A Florida city official is calling for a review of all the local work performed by a former Surfside building inspector linked to the deadly condo-tower collapse.
The vice mayor of Doral — where Rosendo “Ross” Prieto worked as an interim building official since leaving his Surfside post last year — wants “a revision of everything having to do with” Prieto, according to WPLG-TV.
Prieto, 54, took leave from his Doral job after the June 24 collapse of Champlain Towers South Condo in Surfside, where 32 people are confirmed dead and another 113 are still missing.
“It would be irresponsible of me not to verify any project that has passed through the hands of this ex-employee of our city,” Doral Vice Mayor Pete Cabrera told WPLG.
Prieto came under fire after reports surfaced that while he was working for Surfside, he assured Champlain building tenants in 2018 that the condo tower was “in very good shape” — despite a troubling engineer’s report the prior month that flagged “major structural damage.”
“Structural engineer report was reviewed by (the inspector),” minutes of the Nov. 15, 2018, meeting show. “It appears the building is in very good shape.”
Prieto told the Miami Herald that he did not recall being at the meeting and denied that he had received the report by engineer Frank Morabito. He declined to comment further on the advice of his lawyer.
Cabrera is calling for a special Doral council meeting to review “everything that has passed through the hands” of Prieto and his company, CAP Government Inc. in Coral Gables. Officials in Doral did not detail the work that Prieto and his company did there.
Doral is about 20 miles west of Surfside and is also in Miami-Dade County.
Morabito said in his report regarding the Surfside building that $9 million worth of work was required to repair it, although the cost ballooned to $15 million as bickering on the condo association board and other issues delayed the work until this year.
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