159 people are missing in Fla. condo collapse, as confirmed deaths rise to four

SURFSIDE, Fla. – The number of missing residents rose to 159, with four deaths confirmed so far in the collapse of a Surfside condo tower.

Rescuers removed bodies from the rubble of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, as the search for survivors went into its second day and another fire broke out in the debris. The death toll is expected to rise, with the high number of residents still unaccounted for.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a Friday morning news conference that rescue crews worked through the night and were still in action, using heavy equipment to move the wreckage. Rescue crews were working at “extraordinary risk” of injury from debris in the hope of finding survivors, she said.

“We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope there are people alive,” she said.

Rescue workers are listening for sounds from the rubble that could indicate survivors, said Raide Jadallah, assistant Miami-Dade County fire chief.

“We are listening for sounds,” he said. “It’s not specifically human sounds. It could be tapping, it could be steel twisting, it could be debris raining down. So, we’re concentrating in those areas.”

“We have hope,” he said. “And every time that we hear a sound, we concentrate in that area. So we send additional teams utilizing the devices, utilizing K-9, utilizing personnel. So as we continue to hear those sounds, we concentrate in those areas.”

A fire broke out again in the rubble Friday morning, and firefighters were spraying water on it.

Shortly before 1 a.m. Friday, the White House said President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Florida and ordered federal assistance to help deal with the condominium collapse in Surfside.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district includes Surfside, said the White House would grant all of the requests for resources the community needs for families and the local governments.

Clean-up costs, housing assistance and funeral services are all expenses the federal government is ready to provide, the White House and Wasserman Schultz said. Being an international community, Wasserman Schultz said officials are working with constituents to help get visas processed quickly for family members overseas.

“I will tell you after spending the bulk of the day here that this is a tragedy without precedence in the United States of America,” Wasserman Schultz.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio said many family members and friends are “hoping for a miracle” and reassured that despite the desperation the community is feeling, renowned rescue crews are working around the clock.

As storms rolled in toward Surfside Thursday night, one meteorologist for CBS4 Miami said in a tweet there could be a potential for rescue efforts to be disrupted by the weather.

The Miami Herald reported Thursday that officials confirmed 35 survivors were pulled from the rubble. Ten people were treated at the scene and at least two were hospitalized, according to the Herald.

The missing include at least 34 Jewish people, in a part of the Miami coast that’s within walking distance of five synagogues. It includes nine Argentines, according to the Argentine Consulate in Miami. It includes six citizens of Paraguay, including siblings of that country’s first lady, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay.

Anxious family members crowded into a community center near the collapsed condo tower in the town of Surfside on Thursday afternoon, as rescue efforts continued. But authorities cautioned that the official death toll of one was likely to climb.

“We just toured around the complex to be able to see, and the TV doesn’t do it justice,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “I mean it is really, really traumatic to see the collapse of a massive structure like that.”

DeSantis issued a state of emergency for Miami-Dade County on Thursday evening, about an hour after Cava signed a local state of emergency declaration and urged in a tweet for the governor to do the same.

In a short video clip posted to social media just after 6:30 p.m, DeSantis said those who live in the building will not be going back.

“They’re going to need housing, they’re going to need arrangements for the foreseeable future,” DeSantis said in the video.

The emergency declaration will open up the ability of federal assistance for those who are displaced, DeSantis said.

Rescuers with search dogs picked through the rubble, their work hampered by stormy weather and a fire that broke out in the intact part of the building. As they worked, family members gathered at the Surfside Community Center, where they were organized by the floor on which their relatives lived.

“We’re just trying to find my cousin,” said Hildelisa Gonzalez, clutching a photo of her cousin Edgar, as she walked into the community center. “We know they recovered his daughter and his wife. But we have no word on him. Their floor got hit hard.”

The tower at 8777 Collins Ave. collapsed around 1:30 a.m. A surveillance video showed the building falling to the ground in seconds, with the center going down first and the side sagging on top of it, sending up huge clouds of dust.

“I could hear somebody yelling, screaming,” Nicholas Balboa told CNN. “I could hear by his voice it was a little boy. I saw an arm sticking out of the wreckage.” He and the other person tried to climb up, but it was “too heavy” with too much rebar.

He said the boy was screaming, “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

Balboa called over police, who got firefighters over to pull him out.

Jennifer Carr was asleep in a neighboring building when she was awakened by a loud boom that shook her room, she told the Associated Press. The building’s fire alarms went off, and she and her family went outside and saw the collapse.

“It was devastation,” Carr said. “People were running and screaming.”

About 300 people were gathered at the family reunification site, alongside a smattering of public officials and volunteers providing food and other services.

At the door, a woman wrote down the names of the missing as well as the name of the loved ones waiting for them, feeding them into a database.

Sabrina Campbell has friends that live on the sixth floor whom she tried to call.

“No response,” she said.

“It’s been rough,” she said. “I’m still pursuing that they are alive. Hopefully they’re underneath there safe.”

The search for the cause of an almost unheard-of catastrophe has already begun. One possible cause emerged from research by a scientist at Florida International University, who found the building has been sinking about 2 millimeters a year since the 1990s, according to USA Today.

Such sinking can crack walls or cause foundations to shift, which he said could have led to the collapse, said Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in FIU’s Department of Earth and Environment. The building was mentioned as part of a larger study of sinking lands in the area.

When he heard the news he immediately knew which building was involved, he said. “I looked at this morning and said ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” he said.

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said roof work was taking place at the building but he doubted it caused the disaster.

“Certainly, that doesn’t seem like it would be the issue that would have caused it,” he said, according to WSVN-Ch. 7. “Some of the residents at the community center have complained to me that the new building that went up to the south used to shake the building when they were putting the pilings in. But I think that we need to look very hard at what happened there and find out because buildings just don’t fall down like this.”

Rescue workers had to amputate one woman’s leg to get her out, Frank Rollason, Miami-Dade emergency management director, told the Miami Herald.

“The first responders were able to save a lot of people,” DeSantis said earlier in the day. “They are going to be going through more. It’s a really, really tragic situation. We’ll hope for the best in terms of additional recoveries, but we are bracing for some bad news just given the destruction that we’re seeing.”

President Joe Biden said Thursday that he was ready to deploy federal resources but couldn’t do so until DeSantis asked.

“I say to the people of Florida, whatever help you want, the federal government can provide, we’re waiting,” he said at the White House. “Just ask us.”

At midafternoon Thursday, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Cava called on DeSantis to make the request.

“At this moment, it is critical that @GovRonDeSantis declare a state of emergency for the building collapse in Surfside so the federal government can allocate resources we desperately need,” Cava wrote on Twitter. “I have asked the Governor to do this immediately — there is no time to waste.”

A hotline to report missing family members was set up at 305-614-1819.

Surfside Mayor Burkett said the building manager told him the building was substantially full.

“The building is literally pancaked,” Burkett said at a news conference. “That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean to me that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”

Chani Lipskar, wife of the rabbi at the Shul of Bal Harbour, said thousands of people “across the globe” were reciting prayers for the 34 Jewish people missing, as well as everyone else unaccounted for.

Her synagogue brought chocolate milk and sandwiches to the Surfside Community Center, where families were waiting for news.

“We were sound asleep and we heard a weird noise that woke us up in the middle of the night,” said Ofi Osin-Cohen, who lives in the third floor. “It could have been thunder, but it didn’t quite seem like thunder. And I said what is going on? Is it raining? We looked outside, and I saw a plume of smoke coming up.”

“And I said to my husband, ‘Grab a few things, your wallet, your phone, your charger, we gotta get out of here.’”

They opened the door of their apartment and saw the hallway blocked by debris. They went down a different hallway and found an exit door that wouldn’t open. The garage level was filled with water.

“There were two elderly people there that we took with us and said, ‘Let’s go back to our apartment. We can go on the balcony. They’ll rescue us from the balcony.’ So we did that. We let fire rescue know the building was not passable, we needed to get out and we needed them to rescue us.”

(Staff writers Susannah Bryan, Lisa J. Huriash and Yvonne Valdez, and photographer Susan Stocker contributed to this report.)

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