Officials have accounted for 134 of the building’s residents and are looking for information about an estimated 150 others. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava stressed that “these numbers are not final.”
The search-and-rescue mission will continue, and emergency workers have brought in major machinery to sift through the debris, which will be taken to a warehouse and analyzed for forensic clues.
Here are some significant developments
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Foreigners do not qualify for FEMA aid, officials say
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s designation of a state of emergency for Miami-Dade County paved the way for President Biden to approve federal emergency aid from FEMA to assist with housing for victims and funeral needs.
However, at a news conference on Sunday evening, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said such aid would be limited to citizens.
“We have FEMA aid for all those who qualify,” she said in Spanish. “Foreign nationals do not qualify. This aid can only help those who do.”
A “substantial number” of residents of the collapsed Champlain Towers South building were foreigners, said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), with people hailing from Israel and various South American countries.
Foreign officials have confirmed that three Uruguayan, six Paraguayan, six Colombian, six Venezuelan, nine Argentine and at least 20 Israeli nationals remain unaccounted for. None would qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency aid.
Nevertheless, Levine Cava said the county is coordinating efforts to assist foreign family members with donations and volunteers.
The American Red Cross, she added, is providing rooms for people.
Many foreigners’ families have expressed desperation about obtaining information regarding their loved ones’ whereabouts.
“We have limited information, and we don’t have the means to travel to Miami,” said Sonia Orihuela, a cousin of Leidy Luna Villalba, a missing Paraguayan nursing student. “We can’t even go to put her picture on the fence and pray for her to come back.”
From the rubble, rescuers pull the cherished treasures of the condo’s missing residents
A football. A stuffed animal. A bar mitzvah T-shirt.
Rescuers searching for survivors in the rubble have found signs of life, collecting some toys and other belongings to leave at a makeshift memorial site that was set up a block away.
The memorial, which was blocked off temporarily as responders expanded the perimeter of the scene Saturday, has become a place for those digging through the rubble to leave mementos — perhaps once prized by their owners, now cherished as the last traces of people who disappeared under a pile of debris.
For Benjamin Abo, a physician embedded with the rescue team, the array of treasures is a tribute that can help people affected by the tragedy have a chance to pay their respects.
“We’re not here just to try to save lives but we’re also treating the community and the survivors,” Abo said.
He conceived the idea to bring items from the site after he saw children’s trinkets, including a Hess toy truck like the type Abo received from his grandparents every Hanukkah. Since then, other rescuers have brought more items during their breaks.
Abo, like other locals involved in the rescue effort, knew some of the victims personally, including a hospital colleague as well as relatives of friends.
“When you talk about a response to our community, this is my community, too,” Abo said.
Working through layers of debris, the rescuers feel tense as they come to certain spots, seeing remnants of a room and imagining who lived there, he said.
“We can tell when we get to a bedroom, we can tell when we get to a nursery,” Abo said. “There’s memorabilia, there’s menorahs, there’s cribs.”
He added: “Even if you don’t recover a body, you recover a life that’s lost.”
For some, frustrations mount over recovery efforts
As the death toll in the South Florida condominium collapse rose to nine Sunday night, rescue workers sought to reassure the families of those who were missing. For some, however, the perception of slow progress in the recovery effort has been frustrating.
“I want an answer. Not a band-aid, not a Tylenol, not someone to assuage my pain,” said one unidentified mother at a meeting on Saturday with rescue workers and state officials. “My daughter is 26 years old and in perfect health. She could make it out of there.”
Footage of the meeting was recorded and posted to Instagram by user Abigail Pereira. Two of Pereira’s friends are among the more than 150 people still unaccounted for.
“Imagine it was your children in there,” said the mother, who also questioned how Florida authorities were using rescue crews that have been dispatched from Israel to assist with response.
On Friday, Carlos Naibryf told The Washington Post, “The majority of the people are underneath the rubble and they haven’t been pulled out. They’re too slow and I want my son now.”
Naibryf’s son Ilan and Ilan’s girlfriend Deborah Berezdivin are reportedly among those who have not been found.
Surfside Town Manager Andy Hyatt ruminated Sunday on the toll the collapse may take on the community.
“We’ll be facing this for the long term. We’ll be here the morning after. When everybody leaves, we’re still here,” said Hyatt.
For Surfside, with a population of just under 6,000, the potential loss of more than 150 people would represent almost 3 percent of the oceanfront town’s residents.
“Every night when I go home, and I live on the 10th floor of a building just a few blocks from here, I usually open the shutters and look out at the ocean and admire the beauty,” said Hyatt. “But it’s like I don’t have the right to do right now. They lost their right to do that, so I can’t do that. I’m not there yet.”
Building inspection rules will be toughened, vows Surfside town manager: ‘We’d better learn from this’
Officials in Surfside pledged to rewrite local ordinances regulating the construction and inspection of buildings, sounding determined to forestall another catastrophe like the collapse of Champlain Towers South.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Surfside town manager Andy Hyatt said the requirements are going to be toughened — especially the rule calling for building recertification every 40 years.
“We’ll be examining a lot of things, including the 40-year recertification,” Hyatt said.
He compared the collapse to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which led to stricter building codes.
“We’d better learn from this," he said. “People are going to feel the vise, because we’re going to tighten the screws. We’re going to say, ‘You’re going to inspect every 10 years, or maybe every five years.’ ”
Hyatt doesn’t yet have a specific number in mind, but said builders, developers and owners are “going to feel the pain financially.”
“Because,” he added, pointing at the pile of rubble, “consider the alternative.”
The town manager said he lives on the 10th floor of a condominium building just blocks away from the disaster site, and although he’s not concerned about the structural integrity of his building, sounds that he barely noticed before now worry him.
“I hear creaks and things that I always heard,” Hyatt said. “I happen to be by the elevator and so I’m used to hearing that, and I always hear the trash chute. But now when I hear those noises, I’m like, ‘What’s that?’ I turned on a fan so I don’t have to listen to the noises.”
Engineer investigating collapse says 2018 report warning of ‘major structural damage’ raised no red flags
The longtime engineer hired by the town of Surfside to analyze possible causes of the tower collapse criticized the implication that a 2018 report warning of “major structural damage” to part of the building had signaled fatal flaws, telling The Washington Post in the first interview since his appointment that media coverage of the inspection was overblown.
The structural survey report, from engineer Frank P. Morabito, said that waterproofing below the pool deck and entrance drive had failed, allowing damaging leaks.
“What he said is waterproofing is failing and leaking and that lets water into the concrete — that’s true,” Allyn Kilsheimer, president of K.C.E Structural Engineers, told The Post on Sunday. But, he added, that finding is fairly typical.
“Nothing in it raised a red flag,” Kilsheimer said.
Kilsheimer, whose firm helped examine and rebuild the damaged parts of the Pentagon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said his team will use architectural drawings, samples of the building’s concrete and steel, and computer modeling in their work. They have begun the effort remotely while the rescue mission proceeds but will move to the site once it concludes, he said.
He said that the investigation could uncover a “perfect storm” of failures and that “probably 90 percent of the collapses we’ve dealt with — other than things caused by bombs and planes — have been multiple things all going wrong at the same time.”
“Sometimes you can’t get to one particular cause. It’s going to be this or this or this, or some combination,” Kilsheimer said, echoing what other experts have hypothesized. “And that’s the best you can come up with.”
On Saturday, Kilsheimer toured two buildings that are nearly identical to the structure that collapsed, Champlain Towers North and Champlain Towers East. Nothing in either building’s below-ground garage area was a cause for major concern, he said.
“I didn’t see anything in there that showed me from the exposed and visible conditions, anything that, in my mind, was a concern for a structural collapse mechanism,” Kilsheimer said.
He said his team would be examining other possible factors, including sea-level rise — something he said he doubts had an impact — and whether construction on nearby buildings could have played a role.
“We will be looking at everything,” he said.
Thunder and lightning have paused rescue efforts at least twice, with more storms forecast in the coming week
Hours after Champlain Tours South collapsed, a storm dealt the search-and-rescue effort an early and ominous sign: Lightning forced the delay of a Thursday morning news conference where officials were discussing the disaster — the first but not the last time weather would interrupt proceedings there.
On at least two occasions in the days since, first responders combing through the rubble for survivors and victims have had to halt their efforts because of nearby lightning strikes, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokeswoman Erika Benitez said.
Officials will be monitoring the weather closely in the days to come, with more thunderstorms possible through the following weekend, according to a forecast from the National Weather Service.
Rules from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — a federal regulatory agency in the Department of Labor — prevent workers from continuing their outdoor jobs if lightning strikes near the site or thunder is overhead. According to an agency fact sheet, work should not resume until 30 minutes after the last sound of thunder.
Benitez said if only a single lightning strike occurs, the stoppage lasts for 20 minutes.
According to an OSHA database, lightning strikes have killed more than 60 workers over the past two decades.
But thunder and lightning needn’t be present for weather to complicate the search and rescue mission. The rain and wind alone have made matters significantly more difficult, with gusts strong enough to blow parts of the still-standing building section onto the debris pile.
At Catholic church near condo site, worshipers pray for missing congregants: ‘That’s what faith is all about’
At St. Joseph, a Catholic church a block from the condo building, worshipers gathered Sunday for Mass — but some of the regulars were absent.
Congregation members who lived in at least eight units of Champlain Towers South that collapsed Thursday were missing, according to the church. In some cases, whole families were unaccounted for.
“We pray for those still in the rubble,” deacon John Ermer said Saturday night. “We pray they survive.”
Despite the loss felt, clergy members spoke about a glimmer of hope they felt. Two congregants, Cesar and Carla Guerrero, were not in the building that night.
Marian Lopez, along with husband Alfredo and son Michael, were among those who made it out alive.
On Sunday morning, Marian had returned to the parish, helping with the Mass.
“She was in good spirits,” deacon Roberto Pineda said. “Because that’s what faith is all about. It’s about living.”
Stormy weather brings hints of the lives of missing residents to the site’s surface
The same stormy weather that has hindered rescue efforts has also surfaced reminders of the lives of some of the building’s residents, with wind blowing personal items across the site of the wrecked high-rise — a grim reminder of the memories made in the condominium.
When tattered family photos landed at state Sen. Jason Pizzo’s feet as he was touring the site, the Miami Democrat picked them up, intending to reunite the pictures with the relatives left behind.
During his first trip to the site, he collected three photos, one of which was from Jay Kleiman’s bar mitzvah. Kleiman is missing along with family members from Puerto Rico staying in two units on the seventh floor.
The day after finding the photo, Pizzo said, he met with Kleiman’s family waiting for news of their missing relatives.
“I told them, ‘I got to tell you, I found a picture of Jay’s bar mitzvah blowing in the wind,’ ” he said.
Pizzo gave the photos to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with the hope that they will aid officials and then be returned to the family, along with other personal items he saw, including chairs, rugs and a luggage tag bearing the name of Jay Cohen, another missing resident.
“There’s a balance between needing to conduct a thorough investigation,” he said, referring to the ongoing inquiry about the building’s structural deficiencies.
Deciding when to shift from rescue to recovery ‘weighs heavy,’ former fire chief says
A difficult decision looms as crews continue to sift through the rubble in Surfside’s condo collapse: when to shift the rescue effort to recovery.
Former Miami-Dade fire chief Dave Downey worked at the department for more than three decades and is helping the current chief make the call.
Downey said he has “held the weight” of two similar calls in Florida — one involving a collapsed parking garage, the other the 2018 Florida International University bridge collapse — and two during a mission to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
He said there are many elements beyond time to consider: Emergency teams must assess the effects of fire, smoke, rain and humidity and whether any gaps remain in the rubble where survivors could be waiting.
Downey said the final step of the decision-making process will be “de-layering” the collapsed floors using heavy cranes to uncover those possible gaps.
The main reason crews would switch from rescue to recovery is so they can employ new techniques to sort through the pile, he said. Any movements have to be precise at this point to avoid complicating rescue efforts or injuring someone. But in recovery mode, methods will focus on debris removal.
“Listen, we’re never going to say there’s never a chance for survivors,” he said in an interview Sunday. “I led the team in Haiti, and we pulled a 2-year-old out of a building totally intact eight days after the earthquake.”
He said the rescue-to-recovery decision could also apply only to specific areas of the pile, so rescue efforts could continue in one zone but move to recovery in another.
Making the call will not be easy, Downey said.
“It’s one of those things that weighs heavy,” he said. “I’ve sat in that seat.”
Photos: Rescue crews continue to look for survivors
From the top of the remaining portions of the Champlain Towers South, to the pile of rubble on the ground below, rescue crews continued to search for survivors on Sunday.
“We’ve been working around-the-clock,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. “Since the wee hours of the morning, Thursday, we’ve been here 24 hours a day.”
Volunteers bring emotional support dogs for first responders, families
Early Sunday afternoon, volunteers led two dogs through the sand to barriers where onlookers were trying to catch a glimpse of the rescue efforts. Some family members had come to the spot to keep vigil.
Jennifer Paiva and Yisnery Gomes, residents of the Tampa area with the Florida-based nonprofit Boricuas De Corazon Inc., drove to Surfside with the emotional support dogs after being cleared by authorities. Their organization provides help to disaster victims.
“When we first saw it happening, we were like, ‘We’re going,’ ” Paiva said.
They brought Molly, a Walker coonhound, and Tal, an Akbash. Together, they paced between the barricaded portion of the beach to the hotel where families were waiting for news, offering the dogs to families, first responders or “anyone who wants them,” Gomes said.
They’ve stayed busy — arriving Saturday and working into the early hours of Sunday. Gomes said the dogs offer a kind of emotional comfort that is “just on a whole other level — it’s unconditional love and support.”
“Sometimes that’s all you need,” she added. “You just want to hug on a dog.”
Relatives of victims will be allowed to visit site of wreckage to mourn, officials say
Loved ones of those missing after the condo collapse in Surfside will be granted access to the wreckage site to grieve and pray, officials said.
“We are working with the families, and there will be an opportunity for visitation,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava (D) said during a Sunday news conference. “It will be a very private event.”
Family members may be allowed at the site as soon as Sunday afternoon. Buses will take relatives gathered at a reunification center at the Grand Beach Hotel to the condo building as early as 2 p.m., the Miami Herald reported.
Family members have been unable to visit the wreckage after police established a broad perimeter around the debris.
Surfside officials say ‘no evidence’ of major structural concerns at collapsed tower’s sister building
Officials in Surfside say the decision not to force residents to evacuate from a sister building nearly identical to the one that partially collapsed Thursday came after a review by an independent engineer found “no evidence” of major structural concern.
A statement released Sunday says a walk-through led by Allyn Kilsheimer, a veteran engineer, evaluated “limited exposed areas,” including the underside of the below-ground garages at both Champlain Towers North and Champlain Towers East.
“It was determined there is no evidence of exposed and physical conditions of major structural concern,” the city said in a written release.
Ever since the collapse, concerned residents of Champlain Towers North — the “sister building” 1,000 feet away constructed the same year and by the same designer — have wondered whether their building was safe. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said Saturday that officials would help residents voluntarily relocate if they felt unsafe.
“If they would like to relocate, FEMA will help them with those arrangements,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Rachel Pinzur, a spokeswoman for Burkett’s office, said the town has hired Kilsheimer, who is considered a leading expert on damaged structures, having previously worked on disaster sites including the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the terrorist attack at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
The Champlain Towers North condo board was scheduled to meet Sunday to discuss its options, including having an independent assessment performed this week.
Fire chief can’t say when rescue could turn to recovery: ‘Hope — that’s what I’m focusing on’
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said he could not yet say when the search-and-rescue effort might shift to a recovery effort.
“Hope — that’s what I’m focusing on,” the fire chief said at Sunday’s news conference. “So I’m going to continue that as much as possible. That’s the driving message.”
He added: “We’re going to continue moving and moving and searching as hard as we can, for as long as we can, until we have to make that decision.”
He stressed that the type of building collapse that occurred in Surfside is a challenge and praised the level of support the teams are receiving.
“We’ll continue moving through and doing what we’re doing, and, you know, obviously trying the best that we can,” Cominsky said.
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