John Pistorino has been hired to investigate the building collapse in Surfside, Fla. He says the process will involve trying to reconstruct parts of the building to see where critical pieces failed.

Transcript

NOEL KING, HOST:

I'm going to bring in John Pistorino now. He's a structural engineer who's been retained by an attorney to investigate this collapse. He's investigated many similar situations around the country. And I will note for listeners that he is unable to disclose who has retained him at this time. Good morning, Mr. Pistorino. Thanks for being with us.

JOHN PISTORINO: Good morning.

KING: How does an investigation like this start?

PISTORINO: Well, once the site is cleared and turned over, then an investigative group team made up of many different engineers and individuals will have an organizational meeting and decide how to go about taking out the evidence, if you will, and taking it maybe to a yard or a field someplace and try to reconstruct the building and look at the critical pieces to see if they can figure out how each piece failed and what the significance was. And normally, we would be taking samples of strength of concrete, if steel is corroded, that type of thing, and have a laboratory analysis and then down near the bottom, we would probably have a geotech engineering firm do borings underneath the building into the foundation areas in the piles and see what the condition of the soil and the foundation is at that time as well.

KING: I can hear from your answer that you are familiar with situations of this sort. And I wonder, of course, the big question is how did this happen? But beneath that, there are smaller questions, which I would guess are equally important. What are the questions at the front of your mind right now?

PISTORINO: Well, we have the 40-year recertification program that's been in effect for over 40, 45 years here in Dade County, which means that all building owners are supposed to maintain their buildings from the time they're built. And the 40-year recertification is just a line in the sand to give the building official some authority to say, if you haven't completed your investigation or your certification, he can issue violations or even withdraw occupancy of the building.

So that system has worked very well. Many, many buildings have gone through it. Structural engineers who are familiar with these kinds of buildings can go under and into buildings and look for telltale symptoms that reinforced concrete will show if it's being damaged or if there's settlement or some other condition going on and then make a decision as to whether or not it's significant.

But any rate, whatever they find when they find it - it then needs to be repaired. And this should be going on from Day 1 when the buildings are built. They're not supposed to wait 40 years, and then all of a sudden start looking around, what's wrong with my building? But so the majority - you know, the buildings here in South Florida have gone through that. And there are the 40-year-old buildings. There are some that have not yet that need to. But that's the safeguards we have.

KING: And when you hear that The Wall Street Journal reports in April, the president of the South Tower's condo association told residents the building was in desperate disrepair, what does that bring to mind for you?

PISTORINO: Well, I mean, I can't comment on this particular building, but I will say that other buildings that I've been involved in where the repairs are significant and that kind of number comes up, it still remains that there's - if there's any kind of a potential life safety issue, the fact that repairs are necessary isn't really the issue. The building official has to be informed and whether repairs are being made that have anything to do with the stability of the building or not, that type of - those type of repairs are ongoing on many buildings right now in South Florida, you know, even at that level. But it's not necessarily had anything to do with the building itself being in jeopardy.

KING: OK. The North Tower of this building was constructed around the same time as the South Tower that collapsed last Thursday, built, as the town's mayor has said, by the same builder, maybe, he said, with the same materials, maybe, he said, with the same plans. Will looking at the North Tower help with the investigation into what happened at the South Tower? Do you plan on doing that?

PISTORINO: Well, yes, that would be a - definitely to look at the configuration of the building, even though the plans would be available of this building, to see what the actual configuration is. Looking at the North Tower, seeing its - well, its condition, for one thing, but primarily the arrangement of the structural elements will help a lot because the structural elements, of course, on the South Tower, has been disfigured and relocated, so to speak.

KING: OK. You designed Miami-Dade's 40-year recertification process back in the '70s after a similar building collapse. And essentially, as I understand it, as you've described it, it says every 40 years, you got to get this building recertified. In a place like Florida where you have extreme heat, you have hurricanes, you have flooding, you have storm surges, why 40 years? Why not 10? I'm no expert, but 40 years seems like a long time.

PISTORINO: Well, the building that collapsed in 1974 was about a building that was almost 40 years old, but it had not been taken care of. And in fact, it had been - some of the issues had been camouflaged, and so it was - so we decided that at that time, that 40 years, if a building is not being maintained, then it could become jeopardized in that time. I mean, even then, we had a lot of pushback. Should it be 50 years or more?

So we got the 40 years, but that doesn't - 40 years does not mean that - our laws and our building code require the building to be maintained as it was originally built at all times. So just to say - so you start maintaining it. When you get to 40 years, an engineer who has been retained to look at the building should have no trouble going through it quickly if the building has been maintained as it was supposed to be.

KING: John Pistorino, structural engineer in South Florida. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.