It would be quite hard to fake enough cube samples for that and unlikely to be worth the bother. The steelwork failing is more likely. Pre-stressed conc is basically an explosion waiting to happen, which makes demolitions interesting. Another possibility is concrete cancer but the map cracking is well known and easily recognised. That last is unlikely and easy to rule out with some simple chemistry. However, Miami is on the coast so the extra ingredients are there.
There are loads of possibilities but at the moment I think foundation failure is most likely. Unless you pile down to bedrock or build a gigantic raft of conc. then you need very stable land for a building that size. Another other option is to build it flexible but that was obviously not the case. The geology there is likely to be a nightmare. Miami is a lot of reclaimed land, low lying and next door to the Atlantic.
The sight of the collapse is something I won't forget in a hurry. The secondary collapse on the right in the security camera footage took about three seconds. That's insanely fast. The failure was absolutely catastrophic. It wasn't simply a cascade - the whole structure seemed to fail simultaneously from top to bottom and that is not normal.
There are loads of possibilities but at the moment I think foundation failure is most likely. Unless you pile down to bedrock or build a gigantic raft of conc. then you need very stable land for a building that size. Another other option is to build it flexible but that was obviously not the case. The geology there is likely to be a nightmare. Miami is a lot of reclaimed land, low lying and next door to the Atlantic.
The sight of the collapse is something I won't forget in a hurry. The secondary collapse on the right in the security camera footage took about three seconds. That's insanely fast. The failure was absolutely catastrophic. It wasn't simply a cascade - the whole structure seemed to fail simultaneously from top to bottom and that is not normal.