Salt and steel
Is corroded Horry County condo an omen for the SC coast?
MYRTLE BEACH — Peter Coan heard pounding on the door as he sat on his balcony a couple of hours before sunset on a Friday in October, watching waves crash on the sand from 21 floors above, the Grand Strand skyline visible in the distance. He had moved to Renaissance Tower last year from New York to find a peaceful place to write his next book.
He parted with his pastrami sandwich to see who was there. It was police, shouting: "Evacuate! Evacuate!"
Four floors down, Shirley Kreachbaum and her husband headed to the elevator, dressed for a stroll on the beach. The doors slid open Oct. 7 and revealed a lobby filled with firefighters, police and code enforcement officers. It's dangerous in here, a maintenance man told her, everyone needs to leave.
Crews work to stabilize The Renaissance Tower on Dec. 1, 2022, in Myrtle Beach. The building sits empty after it was evacuated in early October due to structural issues. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
A firefighter told them to pack only what they could carry. The 22-story condo building just south of Myrtle Beach needed to be empty within an hour.
Kreachbaum heard someone with Horry County enforcement say "severe structural damage" and "possible loss of life."
Rumors swirled of a bomb threat, a hostage situation, a construction accident at the 320-unit building.
But forces that threatened to topple the tower had been lurking for years, eating away at the steel and concrete that keep it standing. Experts say the slow-motion destruction may be a hidden threat to buildings up and down the East Coast.
The Champlain Towers collapse that killed 98 people near Miami last year exposed a risk that had gone unnoticed near shorelines for decades: The same saltwater that makes these tall coastal buildings attractive is patiently, persistently attacking them. Myrtle Beach alone has more than 150 buildings that are at least six stories tall, according to a survey conducted last year. Hundreds more hug the shoreline from Maryland to Florida.
Anyone with a boat in saltwater knows it rusts much quicker than it would in freshwater, said Phillip Dustan, an ecology professor at College of Charleston. The same process is happening to steel-supported buildings along the coast. Rusted rebar expands, which can eventually crack the concrete around it, leaving whatever it's holding up without enough support.
Renaissance Tower, a Myrtle Beach area high-rise, was evacuated after repair work under the 22-story tower revealed concerns about the condition of its existing steel foundation.
Rising sea levels mean more floods and more opportunities for saltwater to invade a building's foundation, soaking it and leaving the salt behind as it dries. Sea levels in South Carolina are rising faster than in much of the world: Research showed the sea level in Charleston Harbor has risen more than 15 inches over the past 120 years compared to a global average of 8.5 inches.
The threat of saltwater intrusion isn't confined to oceanfront properties, Dustan said.
"It's a problem all through this area where structures have been built on land that's low. … They raise the land, but they really haven't raised where all the pilings go if it's a big building," Dustan said. "Virtually every development from Texas up into Maryland has these problems."
At Champlain Towers in Surfside, Fla., groundwater rose above the garage floor 244 times a year between 1996 and 2006. That annual average nearly tripled between 2007 and 2020, to 636 times a year, according to research published after it collapsed. With rising sea levels, groundwater near the ocean is more likely to be contaminated with salt. What caused the collapse still hasn't been determined, but corrosion is expected to have played a role.
"I think as we see modern construction aging, we're going to begin to see more and more of this," said Anthony Abbate, an architecture professor at Florida Atlantic University who studies how climate change affects cities. "We don't know truly the longevity of steel and reinforced concrete under these conditions."
This aerial photo shows part of the 12-story oceanfront Champlain Towers South Condo that collapsed last year in Surfside, Fla.
At Renaissance Tower, "some of the column flanges are completely disintegrated on the outer side of the columns," engineer Tim Donohue wrote in an Oct. 7 letter deeming the building unsafe. He wrote that the columns still had solid steel, but it was impossible to tell how much, so the only safe assumption was that the building was unstable.
The day before, Chris Jenkins was eating lunch and drinking beer with his wife at The Quarter Deck, a beachside bar directly in front of the tower. Workers planning minor repairs removed the cover and exposed one of the steel-reinforced concrete columns at the front of the building. Chunks were missing, and Jenkins could see all the way through parts of it.
That looks terrible, he told his wife. Jenkins shrugged it off and went back to enjoying vacation when the workers left immediately afterward. He barely noticing the next morning that he woke up to silence instead of construction noises below.
The Renaissance Tower in Myrtle Beach sits empty after evacuation of the 22-story condominium structure in early October. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff
But later that day, at 5:36 p.m., he found himself cutting short the family's day in Murrells Inlet and speeding back to retrieve their belongings from the 10th floor of a building so compromised that being inside was dangerous.
The hasty operation to clear out the oceanfront high-rise tossed hundreds of lives into immediate chaos. Many had no time to grab all of their belongings in the rush to escape. Some residents bought tents and spent the night next door at Ocean Lakes campground.
"They let all three of us go up there, and it was just a mad rush of packing and getting whatever we could," Jenkins said. Officials were operating the elevators and keeping a head count of everyone who entered. Firefighters were knocking on doors, clearing rooms and helping people carry things to the elevators. Some people had piles of clothes still on hangers. A little girl had a flat-screen TV under her arm. "It was wild. A lot of people were confused, didn't know where to go."
As his wife was preparing to take out the trash, a firefighter said don't worry about it. There's no time.
No one has been allowed back inside since.
Corroded metal beams are seen at the Renaissance Tower in Myrtle Beach. Condo owners at the 320-unit high-rise in Horry County soon may be allowed to reoccupy the building that was evacuated three months ago due to structural issues. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff
'Mother Earth is talking to us'
Renaissance Tower opened at Myrtle Beach Resort in 1985. Myrtle Beach's first high-rise hotel had opened 14 years earlier, kicking off a building boom that would change the beachfront skyline and lead to soaring population numbers over the next two decades. Horry County remains the fastest-growing county in South Carolina, and its cluster of affordable high-rises along the Grand Strand help drive a tourism economy that two years ago attracted more than 20 million visitors.
But on this patch of beach south of the city limits, Renaissance Tower stands alone. Surrounded on either side by the flat beachfront campsites at Ocean Lakes and Pirateland, every balcony has an ocean view. The building is usually home to a mix of vacationers, long-term renters and owners who live at the tower or visit for part of the year. As recently as last year, some studio units sold for under $100,000 and some 2-bedrooms went for as little as $150,000.
For decades, the main concern when building near the coast has been making sure a hurricane won't blow it away. No one was considering rising tides or how they could eventually bring down a building from below.
After they pass an initial inspection, buildings in Horry County never have to be inspected again.
The corrosion at Renaissance Tower was noticed by Donohue as early as 2018, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of condo owners. The lawsuit accuses the condo board of failing to act for years after learning about the building's condition and failing to keep enough money in reserves to pay for repairs.
After the Champlain Towers collapse, the Renaissance condo board ordered another check of its foundation. In September 2021, Donohue, the engineer, told the condo board that the “condition under the building is problematic and getting more problematic every month of every year and I don’t think we can sit here and just keep pushing it down the road,” according to the lawsuit.
Work to repair the steel was scheduled alongside replacements for leaking balconies and windows. The day before the building was deemed unsafe, workers dangled from the roof while others operated machinery to expose the steel columns.
The steel they revealed was in far worse shape than Donohue had been able to see by peering through the crawl space.
A photo filed in court documents allegedly shows the foundation of the Renaissance Tower. Provided
Fred Bloetscher, a professor of civil engineering at Florida Atlantic University, said the damage revealed at Renaissance Tower points to an eerie reality. Cracks or corrosion can be spotted and fixed on structures like bridges or piers, he said.
"But in a building or if it's under the ground, or it's a pile cap or something like that, like Champlain Towers, you have no idea what the condition of it is," Bloetscher said. "If I'm a person that's got a building on the coast, I don't care where it is, I'd be a little nervous."
Technology could eventually reduce the guesswork. Bloetscher said there are now sensors that can be installed in the columns to measure corrosion levels on the rebar, like a Fitbit for a building.
The Post and Courier has requested public records from Horry County under the state’s Freedom of Information Act that would help tower residents and the public better understand what happened, including fire department radio traffic, inspection reports and emails sent and received by the county's code enforcement director on the day of the evacuation. The county demanded hundreds of dollars for public records and refused to explain the cost.
MAPPING SC'S TALL BUILDINGS IN COASTAL SURGE ZONES: The Post and Courier mapped the location of elevator permits as a proxy for tall buildings, since buildings with three or more stories are far more likely to have elevators. Beginning with a list of nearly 6,000 elevators from Horry County down the South Carolina Coast, we identified nearly 2,000 structures that fall within coastal surge zones, meaning those close enough to the ocean for a hurricane to cause tidal flooding. The data doesn't include construction dates, heights or building materials, which could further identify the structures most at risk. Each dot represents a building with at least one elevator. (SOURCE: NOAA; S.C. OFFICE OF ELEVATORS AND AMUSEMENT RIDES)
In another attempt to begin measuring the scale of the issue, The Post and Courier mapped the location of elevator permits using state-provided data to identify tall buildings from Horry County down the South Carolina coast that fall within coastal surge zones, meaning those close enough to the ocean for a hurricane to cause tidal flooding. The data doesn't include construction dates, heights or building materials, which could further identify those most at risk.
The paper's analysis, a rough outline of buildings that may be most exposed to saltwater, identified nearly 2,000 structures with elevators in surge zones along the South Carolina coast.
Miami-Dade County officials ordered emergency safety inspections of hundreds of condominiums after Champlain Tower collapsed. Within months, inspectors had identified two dozen high-rises in need of repair.
A few weeks after the evacuation in Horry County, residents of a condo standing blocks from Champlain Towers also were ordered to leave. Those residents were allowed to return this month.
Democratic State Rep. Wendell Gilliard of Charleston introduced a resolution last year that would have required similar inspections for tall buildings near the coast. It died in a committee.
"I always tell people in Columbia when I presented this bill that Mother Earth is talking to us and we better damn start listening," Gilliard said.
Fighting age, rising waters
Work was scheduled to begin Nov. 28 to stabilize Renaissance Tower and its seven damaged steel columns that are closest to the beach. If everything goes right, residents could be allowed back inside by Christmas.
But Horry County would have to sign off first, and those who returned would be living in the building as work to repair the foundation begins. Engineers won't know the scope, or the cost, of those repairs until after the building is stabilized. The initial work alone will cost $1.2 million, suggesting a much bigger price tag ahead to actually fix the problem.
Kreachbaum, who packed in such a hurry on Oct. 7 that she forgot her toothbrush and contact lenses, isn't in a rush to return.
"The idea of going back in that building makes me physically ill. I don't like to think about it, and I'll deal with that when I have to," said Kreachbaum. "This isn't just a matter of, 'Oh, that was a close call and let's all join hands and sing Kumbaya.' You could've killed people, not just myself but hundreds of others."
Karen Mays displays a storage space at her hair salon after she evacuated her condo at Renaissance Tower in Myrtle Beach. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff
Karen Mays struggles with the idea, too. She sold her house to pay off the debt on her $82,000 studio condo in the tower and was planning to move in Oct. 13.
Some days, she wonders if it would be better for the building to go ahead and fall while it is empty.
Her losses are mounting: Retirees in the building who were regular customers at her barbershop across the street from the tower are no longer nearby. Mays was going to live in her condo Mondays through Thursdays and stay with family members on weekends while renting it out and making a few thousand dollars a month. She also manages and cleans condos in the building for family and friends.
The place was going to pay for itself. Now, she is paying a monthly homeowners association fee for a place she can't enter. She and other residents said their insurance claims had been denied. Mays was taking the first step of a plan she and three friends had hatched to retire in the same building on the beach, like their own version of the "Golden Girls." Her friend Renea Hudgins closed on a condo in the building Aug. 4, two months before it was evacuated. Hudgins said no one told her about the repairs before she bought.
Mays is living out of a suitcase, paying $25 a night for a room in an Airbnb rental and keeping her shop open longer while trying to get by on $13 haircuts.
"If they deem it safe, I will be uncomfortable but I guess I will still probably take my chances and go up there," Mays said. "I'm a month behind on everything. … I don't know how long anybody can keep this up.
"I'm crying over a lost income or a lost home right now, but I'm lucky because I still have a place to go and I'm lucky I'm alive."
Karen Mays looks up at her former condo at Renaissance Tower in Myrtle Beach after getting mail on Nov. 2, 2022. Andrew J. Whitaker/Staff
Coan, the author, spent two weeks living with a friend because he had nowhere to go. Now, he is renting an apartment on the Myrtle Beach Resort property where the tower is located.
One of his friends lost all of her stuff. She came home to find the building locked with orders for nobody to go inside. She didn’t even have another pair of underwear. He wonders what would have happened if he had stayed out fishing longer that Friday. He would have no clothes. His laptop would be locked up in the building. His printer still is.
Coan has put his unit up for sale and is willing to take a loss to get out of it. Like others, he is angry no one did anything to fix the building before it became an emergency.
“I don’t trust these people. And the worst part is, they don’t care," Coan said of the condo board and management. “I just want to sell it and walk away.”
The window and balcony replacements and stabilization work are costing owners thousands of dollars each. And the final repairs are likely to cost much more.
The view from Peter Coan’s unit. He says that on a clear day, you can see North Carolina. He has put it up for sale. Peter Coan/Provided
Randall Parkinson, a coastal geologist at Florida International University, said the story of Renaissance Tower sounds like the classic case with condos, which rarely impose fees high enough to pay for major structural repairs.
Requiring inspections, especially ones that go deeper than a quick visual check, is a start, he said. But knowing there is a problem isn't the same as paying to fix it.
Parkinson said condos could get away with minimal fees for landscaping and minor repairs when their buildings were young. But now, both age and rising waters are working against them, he said.
When he published his first research on sea level rise in 1987, Parkinson said, the issue hadn't made it into the public conversation. Even today, the vast majority of research on the impact of salt on buildings has been done in the snow belt, he said.
"This is a monster of a problem," Parkinson said. "The magnitude of this, the scale of this, I don't think anybody has come to terms with it."
