More than 350 people were hastily evacuated from an Orlando apartment complex last week after fire officials found cracks throughout the building along with doors that wouldn\u2019t open.<\/p>\n
Local news outlets reported that a panicky resident called 911 Thursday morning to report popping and cracking sounds and a jammed front door at The Rialto, a five-story complex in southwest Orlando. Orange County Fire Rescue workers and a building inspector surveyed the building, found signs of structural instability and decided to evacuate all the residents, the Orlando Sentinel and Central Florida Public Media reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n A structural engineer hired by the complex was examining the building over the weekend, news sites reported.<\/p>\n The complex, near a lake and with ground-level shops, was built in 2014. It had passed an annual inspection in September, which found no structural damage, the Sentinel noted<\/a>. But last week, firefighters found damage on all five floors.<\/p>\n Local emergency management and the American Red Cross worked to find hotel accommodations for displaced residents, and hotels had offered discounted rates, news sites reported.<\/p>\n The evacuation is the latest since Florida officials became more alert to potential structural issues following the 2021 collapse<\/a> of a condominium building near Miami Beach, a collapse that killed 98 people. After that tragedy, Florida lawmakers passed legislation requiring more inspections and more reserve funding for most condominium buildings around the state.<\/p>\n In 2025, a Clearwater condo building<\/a> was evacuated after a concrete beam developed significant cracking. In 2023, a condo building on Biscayne Bay was deemed unsafe<\/a> after a 60-year inspection found sagging floors and termite damage.<\/p>\n Photo: The Rialto apartment complex in Orlando (Google Street View)<\/p>\n The most important insurance news,in your inbox every business day.<\/p>\n Get the insurance industry’s trusted newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 350 people were hastily evacuated from an Orlando apartment complex last week after fire officials found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[93143,93144,93145,139,141,140,93146,93147],"class_list":["post-202074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-building-inspections-in-florida","tag-commercial-residential-property-insurance","tag-florida-apartment-liability-law","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-renters-insurance","tag-surfside-condo-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}