Neglect

A man from Scotland noticed positive changes in his lifestyle after he decided to stop watching television in the evening. 41-year-old Stephen Clarke said, “Now I spend my time creating the reality I want rather than numbing myself from the one I have.”

Mr. Clarke grew up watching television at home as it seemed like a normal thing for him to do. After completing work, he would watch movies or DVDs. Since he already followed a healthy lifestyle, he didn’t experience any glaring negative effects from watching television, but it was the “not-so-obvious side effects” that he eventually became aware of.

Mr. Clarke noticed, “I could feel the energy I was taking on board from the movies and shows I was watching. The drama, the violence, the stress, not to mention the blue light from screens late at night activating and heightening my nervous system and exaggerating all of this.”

Describing television as a “hypnosis machine,” Mr. Clarke said the blue light along with the flashing images that constantly change at a fast pace makes the narrative a part of your subconscious. “The news is constantly giving us reason to be scared, why we’re different from one another, and why we all need to shield and protect ourselves.”

He also felt that while watching television, he wasn’t processing his own thoughts, but rather numbing them, his emotions, and his energy. Instead of working through them, he began blurring his clarity and vision for life. “I experienced big transitions in my life, and I was numbing the feelings of that with screens in the evening, rather than doing what I should have been doing.”

Knowing this, he was keen on making a change.

The father of three began to learn new things such as wood carving, playing a musical instrument, and more. Additionally, he was able to spend more time reading books, cooking, and going on adventures.

He said, “Every month that passes without constant TV exposure gives me more clarity on what I’m doing and how I choose to live my life. My relationships are transforming as well as my working life.”

Mr. Clarke hasn’t cut television out of his life completely, but when he does watch it, he tries to bring value to what he is watching.

Stradivarius musical instruments are renowned worldwide as some of the greatest ever shaped by the hand of man. Of the roughly 1,000 violins, cellos, guitars, and others that Antonio Stradivari created in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, only 650 exist today and are only played by world-class musicians.

So, you’d think people might be careful with them.

According to an official at Spain’s Royal Palace in Madrid, a Stradivarius cello worth more than $20 million has been damaged. The Spanish newspaper El Mundo explained that the prized cello broke after falling off a table during a photo shoot.

No details were released as to how the cello fell off the table, in what manner it was damaged or the identity of the butterfingers who dropped it. But according to the report, a piece that joins the neck to cello’s body broke and fell off. According to the Daily Mail, the palace official said the broken piece was a replacement installed in the 19th century and will be repaired.

Possible Preaching Angle:

You'd think that when you're dealing with something that valuable, you'd treat it according to its incredible worth. But unfortunately, this is how some spouses treat each other. One command in Scripture says, “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers” (1 Pet. 3:7).

Gift cards make great stocking stuffers—just as long as you don’t stuff them in a drawer and forget about them after the holidays. Americans are expected to spend nearly $30 billion on gift cards this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. Restaurant gift cards are the most popular, making up one-third of those sales.

Most of those gift cards will be redeemed. Paytronix, which tracks restaurant gift card sales, says around 70% of gift cards are used within six months. But many cards—tens of billions of dollars’ worth—wind up forgotten or otherwise unused. That’s when the life of a gift card gets more complicated, with expiration dates or inactivity fees that can vary by state.

After clothing, gift cards will be the most popular present this holiday season. Nearly half of Americans plan to give them, according to the National Retail Federation. But many will remain unspent.

Gift cards get lost or forgotten, or recipients hang on to them for a special occasion. In a July survey, Bankrate found that 47% of U.S. adults had at least one unspent gift card or voucher. The average value of unused gift cards is $187 per person, a total of $23 billion.

While it may take gift cards years to expire, experts say it’s still wise to spend them quickly. Some cards—especially generic cash cards from Visa or MasterCard—will start accruing inactivity fees if they’re not used for a year, which eats away at their value. Inflation also makes cards less valuable over time. And if a retail store closes or goes bankrupt, a gift card could be worthless.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the gifts of God (his promises, salvation, spiritual gifts, talents, the Bible) often remain unused, unopened by faith, and neglected by so many people.

A growing number of high-profile tragedies are leading to prosecutions of parents not for their actions, but for their failures to act. One such case involves Elizabeth Puleo-Tague, whose teenager’s fondness for fast, erratic driving led to a crash that killed a passenger in his car. The mother of the boy who was killed wants her prosecuted for parental neglect.

Kiernan Tague, 17, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his friend Flynn MacKrell after his vehicle, a BMW X3, lost control at 105 miles per hour and collided with a tree. Flynn's mother, Anne Vanker, believes that Puleo-Tague should be held responsible for her son's actions due to her negligence.

“To say this is a living hell is an understatement," said Flynn's mom, Anne Vanker, in an interview. “My life has been ruined. No one should ever, ever have to lose a child like this ... I still can’t believe my son — my big calm son — is gone.”

Vanker says that Kiernan’s mother, Elizabeth Puleo-Tague, should be held legally liable for Flynn’s death. An investigation by the local prosecuting attorney revealed a history of Puleo-Tague pleading with Kiernan to slow down. Despite her repeated warnings and the use of a safety app, Kiernan continued to engage in dangerous driving.

Months before the crash, Puleo-Tague had been receiving notifications from a safety app called Life360, informing her of Kiernan’s aggressive driving. Kiernan had even taken a photo of his Audi’s speedometer exceeding 140 miles per hour.

Texts show that Puleo-Tague repeatedly begged her son to change his ways, but he refused. But not only did she fail to stop her son from continuing in his reckless ways, she bought an even faster car—the BMW—and left the keys at home during a trip to Canada.

In her request for charges, Vanker compared Puleo-Tague to James and Jennifer Crumbley, who are serving 10-year sentences in prison because they failed to take a rifle away from their son Ethan Crumbley, who eventually took the lives of several people at his school.

"She was sitting on a ticking time bomb. She knows he's out of control, yet she basically gets him a weapon," Vanker said. "It's like she handed him an AR-15."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Regardless of the outcome of the case, the tragedy serves as a stark reminder of the importance of addressing reckless behavior in young people, and of the potential consequences of parental neglect.

Brookdale Senior Living is one of the industry's leading providers of senior adult care, with over 600 facilities across the United States. But employees have been complaining that the chain’s centralized computer system, which prioritizes efficiency, misses some of the nuance involving caring for seniors. As a result, they say, its staffing algorithms consistently understaff facilities, and the quality of care suffers.

Patricia McNeal spent six years overseeing facilities in Ohio and Florida, but was forced out after complaining to her superiors about the substandard staffing recommendations. She said, “Brookdale is handing you this thing that says, ‘This is what it says you need, hire for that.’ My eyes told me that we weren’t getting enough.”

And she’s not alone. At a facility in Florida, Brookdale recommended fewer employees than buildings on campus, making it impossible for staff to always monitor all residents. And at a facility in Texas, caregivers were given only 20 minutes to help residents undress, shower, and get dressed again, a standard they could not meet.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the problem stems from decades old research bankrolled by corporate executives looking to cut costs and maximize revenue. They timed a set of caregivers performing various tasks, then fed that data into their programming, erroneously assuming that all adults have the same needs and that those trends would never evolve over time. What resulted is a standard of low-skilled laborers performing rote tasks, treating human beings like widgets on an assembly line.

This labor model fails to account for the complexities of dealing with adults who may be facing cognitive decline. When any one task takes longer than anticipated, it subtracts time from the entire pool of available hours, which prevents some residents from receiving essential care.

In an email to her superiors, Brenda Jarmer, a director of operations in Florida, pleaded for intervention, “I cannot stress to you how bad it is … I am asking for help.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Being a wise steward of resources is important, but we should never be so concerned with efficiency and conformity that we fail to care for the weakest among us.

Would you invest with someone who guarantees a 50% annual return with no risk of loss? Would you reply to an email offering you a share of a lost treasure in a far-away country, in exchange for sending just a little bit of money to kickstart the recovery effort? Would you buy a Picasso or a Dali from a late-night infomercial?

We didn’t think so. But many people do fall for scams like these. Why? Are the victims uneducated, unintelligent, or constitutionally naïve? Unfortunately for all of us, the answer is no. Even people at the top of their professions can be taken in.

Several former cabinet secretaries were convinced to join the board of Theranos, whose founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was convicted of criminal fraud. Wealthy art collectors bought phony paintings from a famous Manhattan gallery. According to the FBI, phishing scams led to losses of more than $43 billion between 2016 and 2021.

In their book Nobody’s Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It, two researchers write:

Frauds are ever evolving and can be complex and sophisticated, but even simple ploys can take us in … Most of the scams people fall for today are not really new; they are remixes and mashups of tricks that have worked for generations … Taking steps to avoid deception means we have to abandon the myth that only the gullible can be taken in. There are scams out there waiting for each of us, no matter how sophisticated we think we are. Rather than “it can’t happen to me,” your mantra should be “accept less, check more.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Money; Finances – Even the financially savvy can be taken in by a lack of vigilance or a desire for quick profits or a slick sales pitch; 2) Deceiver; Deception; Satan – This is especially good advice for our defense against our spiritual enemy, Satan. He has thousands of years of experience in deceiving people and we must keep our grip on the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:10-17).

Some people love them, some people hate them. Worse, a large number of us who receive them on special occasions are indifferent to them, or even forget about them entirely. Such is the sad fate of gift cards – millions of which go unused each year and have a collective value estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

Almost two-thirds of American consumers have at least one unspent gift card tucked away in a drawer, pocket, wallet, or purse. And at least half of those consumers lose a gift card before they use it, according to a new report from Credit Summit. The report said there is as much as $21 billion of unspent money tied up in unused and lost gift cards. Of those surveyed, a majority of respondents said their unredeemed cards were worth $200 or less.

Rebecca Stumpf, an editor with Credit Summit, said “Gift cards are extremely popular and almost everyone enjoys getting them. But many people leave them sitting in a drawer to redeem on a special occasion. Use them, don’t save them. If someone has given you a gift card, they want you to spend the money.”

So why aren’t we using up what people have taken the trouble to give us? According to Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst with CreditCards.com and Bankrate.com:

Inertia is a big factor. Sometimes the gift card is for a store that you don’t particularly like or it’s not convenient to go there. Still, ignoring the gift of free money is unwise. They’re not going to get more valuable over time; it’s the exact opposite, as inflation eats away at the value. And the longer you hold onto these unused gift cards, the more likely you are to lose them or forget about them or have the store go out of business.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the gifts of God (salvation, spiritual gifts, talents, the Bible) often remain unused, unopened by faith, and neglected by so many people.

In her 2023 book, Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited, author Mary Eberstadt explores the aftereffects of the sexual revolution on men, women, and children. Today there is considerably less family commitment and nurturing relationships than in the past. She writes:

Children today are considerably less likely to have siblings — and by extension, cousins, aunts, and uncles — than they were sixty years ago. Almost 30 percent of all households consist of just one person. Some 40 percent of all children lack a biological father in the home. Such momentous, ubiquitous changes to kinship have had and continue to have momentous and ubiquitous consequences. How could they not? A world of fewer and weaker family ties is one in which deprived people are furious about things they do not have or no longer know.

The National Review summarizes her main points:

To put it more starkly, in the name of human freedom, we have perhaps unwittingly created a society in which children on the whole experience less love and commitment in their lives than ever before. There are literally fewer people in their lives who are bonded to them by familial ties. This means fewer role models. Fewer chances to connect with the one odd cousin, aunt, or in-law who shares a peculiar passion or trait. It means less practice at socialization. It means fewer chances to practice sharing joy, and grief, with people whose bonds are natural and durable.

Eberstadt discloses the undeniably shocking consequences:

The vast majority of incarcerated juveniles have grown up in fatherless homes. ... Absent fathers predict higher rates of truancy, psychiatric problems, criminality, promiscuity, drug use, rape, domestic violence, and other tragic outcomes.

In the film Wonder, which is based on the novel with the same name, a 10-year-old boy named Auggie was born with a rare medical facial deformity. Auggie has been home-schooled his whole life. But in fifth grade, his parents make the decision to send Auggie to school. The film chronicles Auggie’s experience of acclimating to his new social environment, getting bullied for the way he looks, and slowly making friends.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, including the story of Auggie’s older sister, Via. Via loves Auggie and watches out for him, but she often feels unseen by her family because of how much attention Auggie requires. And so she adjusts her life around this reality. Via fades to the background and keeps the details of her life hidden from her parents. There’s this poignant moment when Via expresses how much she longs for her mother to cast her gaze fully on her.

And then there’s this scene, where Via is serving as a stagehand as well as the understudy for the lead role in the high school’s production of Our Town. Her parents are in the audience because Via’s best friend has the lead role. But then her friend, who sees an opportunity, pretends to be sick right before the curtain goes up, which thrusts Via onto the stage, while her parents sit in the audience watching her amazing performance.

After the play is over, her family comes backstage, overwhelmed by her performance. And then there’s this moment, where Via looks up, and everything else fades to the background, and her mom is staring her right in the eye, with this look of incredible love and pride. And she simply points at her. In that moment, it’s as if Via is receiving the fulfillment of a fundamental human desire: to be seen, to be known, and to be loved.

The scene can be found here.

Do you realize that 30 percent of all men of working age in this culture are not working? There are many reasons for this. Some workers lack the skills needed for all but the lowest-paid jobs. Some jobs have been eliminated because of technology advances or cheaper overseas labor. Some have discovered government benefits that enable them to avoid working.

A study for the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, reports that “75 percent of inactive prime-age men are in a household that received some form of government transfer payment.” The researcher believes that government disability benefits in particular are one reason for the lack of interest in work.

Another trend toward irresponsibility is the growth of the video-gaming culture in our society. Many young men and women are spending countless hours every day or many hours of the night just gaming away. They may lose sleep, college opportunities, and work advancement with addictions to meaningless competitions that consume time and energy but produce nothing.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What would you call a pastime where a person spends all their time, all their money, all their resources, pursuing things that are not real and that never will benefit them or society? We would call it slavery. And those who are enslaved by such meaningless pursuits ultimately lose all respect for themselves. Work gives us dignity, because work itself is dignified.

Financial consultant and popular radio host Dave Ramsey is being sued by a group of former listeners over his role in promoting a company alleged to have defrauded customers of millions of dollars.

The class-action lawsuit claims that Ramsey’s Lampo Group, earned about $30 million from 2015 to 2021 endorsing Timeshare Exit Team. This Kirkland, Washington company received over $200 million in revenue by promising to relieve clients of their costly financial obligations from time share agreements.

In 2021, Timeshare Exit Team paid $2.61 million as part of a settlement with the attorney general of the state of Washington over what it claims were deceptive business practices. This included advising clients to stop paying timeshare fees and issuing fake property deeds in an attempt to convince clients they were free of their obligations. The complaint reads, “When customers finally discovered the schemes and demanded their refunds, [Timeshare Exit Team founder] Reed Hein fabricated excuses not to honor the promises or stopped returning their calls.”

The lawsuit seeks $150 million in damages, claiming that the actions of Ramsey Solutions, Timeshare Exit Team, and Happy Hour Media Group, conspired to commit “negligent malrepresentation” and “unjust enrichment” in violation of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

Ramsey has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, but plaintiffs in the suit claim that Ramsey should have known better. The lawsuit reads:

Reed Hein made many claims that any competent financial advisor with Dave Ramsey’s knowledge and skill would know to be false, and it engaged in many activities Dave Ramsey would have known to be illegal. Ramsey never returned any of the tens of millions of dollars Reed Hein and Happy Hour Media Group paid him from his own listeners’ hard-earned money. Instead, Ramsey has chosen to profit from his listeners’ money.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Anyone who preaches financial accountability must be willing to submit their own behavior to that same standard. We lose credibility in the community of faith when we have standards for others that we do not adopt for ourselves.

Did you drop the ball this Mother’s Day and forget to pick up a gift for your mom? You’re not alone. A new survey has found that one in six Americans hasn’t sent their mother a single present in over a year. A survey found that 67 percent know their mom’s favorite flower. However, 37 percent admit they haven’t bought their mother flowers of any kind over the last year.

Another 57 percent know exactly what movie their mom would love to watch. But one in three people haven’t sat down to watch a movie with her in more than a year. Another 81 percent know their mom’s favorite hobby, but only half the poll say they’ve joined their mother to do that activity within the last six months. Even though 81% know their mom’s favorite way to pamper herself, 51% haven’t treated their mom in the last month.

A study found that mothers spend a staggering 97 hours a week doing something related to parenting—the same amount of time most people with a six-figure salary spend on their job.

Celebrating Mother’s Day is an easy way to show appreciation to the hard work, dedication, and care moms provide. They may not be sending flowers or taking mom out to dinner, but at least Americans are picking up the phone. More than 80 percent of the poll say they speak to their mother at least once a month.

So, if there’s a lesson coming out of this survey, maybe it’s that Americans need to spend a little quality time with their mom. With Mother’s Day being a day to do whatever our mother’s love to do, this day in May allows many kids a chance to play “catch-up.” After all, everyday can be Mother’s Day if you try.

On January 15th, 2009, US Airways flight #1549 departed New York City’s LaGuardia’s Airport. Within a few minutes, the plane collided with a flock of geese, taking out both engines. Captain Sully Sullenberg made an emergency landing in the chilly waters of the Hudson River. Before he left the plane and got to safety, he walked the plane twice to make sure no one was onboard. As the captain, he knew that he must be the last person on the plane. “Sully” became a national hero.

Three years later—almost to the date—on January 13th, 2012, a massive Italian cruise ship called the Costa Concordia crashed into the rocks and started to sink. An investigation would determine the cause of the crash: the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, was trying to impress a younger female dancer on board when he veered too close to danger. The ship started sinking with its 4,000-plus passengers on board.

In the confusion and chaos, Schettino escaped on to a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off the ship. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, d--- it.” Schettino later claimed that he fell into a lifeboat because the ship was listing to one side. But the court didn’t believe that story. Instead, he was found guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning the ship with passengers on board. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

A sheep named Baarack received a much-needed shearing after rescuers in Australia found the abandoned animal with more than 75 pounds of wool weighing it down. A video of his transformation on TikTok has more than 18.5 million views. After rescuing Baarack, sanctuary staff gave him the long-overdue shearing and found the fleece clocked in at about 78 pounds.

According to Kelly Dinham with Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary, sheep need at least yearly shearing to keep their coats light enough for the animals, otherwise it will continue to grow. Despite his heavy fleece, Baarack was actually underweight after being sheared. The wool around his face impaired his vision, too. Dinham said they found grit and debris "pooling in the gap between his cornea and the lid." And a grass seed stuck in there had caused an ulcer.

If a sheep goes for an extended period of time without adequate care, the overgrown wool can lead to build up of manure and urine that then could lead to infection, according to a North Dakota State University fact sheet on sheep shearing.

Possible Preaching Angle

This illustration easily applies to the Chief Shepherd and his sheep (and the undershepherd and their flock). As the sheep of his pasture, we need to be under the care of our Shepherd, otherwise we can wander off (Luke 15:4) or be attacked (Acts 20:29). We need those peaceful streams and quiet pastures, and his loving care (John 10:1-18; Psalm 23:1-6).

Six in 10 Gen Zers and Millennials have a complicated relationship—with their cars. A recent survey of Gen Z and Millennial car owners reveals that it takes an average of eight warning lights for them to schedule vehicle maintenance. However, one in four tend to disregard and continue driving with broken speakers or a radio, excessive emissions, low tire pressure light, oil change, or scratches on their vehicle’s body or windshield.

Two out of three say they’re OK with their car not being up to par as long as it passes a state-licensed safety test. On average, it takes five breakdowns for Gen Zers and Millennials to buy a new car.

People stop driving their car and get a new one when the upkeep surpasses their budget (39%), there are too many strange sounds or smells (38%), too many parts have to be replaced (37%), or too much of it is being held together by tape (37%).

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is also true for most people in their spiritual lives, regardless of their age. They will ignore the warning signs and continue with sinful behavior as long as they think they are managing to “hold it together” and get by with it.

Recent court documents unveiled disciplinary actions against two LAPD officers, actions which resulted in their firing. Former LAPD officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell were supposed to be responding to a call about a robbery in progress. But according to recordings obtained from their squad car and body cameras, they waited 20 minutes before they responded to the call.

What occupied their attention during that 20 minute span? The popular augmented reality game Pokemon Go. The officers spent approximately 20 minutes chasing virtual creatures on their mobile devices. “A Snorlax … just popped up on 46th and Leimert,” one of them was recorded as saying.

After the firing, the officers protested the decision on the basis of their contention that recording their conversations was an invasion of their privacy. However, the city’s board of rights upheld the firing in their decision, affirming its necessity. In its filing, the city responded: “Playing Pokémon Go showed complete disregard for the community, wasted resources, violated public trust and was unprofessional and embarrassing to the Department.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

As the people of God, we are called upon to give our full attention to serving. If we're unwilling to sacrifice our immediate desires for the sake of others, we can't in good conscience call ourselves disciples of Jesus.

99-year-old Osceola "Ozzie" Fletcher finally received his Purple Heart. It was awarded in a ceremony at the Fort Hamilton Army base in June of 2021 for wounds he suffered in the Battle of Normandy in 1944. Army officials said that Fletcher was “overlooked” for the medal previously because of racial inequalities. Fletcher said that he was “exhilarated,” when he received the award.

The allied invasion of Normandy, France, also known as D-Day, began on June 6, 1944 and lasted until August. The operation led to the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe, and marked the beginning of the end of the European theater in World War II.

According to The New York Post, Fletcher was a 22-year-old private with the 254th Port Battalion during the military operation. He was working as a crane operator when he was hit by a German missile that left him with leg injuries and a head gash, causing a permanent scar.

Gen. James McConville said during the ceremony, “He has spent his entire life giving to those around him whether they were brothers in arms, families, or his community. Well, today it’s Ozzie’s turn to receive.”

The Army conducted a fact-finding mission regarding Fletcher’s overlooked medal and found that he deserved the award after his daughter, Jacqueline Streets, contacted the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Streets said,

My father has a gash in his head that we can still see. And obviously he was doing the job of an American soldier. I do believe he was overlooked. We’re finally looking at all of our soldiers in the same way, America is trying to shift its thinking about culture and about race and I appreciate that. I think we’re acknowledging things that happened in the past and trying to correct them moving forward.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Race; Race Relations – Every person who serves their country deserves to be honored, regardless of race or ethnicity (Acts 10:34-35, Rom. 10:12); 2) Reward; Service, reward for - God will never overlook any Christian for the service they have offered to him (Heb. 6:10).

Did you know there were two boats that responded to the Titanic when it was sinking? One boat, the Californian, was about 20 miles away. They turned off their radio about ten minutes before the Titanic hit the iceberg. They saw rockets and flares shoot off in the distance. They couldn’t figure out why another boat was shooting rockets and flares, but they didn’t turn on their radio, and they didn’t investigate. They saw the boat’s light turn off, but thought it was just turning its light off for the night. The crew of the Californian were so in maintenance-mode with what they were already doing, they couldn’t imagine the Titanic sinking. For the rest of their lives the crew members of the Californian had to wrestle with why they didn’t go.

But there was another ship, the Carpathia. It was 58 miles away. But its radio was on, and when it got the call that the Titanic was sinking it powered up all its engines and headed straight for the Titanic, navigating around icebergs in the night. It ran full-power ahead for 3.5 hours. When the crew showed up at the scene of the disaster, many had already perished, but they saved 705 lives from the life boats.

Possible Preaching Angle

The Carpathia was in mission mode. The Californian was in maintenance mode. Which would we rather be? The Californian ? Or the Carpathia ? A church just trying to get by? Or a church on a mission, saving lives?

In the early hours of June 24, 2021, part of a slab from a high-rise condo building in Surfside, Florida dropped into the parking garage below. Within minutes, the east wing of the 13-story tower collapsed, killing 98 people in a disaster without modern precedent in the US.

Designed in the late 1970s, the 136-unit Champlain Towers South was completed in 1981 and marketed as luxury living. Officials are still investigating why the tower fell. Engineers point to some key decisions during construction, that while legal at the time, compromised the buildings foundation and integrity.

For instance, a Wall Street Journal report concluded:

[The original builders] skipped waterproofing in areas where saltwater could seep into concrete, the available evidence indicates. They put the building’s structural slabs on thin columns without the support of beams in some places. They installed too few of the special heavy walls that help keep buildings from toppling, engineers say, features that could have limited the extent of the collapse. And they appeared to have put too little concrete over rebar in some places and not enough rebar in others, design plans and photos of the rubble indicate.

Tragically, the construction flaws could have been repaired. The report continued:

Engineers say some issues would have been fixable, had the property’s condo board done more extensive repairs sooner. By 1996, the slab started showing cracks, and pieces of concrete had fallen off the garage ceiling, unusual so soon after construction. Workers patched cracks and waterproofed the pool deck, but that too eventually failed.

But the condo board failed to act. Roof work began weeks before the collapse, but repairs to the steel-reinforced concrete hadn’t yet started.