by Joey Flechas, Douglas Hanks, Samantha J. Gross, Charles Rabin, Alex Harris and Daniel Chang at The Miami Herald
Search and rescue teams continued the delicate work of picking through a mountain of rubble in Surfside on Thursday afternoon, looking for even the faintest signs of life that might be buried inside the two-story-high remains of the partial collapse of the 12-story oceanfront building, Champlain Towers South Condo.
Nearly 12 hours after the building came crashing down, the death toll remained unknown. Officials confirmed at least one death, and said 35 survivors were pulled from the wreckage, with 10 injured persons treated at the scene and at least two transported to a hospital.
Miami-Dade County police said as many as 99 people are reported missing. There were about 55 units in the tower that collapsed, rescue workers said. An attached tower housing the remainder of the 136-unit complex remained standing Thursday afternoon but its residents have been evacuated.
Witnesses said the disaster arrived unexpectedly while most residents were still in bed. The tower at 8777 Collins Ave. crumpled with “a bang that just kept on going,” one witness said, a little after 1:30 a.m.
“It’s the unimaginable,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. “It’s a terrible, terrible nightmare that we have here on Surfside.”
Security camera footage of the collapse looked eerily similar to a controlled demolition, minus the flash of explosives. The center of the tower gave way first, with the rest of the structure collapsing into a pile of rubble. The cause of the collapse is unknown, though one building expert deemed it “an oddity of biblical proportions” for the 40-year-old structure to fall unexpectedly.
In a scene reminiscent of 9/11, evacuees and family and friends of residents gathered at the nearby Surfside Community Center, some carrying photos of their missing loved ones, and anxiously waited for news. More than 700 missing-person reports came in to a Miami-Dade hot line and web page set up to track victims of the collapse, according to the county’s Emergency Operations Center.
Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez said at 2:30 p.m. that 53 residents of Champlain Towers had been accounted for but that 99 remained missing. Ramirez’s top aide, Lt. Carlos Rosario, cautioned that the count may not be accurate and that the numbers are just “the best we have right now.”
Rosario said the 53 who are accounted for are either residents of the building or they were supposed to be there when it collapsed. He wasn’t certain how county officials arrived at the number of missing people, and said it could be a combination of people coming forward to report a friend or relative missing, property records or a list of names supplied by a property manager.
“It’s very fluid,” he said…