The death toll from the collapse of an apartment in Florida climbs to 9, and 150 people are still missing Reuters

Andy Sullivan

Surfside, Florida (Reuters)-On Sunday, the official death toll from the partial collapse of a high-rise apartment building near Miami rose to nine. More than 150 people are still missing. Rescue teams searched the rubble for the fourth consecutive day No further signs of life were found.

What caused nearly half of the 12-story, 156-unit building to collapse when residents were sleeping in the early hours of Thursday morning has not yet been determined, but the inspection report of the engineers in 2018 found that the structure of the parking garage under 40 years was seriously deteriorated-the old tower.

Officials in Surfside, a small coastal town near Miami, said they hope rescuers will find survivors in the air pockets that may have formed in the shards of pancakes.

Even so, Fire Chief Allen Kominsky said on Sunday that since the beginning of the tragedy, when a faint sound was detected, the staff had not found such a gap in the rubble or any signs of being alive.

“This is an extremely difficult situation,” Kominsky said. “Our rescue team is non-stop, doing everything we can, searching every area, every hope, to see if we can find a living victim.”

On Sunday, two large cranes and two backhoes joined the debris removal work, which was previously carried out mainly by the team manually. They also used rescue dogs, sonar, drones and infrared scanners to carefully pass through the ruins.

The Mayor of Miami-Dade, Daniella Levine Cava, stated that six to eight rescue teams are demolishing multiple layers of broken concrete and twists next to the apartment section of Champlain Towers South Metal pile.

“Hundreds of players are on standby to rotate because we need to start again,” Levin Kava said in a briefing. She announced that the death toll had risen to nine, and the number of unaccounted for was still 152.

The mayor later stated that these figures will remain “very unstable.”

These teams include experts sent by Israel and Mexico to assist in the search. The American flag on top of a crane was rippling in the fierce sea breeze.

Given that dozens of people are still missing, this disaster may eventually become one of the deadliest unintentional structural failures in American history.

In contrast, in January 1922, the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater in Washington, DC collapsed due to the weight of snow during a silent movie screening, killing 98 people. Two internal walkways collapsed into the lobby of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, where 114 people died at the dance party in July 1981.

Luck and miracle

Officials said a smothering fire under the rubble that hindered rescue workers’ work had subsided on Sunday morning. The mayor said that a ditch was dug in the rubble to separate the smoking debris area from the rest of the wreckage. The thunderstorms over the weekend also hindered search efforts.

“Our luck, at least in terms of weather and fires, seems to have improved now. We just need to see more miracles every day, we need to start pulling people out of the rubble and reuniting them with their families,” Surfsai The mayor of Germany, Charles Burkett, said at a briefing on Sunday evening.

Levin Kava said that some relatives of the missing have provided officials with DNA samples and have allowed their family members to conduct private visits on Sunday through special arrangements.

Speaking of family members, Governor Ron DeSantis told Miami TV station WPLG-TV: “You realize you might get terrible news, but you just don’t. You are kind of waiting. They just want answers.”

The police released the names of four victims ranging in age from 54 to 83 years old-a 58-year-old couple, a volunteer minor league baseball coach and the mother of a 15-year-old boy who had died after the accident He was rescued from the rubble soon. Collapse.

Photos of the missing persons as well as flowers and information are posted on a nearby fence. “The Lord is my refuge” read a hand-made slogan. “Surfside God is with you” the other said.

Surfside officials have released documents that include the engineer’s 2018 report, which mentions significant structural damage under the building’s pool deck and “concrete degradation” in the underground parking lot.

The report was prepared for the Champlain Towers South apartment board to prepare for this year’s major maintenance project.

Greg Schlesinger, a lawyer and former general contractor who specializes in building failure cases, said that it is clear that the defects identified in the 2018 report were the main cause of the disaster.

Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer working with the Apartment Association, said that the issues outlined in the 2018 report are typical of old buildings in the area and did not shock the board members, who all live in the tower with their families.

The report estimated that it would cost $9.1 million to perform the recommended repairs. She said that the roof replacement work has begun, but the pandemic has slowed the progress of the project.

According to Shimon Wdowinski, a professor at Florida International University, satellite data from the 1990s showed that the building was sinking 1 to 3 millimeters per year, while the surrounding buildings were stable.

Schlesinger said that investigations and inevitable lawsuits will eventually reveal the cause of the collapse.

“But we do know one thing: there is a structural failure,” he said. “We know another thing: structural failures shouldn’t happen.”