In a few seconds, South Florida is changed, forever
Julie Spiegel devoted her life to philanthropy and her family.
“She was the glue that held our family together,” her visibly shaken husband Kevin said on CNN Friday.
Arnie Notkin was a coach and physical education teacher and a beloved mentor to generations of kids in Miami Beach.
Marcus Guara was a BMX bicycle racer who overcame a serious accident and resumed his career on tracks across South Florida.
Guara, his wife Ana, their two daughters and the others are all missing. They are among the 159 people unaccounted for in the collapse of part of the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Surfside. As of Friday, four were confirmed dead and 127 survivors had been located.
The magnitude of it is beyond comprehension. So too is the mystery. “This is not normal,” said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett.
It all happened so fast. A horrifying roar in the middle of the night, followed by a monstrous cloud of debris. And then — silence. An agonizing silence, hour after hour, that torments families and friends of the missing. Surfside is a close-knit place and many people knew someone who’s affected: White House chief of staff Ron Klain feared the loss of a friend’s wife.
That frozen image of the gnarled wreckage, its top-floor bedroom exposed, with a white bunk bed and a black desk chair dangling nearby, will be in our minds always.
If you live in a high-rise condo in Hallandale Beach, on Galt Ocean Mile, or in Pompano, Boca or Boynton, this unimaginable catastrophe has a very deep and terrifying resonance, as it should, and will understandably cause a lot of anxiety for a lot of people for a long time.
That’s why it’s so crucial that state and local governments work diligently to find out what happened as soon as possible.
High-rise condos aren’t just part of the landscape of South Florida. They’re as much a part of our collective psyche as air conditioning and I-95.
Since the 1970s, condo towers have hugged the coastline that is now so vulnerable to sea level rise. An FIU study released last year found evidence of land subsidence, a gradual settling or sinking of the Earth’s surface, at Champlain Towers as far back as the mid-1990s.
The day before the collapse occurred about 1:30 a.m. Thursday, a resident who’s now missing told her son she heard “creaking” noises, and workmen are inspecting the building as part of a recertification required every 40 years. Clues or mere coincidences? We don’t yet know.
The ordinariness of Champlain Towers South, and the apparent randomness of the collapse, are chilling.
As U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, whose district includes Surfside, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo: “We all have to hope that it’s a one-off, but I don’t know that it is.”
As the sun rose over Surfside on Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis declared, “It’s a team effort, all about trying to save lives.”
The message was right, but the optics were all wrong.
When DeSantis said that, he was in Pensacola — 700 miles and a time zone away — standing with a group of Florida Highway Patrol troopers being sent off to Mexico to help patrol the border, at the expense of Florida taxpayers.
With his own constituents unaccounted for and their families frantically searching for answers, DeSantis belonged in Surfside, not at a photo-op to promote his presidential ambitions.
He quickly high-tailed it back to Miami-Dade and, perhaps for the first time, acknowledged that Joe Biden is president: “We really appreciate having the support of the president,” he said in a mid-afternoon briefing, in reference to the White House’s offer of help.
What happened in Surfside must never happen again. It deserves the undivided attention of state and local leaders.