2015-1015 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes:Regular City Commission Meeting October 15,2015 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida watched the Police Department bring in reinforcements,we had hundreds of professionals on the scene within minutes. The fact is that the scene unfolded in a very orderly manner. The primary consideration was the safety of the public,the securing of that area to make sure that nothing else was going wrong because at the time this happened,we didn't know if there was going to be a secondary explosion, or how many people were in the building, or if the building was stable, it really was quite an incident in real time. As the day progressed our Police Department was put in charge of closing off six (6) blocks of Collins Avenue, the traffic in both directions. That is a very unenviable task, and he can say that he got calls on his cell phone that day because people recognized what happened and were upset about the traffic but the fact of the matter is everything that was done was done with safety in mind for the general public. The Monaco was shut down and evacuated immediately because debris was falling through the roof, there was an additional gas leak there, there was a gas leak in the building, but as he said, the first responders did a fantastic job. Mayor Scholl said in the end, what he can report is there is nothing wrong with the building. There is a lot of speculation that the building was built improperly and that was not the case. Clay Parker,our Building Official,did a very detailed study with his staff over the past week. Basically the building construction company was cited for improperly purging the gas line from the building into an area that was not properly ventilated. What that simply means is if you have your water turned off in your house,when they turn the water back on and you turn your faucet on, it sputters, meaning that air gets built up in your water lines and then this air has to come out of your faucet before water starts flowing smoothly. Something happened at this building and so the gas meter had to be moved and air was in the lines after they moved it. Some construction workers went to the top floor and they were purging the air out of the gas lines, and as that air was purged, gas was released into the building, and unfortunately something ignited that gas. It is not the job of our City staff, or their purview to make the determination of what ignited it. The State Fire Marshall is responsible for what we call cause and origin of the blast, and their report has not been released yet. But our Building Official reviewed the building and the records, and his staff went through it in very meticulous detail and they made the determination that these lines were not purged properly and the building contractor was cited for that. So in the end, it was a terrible accident but he is happy to report that the building was not built improperly, and nobody was killed. This could have been an issue of unimaginable magnitude if the Park had been busier that day, if the beach would have been busier that day,we just got lucky. Our hearts went out to the two workers who were burned,and he has been told that they are out of the hospital now. There were no injuries that were not unable to be treated in a forthright matter. Mayor Scholl said what was astounding to him was the quality and the intensity of our Fire and Law Enforcement Professionals, and he was so pleased to see this because this was a huge event and they operated throughout the day like clockwork. Different teams had to go in, one team had to go in and look for victims, one team had to clear the building, one team had to make sure that the building was safe even for the construction workers to go back into, and then one team had to go in and see what the cause of the actual blast was. He read the Proclamation into the record and presented it to the eight(8)representatives here tonight from the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department including Fire Chief Dave Downey and Fire Chief Darren Williams. 3