Breaking news: Now that you need to prove you have a green pass- the Ramzor (רמזור ) application does the trick and Amazon brings back free shipping to Israel and Five-letter inscription inked 3,100 years ago may be name of biblical judge and Man who rescued 669 Czech children from Nazis is now the hero of a kids’ book BY RICH TENORIO and After Surfside disaster, Florida officials reexamine condo inspection policies and What's My Line? - Pat Boone; Martin Gabel [panel]; Hedy Lamarr [panel] (Jan 5, 1958) and the Portion of Shoftim
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Breaking news: Now that you need to prove you have a green pass- the Ramzor (רמזור ) application does the trick
Wednesday, I went with my friend to a sushi restaurant and wanted to sit inside. No dice said the hostess unless we showed our vaccination passes. Now I am half German so I am organized and had the email on my phone but my friend is not and they were not going to let us stay until another host came over and showed us this app.
We downloaded from the Play store one, two three with either the English spelling above or the Hebrew. Give it the right info and permissions and it accesses your Helth insurance file and in a few minutes you have the information on your phone and we got to stay and eat!
The host knew of the application because we were not the first one with the problems and he picked up a 200 sheckel (sushi is expensive) because we got to stay. The app is easy to use!
Amazon brings back free shipping to Israel
Amazon to offer free shipping to Israel - on orders over $65.-Many items show however there is no shipping to Israel so you have to work hard to find items that work at this time
Amazon has announced that it will reinstate free shipping to Israel from its US site, Israel Hayom reported.
The free delivery will only be available via Amazon's US site, for purchases of over $65, and for items which are shipped by Amazon itself.
Benny Buchnik, founder of the Facebook page group "I Need It" said: "This process includes many technological and electronic products, and I more than estimate that the variety will be larger. Amazon's catalog is very large, and therefore it takes a bit of time to enter so many products."
"However, I estimate that these will not be very heavy products, which raise the cost of shipping."
In late 2019, Amazon began offering free shipping in Israel, on orders over $49. However, in March 2020, Amazon ended all shipping to Israel due to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
In May 2020, the online retail giant resumed shipping to Israel, but it was no longer free.
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
The Portion of Shoftim
Introspection of Public Figures
The portion of Shoftim opens with the command to establish courts and appoint judges who will impartially judge the people. Collective responsibility of the judges and the elders for what transpires under their leadership is not to be taken lightly. We see this most clearly at the end of the portion where we find the commandment of the "Eglah Arafah"- the decapitated calf- the ceremony which takes place when an unidentified corpse is found in the open.
The taking of a life is a tragedy that demands the introspection of the judges and other public figures. And it is for this reason that they gather and publically proclaim "Our hands did not shed this blood".
Bereshit Rabah (portion 14) lists five synonyms for the word soul: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, yechidah, and chayah. Take note that the word "shafchu" (shed) is spelled with the letter "heh" at the end instead of the more commonly used letter "vav"- an allusion to the five synonyms listed above (the numerical value of the letter "heh" is five).
Additionally, as seen in the accompanying picture, the letter "pay" has five concentric circles (an additional allusion to these five synonyms), thereby emphasizing the obligation of introspection required of communal leaders where blood has been shed. (Sefer Harokeiach)
אותיות פ' בליפוף רגיל
אות פ' בליפוף כפול
What's My Line? - Pat Boone; Martin Gabel [panel]; Hedy Lamarr [panel] (Jan 5, 1958)
MYSTERY GUEST: Pat Boone
PANEL: Dorothy Kilgallen, Martin Gabel, Hedy Lamarr, Bennett Cerf
Five-letter inscription inked 3,100 years ago may be name of biblical judge
Excavations in Judean foothills uncover small jug from 1,100 BCE that could be inscribed with 'Jerubbaal'; first evidence of a name from Book of Judges on a contemporary artifact
Inked 3,100 years ago during the era of the biblical judges, an extremely rare five-letter inscription discovered in the lush Judean foothills could be a missing link in the development of Early Alphabetic (also known as Canaanite) writing used during the 12th-10th centuries BCE.
If correct, this would be the first hard evidence of a name from the biblical stories of the judges that is on an artifact contemporary to the period.
The inscription was published Monday as part of the second issue of the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology (JJAR) — a new open-access online journal — edited by Bar-Ilan Prof. Avraham Faust, Hebrew University Prof. Yossef Garfinkel, and Hebrew University researcher Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu.
The painted pottery is dated by the archaeologists to 1,100 BCE, which would make it prior to the formation of the biblical monarchy. The inscription was written in Early Alphabetic/Canaanite script, evidence of which has been found throughout Egypt and the Levant. First finds including paleo-Hebrew script come much later, dating to the 9th century BCE.
According to a cross-institutional team of archaeologists and epigraphers, the partial inscription, painted on three pottery sherds from an incomplete small vessel, is most logically read as "Jerubbaal" or "Yeruba'al," which was the nickname of the biblical judge Gideon, son of Joash, who was active in the northern parts of the Land of Israel during this era.
"The reading Yeruba'al is the most logical and reasonable reading, and I consider it quite definitive," epigrapher Prof. Christopher Rollston from George Washington University, who deciphered the text, told The Times of Israel. "I would hasten to add that this script is well known and nicely attested, so we can read it with precision."
The 'Jerubbaal' inscription, written in ink on a pottery vessel, discovered at Khirbet el Rai. (Dafna Gazit, Israel Antiquities Authority)
The inscription joins a mere handful of others that were found in the Land of Israel from a similar time period. Arguably, one of the earliest was discovered in the 1970s in Izbet-Sarta, followed by several other 12th-10th century BCE inscription discoveries in the past 15 years, including in Tell eṣ-Ṣafi, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Jerusalem, Lachish.
According to the archaeologists, the newly discovered inscription serves as a textual bridge for the transition from the Canaanite to the Israelite and Judahite cultures.
"For decades, there were practically no inscriptions of this era and region. To the point that we were not even sure what the alphabet looked like at that time. There was a gap. Some even argued that the alphabet was unknown in the region, that there were no scribes, and that the Bible must therefore have been written much later," polymath independent epigrapher and historian Michael Langlois told The Times of Israel.
An early 12th century BCE Canaanite alphabet inscription found at Lachish in 2014. (courtesy of Yossi Garfinkel, Hebrew University)
"These inscriptions are still rare, but they are slowly filling the gap; they not only document the evolution of the alphabet, they show that there was in fact continuity in culture, language and traditions. The implications for our understanding of biblical history are vast — and exciting!" said Langlois, who was not involved in this current excavation.
At Khirbet el Rai
The inscription was discovered at the Khirbet el Rai site, located between Kiryat Gat and Lachish, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southwest of Jerusalem. Since 2015, the site has been excavated by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Prof. Yossef Garfinkel, the Israel Antiquities Authority's Sa'ar Ganor, and Dr. Kyle Keimer and Dr. Gil Davies of Macquarie University in Sydney.
According to Ganor, the site includes impressively large structures from the 12th, 11th and 10th centuries BCE. "If you'd like a biblical parallel, we're talking about the days of the judges and King David," he said in an IAA Hebrew-language film.
The three directors of the Khirbet a-Ra'i excavation. (Left to right) Israel Antiquities Authority's Saar Ganor, Prof. Yosef Garfinkel, head of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Dr. Kyle Keimer of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, on July 8, 2019. (Amanda Borschel-Dan/Times of Israel)
Excavating among the area's vineyards, the team has found evidence of a Philistine-era settlement from the 12-11th centuries BCE under layers of a rural settlement dating to the early 10th century BCE, largely considered the Davidic era. Among the findings were massive stone structures and typical Philistine cultural artifacts, including pottery in foundation deposits — good luck offerings laid beneath a building's flooring.
Ganor added that during the seven seasons of excavations, these hundreds of artifacts that help piece together people's daily lives during the ancient biblical period. Among them is this "unimaginable inscription" which was found in one of the 20 storage silos discovered at the site.
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Archaeologist Garfinkel told The Times of Israel that the dating of the pottery piece was accomplished through a confluence of methods including radiocarbon-14 dating from the stratum just above this find, which gave a result of 1050 BCE, the typography of the pottery sherds found with the inscription, and petrographic analysis of the inscribed pottery that was completed by Ariel University's Prof. David Ben-Shlomo, who concluded that the small liter-sized jug was locally made.
The silo dug into the ground and lined with stones, where the 'Jerubbaal' inscription was found at Khirbet el Rai. (IAA)
Garfinkel said the makeup of the ink has not yet been specifically tested, but he assumed it was made from black ash and iron oxide, which was typical of the era and found on similar contemporary painted vessels.
Garfinkel said that only five pieces of the inscribed jug had been found in the silo, which was used for storage for approximately 10-50 years, but later, perhaps after becoming polluted with moist air, became a garbage pit. Due to the paucity of jug pieces, he concluded that the vessel had not been broken inside the silo but rather its pieces had been swept into the pit after a cleanup elsewhere.
What's in a name?
As tempting as it would be to connect the dots between the biblical judge Gideon and the name painted on this jug, the Khirbet el Rai archaeologists freely acknowledge in the press release that "the name of the Judge Gideon ben Yoash was Jerubbaal, but we cannot tell whether he owned the vessel on which the inscription is written in ink."
Aerial view of Khirbet el Rai, near Lachish in central Israel. (Emil Aladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
But to Garfinkel, that's not the relevant takeaway from this find. He emphasized that while it is thrilling and important to find hard evidence of a name included in the Bible, what is even more important is filling what he calls a "missing link" in the Canaanite script. He said that there have been examples discovered from the 14th, 13th, and the first half of the 12th century — but then there was a mysterious period of 150 years of no discovered inscriptions that connected between Canaanite inscriptions and Judean script.
This discovery, he said, would have been "very important even if was just letters without meaning. But in this case, we also have a name from the biblical period."
The inscription is partial, but the word "ba'al" can clearly be read in it, which was a somewhat common name in the Bible from sections that could have taken place during the 11th-10th centuries. This hard evidence dating from the same era, said Garfinkel, helps shore up what he repeatedly called an "onomastic horizon" — i.e., the proof of the common use of "ba'al" in personal names.
The use of "ba'al" can be tied to the strong pagan warrior god, or to "lord," said Garfinkel. He hypothesized that as the peoples came to worship the Israelite god more in following centuries, the onomastic horizon again shifted to include "yahu" — the Israelite god — instead of "ba'al," with names such as Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) and Eliyahu (Elijah).
The 'Jerubbaal' inscription, written in ink on a pottery vessel, discovered at Khirbet el Rai. (Dafna Gazit, Israel Antiquities Authority)
"For the peoples who believed in strong warrior god, sometime over time the Canaanite 'ba'al' became the Israelite 'yahu,'" said Garfinkel.
Playing Boggle with 'ba'al'
Scribes who wrote the developing Early Alphabetic script painted on the newly discovered inscription did not use punctuation and were not particular about the directions in which letters lay. It is quite possible that letters came before and after the four clear letters found on the pottery — spelling resh, bet, ayin, and lamed — and the partial letter that has been identified by Rollston as yud.
According to Hebrew University epigrapher Dr. Haggai Misgav, "the variability of this script is well known." He believes that according to the letters' shapes, the dating of 1,100 BCE is quite possible; however, because the inscription is partial, he is not convinced that "Jerubbaal" is the only reading of the letters. "I can think about 'Azruba'al — the first seen letter could be zayin, and maybe there is an 'ayin before it," he spitballed to The Times of Israel.
Prof. Christopher Rollston inspecting the inscribed late 9th or early 8th century BCE altar that was discovered in a Moabite sanctuary at the Khirbat Ataruz site in central Jordan in 2010. (Courtesy)
Likewise, epigrapher Langlois said that there were still plenty of options on the table before definitely arriving at "Jerubbaal."
"The inscription is fragmentary, which calls for caution. But this kind of inscription often bears personal names, which often feature the name of a deity… Supposing that what we have is a name ending in -baal, and that the previous letter is a resh, there are a number of candidates already attested: Zekharbaal, Maribaal, Jerubbaal etc. And of course it could also be a name not yet attested, which is not uncommon, as our knowledge of that period of history is quite limited. The key is thus the identification of yud at the beginning of the line," said Langlois.
Regarding the partial letter, Rollston said, "The shape of that letter is most consistent with a yud. (It should be remembered that with this very early script, the stance of a letter, that is, the way that it is rotated, can vary a great deal) Thus, it is the shape of that letter which is the crucial part… and the shape is most consistent with a yud."
Regarding playing Boggle with other potential letters to arrive at different readings, Rollston said that there is no visible letter prior to the yud — "thus, to posit that an ayin is present is pure speculation…and I don't consider speculation to be a good method."
Or, as Garfinkel put it, "We have resh, beit, ayin, and lamed, and nearby there is another letter, which is a bit broken… The most stable ground is to reconstruct the minimal possible name, which is Jerubbaal."
Man who rescued 669 Czech children from Nazis is now the hero of a kids' book
Nicholas Winton helped organize Kindertransports that carried young people to safety on the eve of war. 'Nicky & Vera,' by author and illustrator Peter Sis, now honors his legacy
'Nicky & Vera' by Peter Sis (Courtesy W.W. Norton and Company); Holocaust-era hero Nicholas Winton, who helped save 669 Czech children from the Nazi invasion. (AP/Petr David Josek, File)
When Vera, a young Jewish girl, was growing up outside of Prague in 1938, she had little on her mind besides her grandmother and love of animals. But her blissful childhood would change forever with the emerging crisis brought about by her country's neighbor, Nazi Germany.
When Vera's parents learned about an opportunity for Jewish children to escape to the United Kingdom organized by an Englishman named Nicholas Winton, they sent their 9-year-old daughter on a train out. Ultimately, 669 Jewish children were saved by the series of transports out of Czechoslovakia.
Winton, who kept quiet about his role, was surprised on live television decades later as fellow members of the studio audience revealed themselves to be children whose lives he helped save.
Winton, lived a long life, dying in 2015 at the age of 106 and now his moving narrative is being told in "Nicky & Vera," a new book by award-winning children's author and illustrator Peter Sis, released earlier this year. The book has been named to a summer reading list for children by The Times and The Sunday Times.
Collectively, those saved became known as "Winton's Children" — one of whom, Vera (Diamantova) Gissing, is the real-life protagonist of the book. Winton saved others who would go on to be noteworthy achievers, including British politician Alfred Dubs (Baron Dubs), geneticist Renata Laxova and a co-founder of the Israel Air Force, Hugo Marom, who was born in Brno, the same hometown as Sis.
"Winton's Children" are part of a wider story of the Kindertransports in which Jewish child refugees from Nazism came to the UK.
Taught to act quick, he saved lives
Sis, who now resides in the United States, was visiting his former homeland with his son in 2009 and happened upon a celebration of Winton's 100th birthday in Prague.
Sis himself became a refugee later in life, fleeing his then-communist country for the US while working on a film project during the Olympics nearly 40 years ago. He has become a multiple Caldecott honoree and recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, with previous titles about Galileo, Charles Darwin and Tibet.
After Sis set out to write a book about Winton, he was aided by another chance discovery: Gissing's memoir about her escape from Czechoslovakia.
Author and illustrator Peter Sis. (Vit Belohradsky)
"I'm trying to bond for younger audiences," Sis told The Times of Israel in a recent interview. "There's the contrast of the life of a little girl, the danger of coming, the expectations, in the time of great uncertainty."
In the character of Winton, he said, "My objective from the beginning was to show someone… who asked, 'How do I help someone when I see something wrong, say this is wrong and do something about it?'"
Before Winton was a rescuer, he was an Olympic-level fencer. In masterly strokes, Sis depicts his upbringing. Winton was born into a family of Jewish descent that converted to Christianity. He received a broad education before going into finance. The protagonist is whimsically illustrated in his fencing uniform riding a pigeon during university days.
Winton originally planned to devote the winter of 1938 to another physical activity — skiing. Yet a friend named Martin Blake urged him to come to Czechoslovakia instead, to help deal with the refugee crisis that followed the Anschluss and Kristallnacht — both shown in grim illustrations.
"He, because of who he was, moved very, very quickly," Sis said.
Nicholas Winton, center, at Liverpool Street station in London, September 4, 2009. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
Part of a movement
The author notes that there were many others in Czechoslovakia who helped refugees. This point was also mentioned by Winton's daughter Barbara Winton and by historians.
"He couldn't possibly have done it himself," said Barbara Winton, author of a biography of her father. "Somebody had to be in Prague organizing the trains" and assisting with other components of the project in Czechoslovakia and beyond, from "lists of children, briefing parents, organizing foster homes in the UK."
Nicholas Winton with daughter Barbara Winton at the launch of his biography in 2014 on his 105th birthday. (Barbara Winton)
"A lot of people were instrumental," Winton said, naming fellow Britons Trevor Chadwick and Doreen Warriner, adding that Warriner's work landed her on Hitler's watch list. "He was part of a group of people. He was the one who took on responsibility when the Czech Kindertransport happened, getting the permits. He was a kind of catalyst. There were all kinds of individuals before him who got him to get involved."
"I knew Nicholas Winton was a hero," Sis said. "Because he also lived a long life, he became the face of something. He became almost a mythical hero who somehow saved all these people. I found out there were other young people around him — Chadwick was one — a whole team."
"In the afterword," he said, "I do mention [other rescuers, including Chadwick and Warriner]. Everybody can do their own research as they get interested. As many [people] came to Prague, of course you can see many other organizations planning to help people — Americans, Christians, Jewish organizations."
Laura Brade, a scholar at Albion College in Michigan, called Winton "really part of a constellation of actors who came to Prague in the aftermath of the Munich agreement."
According to Brade, in Prague, Winton connected with Warriner, the chairwoman of the British Committee for the Refugees of Czechoslovakia, who showed him refugee camps.
A young Nicholas Winton with a rescued child. (photo credit: Courtesy of Menemsha Films)
"He forms a partnership with her," Brade said. "He decides he can be useful… helping organize the transport of children."
After three weeks in Prague, Winton had to go back to his job as a stock trader by the end of January 1939.
In London, Brade said, Winton, his mother and a small staff "took care of permits, visas, payments to the Home Office to allow children to come to England, of course working with Czech committees as well. The Prague-based Jewish refugee committee was very involved with the children… It was really a collaborative effort."
'Troublesome Sainthood'
Brade expressed concern that some individuals involved in the rescue have been left out of the narrative. She and fellow scholar Rose Holmes wrote a 2017 article about this subject, "Troublesome Sainthood."
"We tried to untangle all the actors involved in the rescue," Brade said. "There really were a lot of women involved — Czech women, British women, who actually stayed in Prague, doing a lot of really dangerous work assisting refugees in Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia," which became a Reich protectorate in 1939.
"One of the things that happened was that women were typically placed in very different roles," Brade said. "They were not necessarily the public face of the organization. But they did a lot of work on the ground. They were written out of the story."
'Nicky & Vera,' by Peter Sis. (Courtesy W.W. Norton and Company)
So were accused communists, she said.
"Warriner was accused later of having communist ties," said Brade. "She was interrogated by the British government. People with questionable political histories, political leanings, were also sort of written out of the story — Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick, Czech women like Marie Schmolka, Hannah Steiner. All died by the time Winton's story gained a lot of public traction in the '80s."
As the rescued children entered their golden years, they understandably welcomed "finally having somebody to thank," Brade said. "I think that played a role in focusing on one person as the hero."
She called Winton "clearly a very generous, giving individual, modest… He himself was an admirable individual that we all want to live up to, should live up to." She also said, "I think Barbara Winton's book does a really great job with how these other people became involved," and although she has not read "Nicky & Vera," "it's on my list of things to read. I love Peter Sis's work."
Asked what made Nicholas Winton do what he did, she replied, "I would love if we could answer that question. I would be much more hopeful."
"There's the fact he had a friend who goes [to Czechoslovakia] first and says, 'You should come see what's going on here,'" Brade said. "And then I do think he's the kind of person who, when he encountered a situation like this, and had felt able to do something, I think he was motivated to act… [If I knew] what motivates altruistic people to do what they do, we would have a very much different world."
She noted that the Czech Jewish community suffered "incredibly" during the Holocaust, with about 88% of the country's Jews slain.
Some of the rescued children, including Vera, returned to Czechoslovakia after the war and found that their families had perished.
Sir Nicholas Winton with some of the now-grown children he helped rescue in Chechoslovakia. (photo credit: Courtesy of Menemsha Films)
"It was a terrible ordeal to lose their families," Sis said, "building completely new lives."
Yet they went on to become adults — in England, Israel, the US, in some cases Czechoslovakia, although it became harder after the 1948 communist coup — and have children and grandchildren of their own, including in Vera's case.
"I spoke to her daughter," Sis said. "She has grandchildren and an extended family." He added that while COVID-19 travel restrictions have kept his communications with Vera online, "I would very much like to meet Vera and also her family, the families of other [rescued] children."
"Now there's a generation of people, of course in their 90s," Sis said. "There's less and less of them left. It's an absolutely fascinating sort of tragic story."
After Surfside disaster, Florida officials reexamine condo inspection policies
With many buildings only checked after construction and then never again, calls mount for much tougher guidelines, particularly for older projects
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) — Across Florida, people living in the thousands of condominiums rising above the state's 1,350 miles of coastline wonder if the building collapse in Surfside could happen to their home as state and local officials discuss what they can do to make sure it doesn't.
Although building collapses are rare, local governments are looking at whether they need to adopt new inspection policies — the vast majority of counties don't require reinspection of a building once it's completed.
"We inspect bridges every two years and yet a high-rise can go up right on the coast and it's inspected at the time it's built and never again," said Volusia County Chair Jeff Brower, who said residents have sent photos of damaged buildings. "It's kind of a wake-up call, and some of the pictures I have seen of our own structures are scary."
He's in contact with the governor's office on the issue but thinks acting locally will be quicker. One idea is reinspecting new buildings after 10 years and, depending on what's found, inspecting again another decade later.
Miami-Dade County, where the 40-year-old Champlain Towers South partially collapsed last month, requires buildings to be recertified as safe every 40 years and every 10 years after that.
"We definitely have to have inspection of the infrastructure of these buildings," Brower said. "They're not falling all over the place, but we don't want even one more like the tragedy at Surfside."
The collapse prompted the county — as well as cities and towns within it — to take a closer look at the recertification rules already in place. One municipality, North Miami Beach has evacuated the nearly 50-year-old Crestview Towers and won't allow residents back in until required repairs have been completed. The county announced late Friday that the 28-story Miami-Dade County Courthouse will begin undergoing repairs immediately because of safety concerns found during a review prompted by the deadly collapse of a nearby condominium building.
Beachgoers walk by the beach entrance to the Arte by Antonio Citterio condominium, center, Tuesday, June 29, 2021, in Surfside, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Florida's beachfront high-rises take a beating from storms, saltwater and sea air, which can wear down concrete and rust rebar. There isn't a mile of Florida's coastline that hasn't been affected in one way or another by hurricanes and tropical storms in the past 40 years — with some areas taking multiple hits.
Although construction standards improved when statewide building codes were strengthened in the 1980s, the quality before then was often questionable, said Brett Turner, a project manager in southwest Florida who has been in the construction industry for 45 years.
"Up until the late '80s, there virtually were no inspections. Our codes were horrible. So any building or house that was built prior to 1986 is suspect," Turner said. "It was the Wild West — whatever you could get away with if you were making a buck."
Turner, who previously specialized in repairing older buildings, said he's seen very dangerous damage in Florida buildings. "I'm surprised that (Surfside) is the first one that I've seen this happen to," he said. "I'm not surprised it happened; I'm surprised it's the first one."
Rubble and debris of the Champlain Towers South condo can be seen in Surfside, Florida on Tuesday, July 6, 2021. The rubble shown here is from the front portion of the condo towers, which was demolished 11 days after the back part of the tower collapsed with people inside. (Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP)
In Boca Raton, officials are working quickly to establish a recertification process for older buildings, Councilman Andy Thomson said.
"We have a number of high-rise condos on the beach, particularly. And I think that's what causes the most heartburn for people because of the potential of corrosion due to saltwater," Thomson said.
Steven Rogers lives at the Chalfonte condominiums in Boca Raton, where neither the city nor Palm Beach County requires building recertification. But Rogers, who was elected the condominium association president, said they're not waiting for either to set a policy.
The association hired engineers two years ago to inspect the two 22-story towers built in the late 1970s on the Atlantic Ocean. Rogers said he called engineers again after the Surfside collapse and told them he wants an inspection policy that's more stringent than Miami-Dade's. The association is now making repairs with plans to do so every year.
"Do inspections that you feel are necessary, not what the city or the state feels is necessary," Rogers said. "It's going to take time for the city or the state to come out with new laws, and in that time, we have to move. We have to do the right things now."
How the state will act could depend a lot on what's learned about the Surfside collapse, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference.
"We want to be able to identify, why did this happen? Is this something that was unique to this building?" DeSantis said. "Is it something that buildings of that age that would have implications beyond that, whether southern Florida or the entire state of Florida? I think we need to get those definitive answers."
Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo, who represents Surfside, has indicated he'll seek legislation to address condominium inspections when lawmakers return to Tallahassee in January.
"We're going to be pushing for a few new provisions in FL condo law (like we have for the last three years). In the interim, condo associations must comply with existing laws and serious structural deficiencies, so our residents are not uprooted and forced to sleep in shelters," Pizzo recently tweeted.
Rescue workers watch as excavators are used to dig through the rubble of the collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building on July 9, 2021 in Surfside, Florida. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images North America / Getty Images via AFP)
Escambia County, which includes Pensacola Beach, has no recertification program for older high-rises, and Building Services Director Tim Tolbert said the area will probably wait to see if a statewide code is enacted.
"I think it will be more enforceable that way," Tolbert said. "Even if that's a requirement and an association refuses to do anything, what do you do? If you go to condemn the building, you're talking about major lawsuits. It's just going to be tough to enforce even if it's a state requirement."
