by Bianca Padro Ocasio and Miami Staff Writers at The Miami Herald
The grim task of recovering the bodies of victims at the site of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside began overnight and continued into a somber Friday in an unfolding tragedy that is feared to be the worst building failure in Florida history.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Friday morning that the number of people who are unaccounted for in Thursday’s building collapse increased to 159 — dramatically higher than the 99 reported earlier. The official death toll rose to four, as three more people were found in the rubble.
On Friday afternoon, the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s office identified the first of the deceased victims as Stacie Fang, 54, who died at Aventura Hospital. The cause was blunt-force injuries. Her son was rescued by firefighters on Thursday morning.
She said 120 people are now accounted for but stressed that all the numbers are “fluid” because some residents may not have been in the building when it collapsed.
“Unfortunately, this has been a tragic night,” Levine Cava said, while stressing that rescuers will “continue searching because we still have hope that we will find people alive.”
The list of unaccounted people was compiled from missing person reports and data collected at the reunification site at the Surfside Community Center, which was emptied Friday afternoon as family members transitioned to a new center at the Grand Beach Hotel one block north.
DEMANDING ANSWERS
Returning to Surfside for the second day on Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed mounting questions about the absence of any explanation for the collapse of the beachfront condominium that has left so many still unaccounted for.
“I’ve also been talking with Mayor Cava and we both agree. We need a definitive explanation for how this could have happened. And that’s an explanation that needs to be an accurate explanation,’‘ he said. “It’s an explanation that, you know, we don’t want to get wrong, obviously, but at the same time I do think it’s important that it’s timely because you have a lot of families here — you have families that lost loved ones in this building collapse. They have a right to know.”
He added that he was aware the question is haunting many in Florida.
“I think there’s a lot of other people throughout this community and really throughout Florida who want to know: How could a building just collapse like that?’‘ he asked.
To that end, he said he spoke with President Joe Biden who “reiterated his administration’s full support” and offered “investigative personnel.” DeSantis also offered the state’s full cooperation to find answers.
“We’ll support whatever we can to do this right, but also to do it timely, so that we get the answers to the families, and then we get the answer to that to the people of Florida,’‘ he said.
A NEW REUNIFICATION CENTER
At mid afternoon, a county bus idled outside the Surfside Community Center, where families lugging tote bags emerged in small groups to board it. Families and friends missing loved ones have been there at the former family reunification center for more than 24 hours, and the mood was more exhausted and despairing than the day before.
After several people got on, the bus made the one-block venture north to the Grand Beach Hotel, a luxury property and the site of the new reunification center. A valet service parked and retrieved vehicles for other people who were also making the hotel their uncertain home until search and rescue crews find signs of their family members and loved ones.
Some hotel employees wheeled in supplies — trays of bagels and boxes of tissues — but large trash bags of donations carried by volunteers were turned away due to a lack of space to put everything.
As a morose Shabbat approached, families emerged from the hotel wearing kippot and sunglasses to walk north toward the small strip of businesses on Harding, past a throng of media cameras. Some whispered in hushed tones about potential signs of life in the rubble, clinging to hope that a miracle would bring their loved ones back home.
THE MISSING
Among those still missing are Cassondra Stratton, who lived in the Champlain Towers South condo with her husband, Mike Stratton. A political strategist, he had left Monday on a business trip for Washington, D.C., where he got a frantic call from his wife early Thursday morning about their condo building shaking. Then the line went dead.
“It was 1:30 a.m., I’ll never, never forget that,” he said.
Now Cassondra Stratton, a 40-year-old model, actress and Pilates instructor, is one of the unaccounted for — feared to be trapped under the rubble as Miami-Dade search and rescue teams continue looking for those still alive.
“She was the most fun, vivacious person you could ever imagine,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “She was full of life, we were always doing something.”
LATIN AMERICAN VICTIMS
About 30 people from Latin America and the Caribbean — including Colombia, Cuba, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Argentina — are among those reported missing by friends and family following the collapse, highlighting the international reach of the tragedy.
While the cause of the 12-story oceanfront condo tower’s collapse remains unknown, Levine Cava and other county officials confirmed that there was no sinkhole under the building.
State Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who also serves as the state fire marshal, said on CNN early Friday morning the rescue mission would continue into the day, with search-and-rescue teams from Naples and Orlando coming to relieve Miami-Dade searchers who had been working their way through the rubble for more than 24 hours.
He said search and rescue teams were using everything at their disposal in the desperate search for life, cutting into the concrete with saws and using infrared cameras after boring through holes in the rubble, along with sonar and specially trained dogs. And when they think they have heard a noise, often the dozens of workers on site will go still and silent in the hope of figuring out where it came from, he said.
“The live active rescue will continue,” Patronis said without going into how long he thinks a person can survive under the debris. “The families deserve it.”
So far, since a child and his mother were rescued on Thursday morning, workers had not found any survivors under the tons of shattered concrete and rebar at Champlain Towers South condo.
Rescuers battled intermittent fires in the rubble pile Friday, hampering retrieval efforts and clouding the area with thick smoke.
Assistant Miami-Dade Fire Chief Ray Jadallah said crews brought in heavy machinery overnight to remove rubble from above. The rescuers boring through the concrete from the garage under the building are only entering the passageways after structural engineers determine what is safe and where pylons should be placed to bolster support.
Asked if he believes there is a chance of anyone still being alive, Jadallah would only say, “we have hope.”
He said crews underground are also now using jackhammers to break through the concrete.
He said workers heard sounds overnight, and while using sensitive equipment they stood silent as they tried to determine just what those sounds were. He said he didn’t believe any of them were from survivors.
“It’s not necessarily human sound,” Jadallah said. “It could be twisting steel.”
Even as the outlook of finding survivors grew more grim, eight search and rescue teams from around the state were standing by to help teams who had worked the past 24 hours from Miami and Miami-Dade. Homicide detectives also began working with the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner overnight in the hope of being able to identify any recovered victims.
Miami Beach Sen. Jason Pizzo was at the scene overnight Thursday and into early Friday morning, where he watched as tactical teams of six worked to extricate bodies from the rubble.
He saw one body taken in a yellow body bag and another that was marked.
A homicide unit tent was set up along the beach, Pizzo said, and staff under Medical Examiner Dr. Emma Lew were carrying the yellow bags.