TUCSON (KVOA) – Weeks before a deadly Florida condo collapse, the building’s board president wrote that structural problems noted in a 2018 report had become significantly worse.
The letter hinted at condo owners being reluctant to pay for repair costs for the building estimated at over $15-million.
With technology developed by a Tucson infrastructure company, that cost could have been a fraction of the initial estimate.
Quake Wrap, a company founded by Mo Ehsani, a former civil engineering professor at the University of Arizona, specializes in infrastructure repair with their carbon laminate technology.
When columns are eroding due to weather, moisture, or other factors, they corrode and become unstable support for the buildings or structures they are holding up.
Quake Wraps technology wraps a carbon laminate around the weakened part of the structure and is then filled with concrete.
This creates a new support structure that is two times stronger than steel.
“It will never corrode and also by nature, it prevents any moisture or oxygen from getting into the column, so it prolongs the life of the column,” Mo Ehsani said.
Ehsani said the cost to use this method is about $2,000 to $3,000 per column.
Much less than the $15-million estimate the board for the condo had previously received.
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