Miami condo collapse: death toll rises to four and more than 150 unaccounted for
Rescue workers were on Friday preparing for a second night sifting the wreckage of a collapsed south Florida condominium block, as authorities raised the known death toll to four and announced a further 159 people whose whereabouts remain unknown.
A painstaking search of the rubble of the Champlain Towers South building, by crews using sonar, sniffing dogs and specialist machinery, was hampered by summer thunderstorms common to the Miami area.
Relatives of those missing waited desperately at a community center in the tiny town of Surfside, on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where the 12-storey condo building came crashing down in the early hours of Thursday.
“This has been an extraordinary day and a half,” Daniella Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade county, said at an afternoon press conference.
“Our hearts are with our first responders who have been going in, desperately seeking people, motivated to find them, hopeful that they will find them and confident that their efforts will pay off.
“And to the families who are suffering and waiting and wondering, wanting news of their loved ones, our hearts are with you.”
She said 127 people had been accounted for, and the figure of 159 was for people “identified as being possibly on the site”.
Crews worked in shifts of 15 minutes through the night and into the daylight hours, delayed by thunderstorms and a series of fires that broke out in the 30ft pile of wreckage from the sudden collapse and destruction of about half of the building’s 130 apartments.
Early on Friday, officials announced that the death toll had reached four and warned it was likely to climb far higher. The first identified victim was named as Stacie Fang, whose 15-year-old son was pulled alive from the debris on Thursday.
Joe Biden, who signed an emergency declaration for the area on Friday morning, freeing up federal funding and resources, sent condolences from the White House.
“It’s a tough, tough time,” the president said at an event to sign a bill designating a national memorial at the scene of another Florida tragedy, the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre.
“There’s so many people waiting. Are they alive, will they be, what will happen? So our heart goes out to them.
“I promise you, the administration and Congress will do everything possible to be of assistance now and after this occurs, after they decide exactly what the state of play is.”
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, spoke at the afternoon briefing and called for a prompt investigation.
“We need a definitive explanation for how this could have happened,” he said. “That’s an explanation that needs to be an accurate explanation, it’s an explanation that we don’t want to get wrong. At the same time I do think it’s important that it’s timely because you have a lot of families here that lost loved ones, you have other folks who were able to get out safely, but then lost their homes.”
The Biden administration announced that six scientists and engineers were being sent from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency set up after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers in New York to look into structural failures, building codes and emergency responses to such disasters.
Miami-Dade fire rescue department structural engineers were also advising rescue workers
Raide Jadallah, an assistant Miami-Dade fire chief, said that while listening devices placed on and in the wreckage had picked up no voices, they had detected possible banging, giving rescuers hope some remained alive beneath the rubble. Rescuers were tunneling into the wreckage from below, going through the building’s underground parking garage.
“We are listening for sounds, not specifically human sounds, it could be tapping, it could be steel kind of twist-
ing, it could be some of the debris kind of raining down,” Jadallah said.
“We have heavy machinery on scene to start pulling some of the superficial metal from above, as we start looking for additional voids from above.”
Levine Cava acknowledged the danger to the rescue workers.
“This work is being done at extreme risk to these individuals, debris is falling on them as they do their work,” she said.
“We have structural engineers on site to assure that they will not be injured, but they are proceeding because they are so motivated. They have to be pulled off the shift.”
Traumatized families huddled together at the Surfside reunification center, some increasingly frustrated by a lack of information. Relatives of the missing were asked to give DNA samples and provide details of tattoos or other possible identifying features.
The mayor promised better communication.
“We are providing briefings to the waiting families every four hours, they are getting detailed descriptions of the operation so they can really understand what’s at stake, and how critical it is that we proceed cautiously and that they have patience,” Levine Cava said.
Brian Logan, regional disaster officer for the Red Cross, said his agency was helping displaced families with immediate needs, including hotel accommodation and supplies. He said teams of counsellors were joining aid workers at the scene.
“We’re bringing in trained experts that have dealt with this type of situation from across the country because we want to make sure we’re truly providing the necessary support for not only those directly or indirectly impacted, but the community at large,” he said.
“This is a difficult time for everybody, whether you’re here locally or seeing these images 3,000 miles away. Take time for yourself.”