SURFSIDE, Fla. – Firefighters battled smoke and time as the search continued for survivors after a 12-story beachfront condominium building collapsed just north of Miami early Thursday morning, killing at least four people and leaving 159 more unaccounted for.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told USA TODAY the rescue efforts will continue “until we pull everybody we can out of that rubble.”
“We will not stop,” he said. “You can count on us to continue this search until we find every person who’s alive in that rubble.”
However, a fire burning beneath the rubble was hampering those efforts, officials said, as smoke spread laterally beneath the pile of debris.
“It’s a very deep fire, and it’s extremely difficult to locate the source, and therefore to stop it,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a press conference Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, Levine Cava said she was directing the county’s Department of Economic and Regulatory Resources to immediately begin an audit of all buildings at the 40-year mark and beyond, to be completed within 30 days.
“We want to make sure every building has completed its certification process and move swiftly to remediate any issues that have been identified in that audit,” she said.
A wing of the residential building in Surfside, Florida, came down with a roar about 1:30 a.m. Thursday. Video footage captured from nearby showed the center of the building appearing to fall first, with a section nearest the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.
It remains unclear why the building collapsed. Researchers and engineers interviewed by USA TODAY pointed to a variety of possibilities, including sea-level rise, the corrosive effect of saltwater, the stability of the ground underneath or more mundane matters like shoddy construction or lax oversight.
Late Friday, the town of Surfside posted several documents to its website related to the collapsed building. None appeared to contain details that would explain the beachside building’s collapse but did reveal multiple, potentially serious issues.
By late Friday, candles, flowers and photos of the missing lined a fence as a burning electrical smell filled the air. Fire continued to burn beneath the rubble, officials said, despite efforts to put it out.
At Saturday morning’s press conference, Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said smoke was picking up as debris was removed, forcing firefighters to reevaluate and adjust their efforts. Air quality was becoming a concern, he said, with the possibility of using ventilators being weighed against the chance that employing them could intensify the ongoing smoldering.
“It’s a very delicate matter,” Cominsky said. “The biggest thing here is hope. That’s what’s driving us right now.”
Here’s what we know Saturday:
Fire hampering rescue efforts
Officials had heard sounds from the rubble as the search efforts for survivors commenced, but those signs have gone dormant with the passing hours.
“You wake up in the morning hoping more and more people were pulled out and that just isn’t what has happened,” Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis said at Saturday morning’s press conference.
While search-and-rescue teams remain hopeful, he said, the ongoing fire is “the number one problem” as firefighters “do not know where it is coming from or how extensive it is.
“The stench is very thick and it obviously has created quite an obstacle,” he said.
The efforts have also been stymied by heavy rains common in South Florida this time of year.
Levine Cava, the mayor, said firefighters were using infrared technology, foam and water to try to fight the fire but simply can’t locate the source.
In the meantime, DeSantis said officials are considering evacuation of the condominium complex’s north tower, which like the collapsed south tower was built in 1981 according to the same design.
First victim identified as Stacie Fang
The death toll from the collapsed condominium building is at four as of Saturday morning. On Friday, relatives issued a statement identifying one of the deceased as Stacie Fang. Her son, Jonah Handler, was rescued from the rubble hours after the collapse.
Fang, 54, died at a hospital from blunt force injuries, the medical examiner’s office told NPR.
The teen boy — who according to Miami’s WSVN is a sophomore, junior-varsity baseball player at a local high school — was rescued by Nicholas Balboa, who was walking his dog near the buildings around midnight when he heard the ground shake, followed by a loud crash. He approached the piles of concrete and metal and heard a scream.
Balboa said he spotted fingers popping out through the broken concrete and heard a boy’s voice say, “Can somebody see me?” Balboa said he climbed over rubble to reach the boy, later identified as Handler.
“He was just saying, ‘Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.’ I told him: ‘We’re not gonna go anywhere. We’ll be here,'” Balboa said.
— Gabriela Miranda and Rachel Aretakis, USA TODAY
‘Please don’t leave me’: Boy trapped in Florida condo rubble rescued by man walking dog
Condo’s inspection reports detail ‘concrete deterioration’
The documents that Surfside town officials posted online Friday date to 2018, with engineers noting design flaws and failing waterproofing that warned of “exponential damage” about 990 days before much of the Champlain Towers South condominium complex collapsed.
The reports, from few pages to several hundred pages long, range from detailed plans to permits for concrete repair to a courtesy notice reminding residents to turn off exterior lights so baby turtles wouldn’t be confused when they hatched and not make it to the safety of the ocean.
An inspection report from Oct. 8, 2018, found “abundant” cracking and spalling of the columns, beams and walls in the garage under the tower that fell to the ground. Spalling refers to the deterioration of concrete, sometime causing flaking and the exposure of reinforcing steel bars known as rebar.
“Abundant cracking and spalling of varying degrees were observed in the concrete columns, beams and walls” of the ground floor parking garage, according to a structural field survey report by Maryland-based Morabito Consultants.
It appears plans to correct these problems were not solidified until April of this year, despite the original report having been issued in October 2018.
“Though some of this damage is minor, most of the concrete deterioration needs to be repaired in a timely fashion,” the report noted.
Gregg Schlesinger, a former construction project engineer who is now a Fort Lauderdale lawyer handling construction defect cases, told the Associated Press that cracks reported in the tower’s stucco facade are another area of concern, possibly indicating structural problems inside the exterior that may have factored in the collapse.
“The building speaks to us,” Schlesinger said. “It is telling us we have a serious problem.”
Such “telltale signs” on oceanfront buildings often portend structural problems, largely from saltwater and salty air intrusion, Schlesinger said.
“This is a wakeup call for folks on the beach,” he said. “Investigate and repair. This should be done every five years. The scary portion is the other buildings. You think this is unique? No.”
Read more here.
— Elizabeth Weise and Kyle Bagenstose, USA TODAY
Four people are dead and dozens are missing after a condo collapsed near Miami. Here’s what experts think caused the deadly collapse.
USA TODAY
Multiple factors could have contributed, experts say
Researchers and engineers are trying to figure out what caused the building’s early morning collapse and what that might mean for other aging high-rises along the Florida coast and the rest of the country.
For now, there are no clear answers. USA TODAY spoke Friday with more than a dozen experts without finding a consensus. Some pointed to sea-level rise and the corrosive effect of saltwater brought with encroaching tides. Others wondered about the stability of the ground beneath or more mundane matters like shoddy construction or lax oversight.
On this point experts did all agree: It will take a long time to discern exactly how and why Champlain Tower South collapsed and that, once the answers are known, they’re likely to prompt changes to the building industry.
“The whole regulatory apparatus is behind the times, relative to current risks,” said Clinton Andrews, a professor of urban planning and director of the Center for Green Building at Rutgers University. “I think the case in Florida illustrates that problem.” Read more here.
— Kyle Bagenstose, Elizabeth Weise, Erin Mansfield, Aleszu Bajak, USA TODAY
Rescue efforts have galvanized area’s Jewish community
South Florida’s tight-knit Jewish community has been both devastated and mobilized by the tragedy.
At least 35 of the 159 people still unaccounted for are Jewish, Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, consul general of Israel in Miami, told USA TODAY Saturday. In the aftermath, multiple synagogues, individuals and community partners have responded in an outpouring of financial, logistical and spiritual support.
On WhatsApp, prayer groups read psalms and posted photos of the missing, while members of Skylake Synagogue, about 20 minutes from Surfside in North Miami Beach, collected clothing, blankets and essentials for families awaiting news.
Hatzalah, a rescue team of Orthodox Jews, has been on the scene since Thursday.
“When darkness and tragedy fall upon us, it’s our duty as a community to come together,” said Rabbi Leib Ezagui of the Jewish Community Synagogue in North Palm Beach. “It doesn’t make sense, and we may never be able to wrap our heads around it.
“But one thing we can be certain of is that by doing good deeds and lending a helping hand in whatever way we can, we are planting a seed that can forever be nurtured.”
Many of the missing have roots around the world, and among them are Orthodox Jews from Russia, Argentine Americans and the sister of Paraguay’s first lady.
Read more about the missing, including a list of names, here.
Contributing: Associated Press; Grace Hauck, Ryan Miller, Christal Hayes, USA TODAY.
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