‘Forever changed’: Surfside leaders, community grapple with tragedy in their town

Before large stretches of Surfside became choked with road blocks, emergency vehicles and hordes of media, the sleepy resort town was quiet early Thursday morning as Town Manager Andy Hyatt ran down Collins Avenue toward what was left of the Champlain Towers South.

A phone call just before 2 a.m. jolted him awake. He had a missed call from Police Chief Julio Yero, who told him part of the condo building had collapsed just five blocks away from his 93rd Street apartment.

As he left his apartment, Hyatt called the mayor and commissioners. He called his department heads and staffers to get down to the site and help displaced residents.

Surfside Police was the first agency that responded to the collapse site at 1:20 a.m., followed soon after by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, Hyatt said. By the time he arrived, emergency lights illuminated the dark. Still, it was difficult to assess the extent of the damage, Hyatt said.

Then the sun came up. And the gravity set in.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Hyatt said.

The beach town of less than 6,000 residents — and no fire department — would soon become the center of a large-scale tragedy. Calls would come from the White House, U.S. senators, the governor and the county mayor. Reporters and TV crews from all across the country — and some from abroad — flew down to Surfside to cover search-and-rescue efforts. Distraught family members of the estimated 159 people still unaccounted for more than a day after the collapse sought answers. Emergency declarations were signed by President Joe Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“This is not in City Manager 101,” said Hyatt, who said he has been on the job eight months. “You talk about certain things, but a building collapse?”

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, town staff — including lifeguards — helped shelter displaced residents at the Surfside Community Center.

Authorities from Miami-Dade County, along with state and federal agencies, quickly took the lead in responding to the disaster. And a coalition of residents, volunteer groups and the American Red Cross have worked to help families displaced by evacuations or missing loved ones.

“There’s not a lot that little Surfside can do except ring the alarm bell. And we rang the alarm bell,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said Friday at a news conference. “And [Miami-Dade] Mayor [Daniella Levine] Cava sent the cavalry, as did the governor. That has made all the difference in the world. They’ve got resources like you can’t believe here.”

But town staff are still working around the clock, answering phone calls from family members, reporters and residents with unrelated concerns. Others are coordinating donations. The town clerk’s office received scores of record requests from media outlets, including the Miami Herald, which has requested construction permits, blueprints and architectural plans, and records of any building inspections or code violations logged by the town related to the collapse.

The Surfside Commission, which met for an emergency meeting Friday, declared a state of emergency and vowed to find answers to what went wrong at the condo. Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer proposed requiring geological surveys for 40-year recertifications, and requiring that buildings undergo the county-mandated recertification more frequently.

Hyatt said the town has engaged a structural engineer to inspect other buildings in Surfside.

For town leaders and residents, it has been overwhelming to be the site of a tragedy like the building collapse. Town staff and commissioners are now tasked with running a government while not knowing if their neighbors are still stuck in the rubble.

“These are our friends and neighbors that are in that building. We’ll know who we knew when we don’t see them again. That will be felt pretty quickly,” Salzhauer said Friday.

Surfside resident Kathy Ledesma, who was walking along Harding Avenue near the collapse site Friday, said the sister of her landlord and the brother of her lawyer are among the people unaccounted for in the collapse. She said she was inspired by the donation drives and outreach from neighbors, but the community “will be forever changed.”

“It could have been us,” she said.