Dozens gather near Surfside memorial wall for multi-faith community vigil honoring victims

Dozens crowded into the barricaded street before the memorial wall a block away from the collapsed condo in Surfside for a multi-faith vigil Thursday evening — taking the moment to pray, light candles, mourn lost loved ones, and “show up” for the tight-knit small town community.

Leo Soto, who organized the vigil, spoke to community members and stressed how the wall has been a way to “put a face to the pain.”

“It’s more than just a photo, more than just a flower,” Soto said into a bullhorn. “We can hope there was love, there was hope, there was peace. It’s the least we can do.”

To Yosaif Arye Glixman, 25, who had a loved one die in the collapse, the flowers on the wall are symbols of an eternal “direct connection” to those lost.

Soto said that upkeep of the memorial, which has grown rapidly over the past two weeks, has taken dozens of volunteers. He noted that private donors — Publix, Sunburst Farms and Galleria Farms — came in Thursday to replace the flowers on the memorial wall with about 7,000 new plants.

“It’s been three weeks since the initial collapse,” said Soto, who set up the memorial between 88th Street and 87th Terrace on Harding Avenue following the tragedy. “This place has truly become a sacred space.”

He added that it’s been moving to observe how many people from across the community — families, rescuers, neighbors — have come to the memorial.

This week, Soto noted, has been particularly difficult for many families after authorities announced a slew of new victims.

As volunteers attached red roses to each of the markers lining the chain-link fence, mourners cried, closed their eyes in prayer and attached more photos to the wall.

“This is very healing to the community,” said Gabrielle Arredondo, a Surfside resident whose neighbors were killed in the collapse. “Being here ... I know that they are not here, but I can feel them here,” she said of those who lost their lives. “It’s a lot of love here.”

A long line of people, many of them holding candles, formed along Harding Avenue early in the night. Some stood a distance from the wall to give space to family members; others waited for an opportunity to approach them and express their condolences.

“It’s impossible to comprehend this tragedy,” said Irina Kamyshnikova in Russian, who immigrated and settled in Surfside nine years ago. She and her husband had come to light candles at the wall.

By 8 p.m. Thursday, ahead of the planned vigil, community members and loved ones of victims had gathered near the memorial wall.

Joe Zevuloni, the founder of Strong for Surfside — a volunteer network that sprouted at the Surfside community center on the day of the collapse and grew from 30 volunteers to over 1,000, including 15 executive chefs to provide meals for first responders — came to hang up a sign on the wall ahead of the vigil.

“We’ve been there from Day One,” he said of why he wanted to attend the vigil. “We want to support the community.” He later spoke to the crowd, arousing the only applause of the night in a tribute to the first responders.

Mike Blandino Scull, 43, was there to pay tribute to Arnold Notkin, who had once been his elementary school gym teacher in South Beach.

“He was a phenomenal teacher,” Scull said, before signing Notkin’s marker. To attend the vigil, he said, for him is a way to show “love and respect for the innocent people who passed,” and to put action in the face of a tragedy for which “there are no words.”

The national press has mostly left town, and regular traffic resumed along Harding Avenue — as the death toll stood at 97 Thursday and the recovery seemed to be nearing an end. Some survivors and friends of victims now are left to wonder what will become of their town.

Bal Harbour Mayor Gabriel Groisman said that in the Jewish religion, mourners sit shiva for seven days after the death of a loved one, a period when friends and extended family stay in the home. It is often said the eighth day is the hardest, Groisman explained, “when everybody leaves the house.”

The last three weeks for the Surfside community, Groisman compared to a form of shiva as the town has felt “the embrace of the world.”

But when the media trucks leave, he said, “we have to make sure that there is no eighth day” for the families of victims.

“That as a community we continue to embrace the families as we’ve embraced them over the past three weeks,” the Bal Harbour mayor added.