Collapsed building had been ‘sinking’
MIAMI: Dozens of residents of a north Miami high-rise were missing after the dramatic collapse of a beachside building in the Florida city.
Authorities said 99 people remained unaccounted for on Friday (AEST) after parts of the Surfside apartment complex crumbled to the ground about 1.30am (local time).
One woman was confirmed dead and at least two others critically injured but the toll was expected to climb as rescuers combed the wreckage of the 12-storey building with cadaver dogs.
An unknown number of residents are feared to have been asleep in the building at the time of the tragic incident.
The search could take as long as a week, said Surfside town manager Andy Hyatt, and it was being complicated by an approaching storm.
“This is not something that is going to be brief. It’s going to be something that is for the long-term,” Mr Hyatt said.
Fire Rescue assistant chief Ray Jadalla said: “This process is slow and methodical. Any time we started breaching parts of the structure, we get rubble falling on us.”
Desperate families gathered near the site as salvage crews combed tonnes of debris from the collapse, which was captured in dramatic video.
“One side of the building just fell completely. It doesn’t exist anymore,” said Nicolas Fernandez, 29, an Argentinian resident of Miami who had yet to hear from friends who were staying overnight in his family’s unit in the building.
“I don’t know about them; I don’t know if they are alive,” he told AFP.
“The building has literally pancaked,” said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett.
“That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean to me that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
Miami Mayor Daniella Levine Cava described “a massive search and rescue” effort.
Authorities said it was unclear how many of the building’s residents were present when it collapsed and that many foreign residents lived or had holiday homes there.
So far 102 others have been accounted for, Ms Levine Cava told a news conference.
“So we are all praying. We are all crying. We are all here with the suffering families,” she said.
At least 18 Latin American nationals are known to be among the missing, according to the country’s consulates.
They are three Uruguayans, nine Argentines and six Paraguayans, among them the sister of the country’s first lady.
Surfside also has a large Jewish population and several rabbis were at the scene to help with rescue operations.
The building was occupied by a mix of full-time and seasonal residents and renters
Professor Shimon Wdowinski from Florida International University told USA Today that the building had been undergoing a structural inspection.
He said the coastal building was erected in 1981 and had been sinking into the ground since the 1990s.
His findings were in a 2020 research report into the impact of rising sea levels and coastal flooding.
He said the Champlain Towers South in Surfside had been sinking at a rate of about 2mm a year in the 1990s.