Four people were confirmed dead and 159 were still missing Friday after a waterfront building collapsed near Miami as rescue teams searched a mountain of debris desperately for survivors.
Three more bodies were pulled from the rubble overnight, after one person was reported dead Thursday, and 159 were presumed missing by Friday afternoon.
One of those killed in the partial collapse of the 12-story building, which occurred without cause in the early hours of Thursday in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, has been identified, local media reported.
It is the mother of a 15-year-old boy rescued Thursday, who was taken to the hospital and did not survive, according to the Miami Herald .
Other bodies were being transported in yellow bags and evacuated so that the police could confirm their identities and inform the bereaved.
“We have one goal in mind now and that is to get people out alive and that’s all we are doing,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told reporters Friday. “We are not going to stop”.
Rescue workers were carefully scouring the structurally unstable pile of debris looking for survivors, removing them by hand as they battled intermittent storms and a fire at the site.
Waiting for a miracle
“I’m praying for a miracle,” Rachel Spiegel, whose mother Judy Spiegel is missing, told CNN on Friday.
The last time Spiegel contacted her mother was Wednesday night, when she texted her saying that she had bought a dress online for her granddaughter, Spiegel’s daughter.
Hours later, early Thursday morning, a large portion of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, a town facing Miami’s Biscayne Bay, collapsed.
Video captured by a nearby security camera showed an entire side of the building suddenly opening into two sections around 1:30 a.m. (12:30 a.m. Mexico City time) Thursday, throwing up clouds of dust.
It’s a very, very hard time. There are so many people waiting, are they alive, what will happen? “Said US President Joe Biden during an event at the White House.
Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state of Florida and ordered federal aid to complement state and local response efforts.
“So we are wholeheartedly with them,” said the president, who earlier declared a state of emergency to provide federal assistance for emergency relief operations and relocation of survivors.
At least 18 Latin American citizens were among the disappeared: nine from Argentina, three from Uruguay, and six from Paraguay, including the sister of the first lady of that country, according to the consulates.
The families looking for their missing loved ones were joined by the first lady of Paraguay, Silvana López Moreira, who traveled to Florida because her sister, her brother-in-law and their children did not appear.
120 people have already been rescued
Firefighters, sniffer dogs and cranes continued to work among the ruins of the building located within the Champlain Towers South complex, about 12 miles from downtown Miami.
So far, “120 people have been located … but the number of people we have no news of has risen to 159,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava said at a news conference.
The authorities “still hope to find people alive.” The first responders “are highly motivated by the prospect of finding people. We have to force them to do their rotations,” he said.
Miami-Dade Deputy Fire Chief Ray Jadallah said Friday that rescuers had heard sounds in the debris overnight, but stressed that it could be debris falling or people hitting.
“We are looking for sounds, human sounds,” Jadallah noted.
A storm Thursday night brought heavy rain without interrupting the search. A fire also had to be controlled on the north side of the building. Heavy rainfall continued to fall in the area on Friday, amid the smell of burning rubber and plastic.
But in the face of the slow search operation, some began to express their frustration.
“Not enough is being done,” Mike Salberg, who traveled from New York after the accident, told AFP. Five of his relatives, including his parents, are missing.
“I want answers,” he said. “Families are marginalized. They tell us they have the best teams but they don’t have the ability and capacity (…) 40 hours later, four dead.”
Surfside is home to a large Jewish community and rabbis mobilized to support evacuated residents and their families.
“They hit us hard, but there is still hope,” Zalmi Duchman, 41, told AFP. “We Jews firmly believe in miracles and we never give up, we are resilient and we try to stay positive in difficult times.”
What is known about the building that collapsed in Miami?
Dozens of people gathered Friday at the Surfside Community Center, where the activity was frantic, with volunteers running around and people hugging for comfort.
Outside the center, Toby Fried held back tears when he said he had last spoken to his brother Chaim “Harry” Rosenberg around midnight Wednesday.
Rosenberg had lived in the Champlain Towers for a year and a half. Both he and his daughter and her husband, who were visiting him from Brooklyn, are missing. “They came to stay with him for a week’s vacation,” Fried said.
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, asked that the causes of the collapse that affected some 55 apartments be clarified “without delay”.
“We need a definitive explanation of how this could have happened,” he told a news conference. “I think it is important that it be without delay,” he added, “to have answers for the families and for the people of Florida.”
Full-time residents lived in the building as well as people who spent only seasons, so it’s hard to tell how many were there when it collapsed. Some were able to escape by going down the stairs, while others were rescued from the balconies.
Although the reasons for the collapse were not clear, the infrastructure of the building, built in 1981 and with 130 homes, will be closely evaluated.
Champlain Towers was due to be recertified this year in accordance with Miami-Dade County safety regulations, and repair work was underway on its roof as part of that process.
But the authorities have stressed that it is unlikely that such works caused the collapse.
According to a study led by Florida International University (FIU) professor Shimon Wdowinski, the site showed signs of sinking about 25 years ago.
“I don’t know if the collapse was predictable. But we detected that the building moved in the 1990s,” Wdowinski told CNN on Friday.
The FIU warned that a “land subsidence by itself would probably not cause a building to collapse.”
The investigation to determine what happened will involve collecting a large amount of data, taking samples of steel and concrete, looking for signs of corrosion or some unusual event prior to the collapse, said another FIU expert, Atorod Azizinamini, head of the department of civil and environmental engineering.
“Unfortunately, this will not happen in a few days or weeks,” he said. “It will take some time.”
With information from AFP and Reuters
