the Surfside condominium collapse that killed almost 100 people.