Death toll in Florida building collapse rises to 28, with 117 missing

SURFSIDE, Fla., (Reuters) - The death toll from a collapsed Miamiarea condominium rose to 28 yesterday after the controlled demolition of the remainder of the building on Sunday night enabled rescuers to expand their search, officials said.

The discovery of the 28th victim was announced during a news conference Monday afternoon. Earlier in the day, officials reported pulling three other bodies from the wreckage.

Another 117 people remained missing 11 days after the 12-story residential building collapsed in Surfside, Florida, prompting a search-and-rescue effort that has continued almost around the clock, pausing only for bad weather, dangerous shifting of the rubble, and the demolition.

Roughly half of the condominium building came tumbling down early in the morning on June 24, and rescue workers were kept away from the unstable half that remained standing for their own safety.

Tropical Storm Elsa in the Caribbean had also threatened to blow the remains over, so officials ordered the building to be taken down by a demolition crew that placed charges at enough weak points to prompt another collapse.

“The search-and-rescue team has been able to search all sections of the grid on the collapse, following the building demolition,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters.

Although updated forecasts predict the Surfside area is likely to avoid the brunt of the storm on its projected course to the north from Cuba, scattered showers and thunderstorms were forecast.

Nobody has been pulled alive from the mounds of pulverized concrete, splintered lumber and twisted metal since the early hours of the disaster in an oceanfront town adjacent to Miami Beach in Florida.