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Surfside, Florida, votes out the mayor after condo collapse

Charles Burkett
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The mayor has lost his job in a small South Florida town where 98 people died in the collapse of an oceanfront condominium last summer.

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett came in third in Tuesday's vote.

Business owner Shlomo Danzinger won with 499 votes, followed by Vice Mayor Tina Paul with 476 and Burkett with 466.

Surfside's oceanfront condos draw an outsized number of international residents so many in the town of nearly 6,000 can't vote.

Danzinger says he thinks many residents were tired of the constant bickering in the wake of the condo collapse.

He says just staying out of the newspapers will be an accomplishment.

The 40-year-old building was scheduled to undergo a recertification process this year before it collapsed.

The South Florida condo was demolished last July.

Officials say 97 people died in the collapse and one died in the hospital. One of the victims was the 7-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story stated The National Institute of Standards and Technology said the collapsed condo showed signs of extensive corrosion and overcrowded concrete reinforcement. However, those findings were determined by Dawn Lehman, a professor of structural engineering at the University of Washington. The NIST is currently investigating the collapse.