One dead and toll to rise after condo collapse
Hundreds of fire and rescue workers scoured through tons of rubble early yesterday after a 12-storey oceanfront residential building partially collapsed just north of Miami Beach in Florida, leaving at least one person dead and at least ten injured, officials said.
Hundreds of fire and rescue workers scoured through tons of rubble early yesterday after a 12-storey oceanfront residential building partially collapsed just north of Miami Beach in Florida, leaving at least one person dead and at least ten injured, officials said.
Fire official said 35 people were rescued from the building, built in 1981, including two who were pulled from the rubble as response teams used trained dogs in a search for survivors.
Sally Heyman, a Miami-dade County Commissioner, said officials have been unable to make contact with 51 people who live in the building, home to a mix of people including families and part-time "snow birds" who spend the winter months in Florida.
The condominium building in Surfside, Florida, about 15 miles north of Miami, had more than 130 units, according to NBC Miami. Officials have said about 80 were occupied.
Surfside mayor Charles Burkett warned during a news conference that the building manager told him the tower was quite full and the death toll was likely to rise.
It was unclear how many people were inside at 2am when an entire side of the building pulled away and fell to the ground below.
"It's hard to imagine how this could have happened ," mr burkettt old reporters ." Buildings just don't fall down."
Construction work was being done on the roof, he said, but it was unclear whether the project involved any heavy gear.
Footage from WPLG Local 10, ami amitv station, showed a rescue team pulling a boy from piles of debris and rebar, and firefighters using ladder trucks to rescue residents trapped on balconies.
Mr Burkett said that part of the building with balconies facing the beach "pancaked" where one floor appears to have fallen atop another, cascading down.
"The back of the building, probably a third or more, is totally pancaked," he said. "That is heart-breaking because it doesn't mean to me that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive."
He said the collapse appeared to have affected 30 units in the building.
Ten people were treated at the scene and two were taken to hospital, one of whom died, Mr Burkett said, adding that 15 families walked out of the building on their own.
Miami-dade County mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, said she got a call from President Joe Biden, who offered federal aid.
Resident Barry Cohen, 63, said he and his wife were asleep in the building when he first heard what he thought was a crack of lightning. The couple went on to their balcony, then opened the door to the building's hallway to find "a pile of rubble and dust and smoke billowing around."
"I couldn't walk out past my doorway," said Mr Cohen, the former deputy mayor of Surfside.
"A gaping hole of rubble."
He and his wife eventually made it to the basement and found rising water there. They returned upstairs, screamed for help and were eventually brought to safety by firefighters using a cherry-picker. Mr Cohen said he raised concerns years ago about whether nearby construction might be causing damage to the building after seeing cracked paving on the pool deck.