Fla. families seek answers, miracles
Biden scheduled to visit Florida site Thursday
The slow work of sifting through the remnants of a collapsed Florida condo building stretched into a sixth day Tuesday, as families desperate for progress endured a wrenching wait for answers.
The count of confirmed dead grew to 12 Tuesday evening.
That leaves nearly 150 people still unaccounted for.
Thunderstorms rolled through the area Tuesday morning, bringing questions about why that would stop rescue efforts. Debris fell onto the search area overnight from the shattered edge of the part of the building that still stands.
SURFSIDE, Fla. – More than 200 search-and-rescue specialists, working in sopping and sweltering conditions, had moved 3 million pounds of concrete on the sixth day of a frenzied and mass effort to find survivors or the dead amid the ruins of a collapsed condo tower north of Miami.
Local officials said said they confirmed one additional death Tuesday and found no new survivors, even as 20 local, state and federal agencies and a diaspora of volunteers from across the world had rushed to Surfside, a mostly residential community just north of Miami, in the hours and days following the collapse of a portion of the 13-story Champlain Towers South tower last Thursday.
The nation’s focus on the disaster is set to heighten further with President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden planning to visit the site Thursday.
The death toll stood at 12, with nearly 150 people missing. Rescuers are working in 12-hour shifts under medical watch because of the physically taxing nature of the work and the sweltering temperatures.
“Is there hope?” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a Tuesday morning news conference. Harkening back to his days in the Navy, DeSantis said, “You’re missing until you’re found. We don’t stop the search.”
The scale of the damage has left the families of missing loved ones and local officials grasping for hope wherever they can find it. When asked by families how long it’s possible to survive in the wreckage, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said he’s pointed to news reports about a woman who survived for 17 days after the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh in 2013.
“Nobody is giving up hope here,” Burkett said. “Nobody is stopping.”
He also said some of the families were frustrated the work had to stop during frequent periods of rain (rescue officials have said those conditions are simply too dangerous).
Local officials also laid out a sweeping series of steps aimed at reform and a search for accountability. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she was consulting with experts from fields as varied as engineering, construction, soil and geology to help identify ways the local government can re form building standards and condo management boards.
The State Attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, also plans to empanel a grand jury to examine the collapse.
Asked what the grand jury would be looking for, Levine Cava said, “Like all of us, answers.”
The earliest scrutiny has zeroed in on how much the tower’s condo association knew about the contents of a 2018 report by an engineering firm that found crumbling concrete columns in the garage beneath the building, a “major error” in the building design and other problems. A letter sent in April by the condo association’s president, Jean Wodnicki, and obtained by USA TODAY, said the problems identified in the basement in that 2018 report had become “significantly worse” and were “accelerating.”