The death toll from the partial collapse of a building in the town of Surfside, near Miami, Florida, rose to nine, authorities said Sunday.
“We found four other bodies in the rubble, as well as human remains,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference, without accounting for changes in the number of missing, which at the last minute Saturday was at 156.
In the early morning hours of June 24, a large portion of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, a town facing Miami’s Biscayne Bay, collapsed.
Authorities have said the death toll will continue to rise as teams from Israel and Mexico joined emergency work at Surfside.
“All the people that are needed are there doing their jobs and we continue to strive to find living people,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told CBS on Sunday.
Authorities said they are hopeful that some of the 156 unaccounted for may be alive.
The search continues with the help of dogs, sonars, drones and infrared scanners, while it is hoped that people can survive in the air pockets that may have formed from the debris.
A fire under the rubble that produced thick smoke and made it difficult for rescuers to work has subsided, authorities said. A trench was dug to separate areas of smoking debris from the rest of the building’s remains and rescuers are using tunnels, the mayor said.
Some families of the missing have provided DNA samples to the authorities, and the police released the names of four victims, aged between 54 and 83 years.
Photographs of the missing were posted on a fence near the site, along with flowers and messages. On Saturday, relatives prayed and kept a silent vigil at a barrier erected on the beach by authorities several hundred meters north of the construction site.
Some residents remain in the sister building to the one that collapsed, where only a voluntary evacuation order has been issued. An inspector did not find any immediately apparent problems in the other construction.
With information from AFP and Reuters.
