NEWS
“It almost resembles the Trade Center”: A first responder’s first moments on scene
“It almost resembles the Trade Center”: A first responder’s first moments on scene
From CNN’s Alyssa Kraus
After about 55 units of the Champlain Towers South collapsed Thursday night, a first responder arrived on scene and described what he saw.
“We have a 13 story building with most of the building gone. This is gonna be a high priority,” the first responder told dispatch.
“I see many people on their balconies. The building is gone — there’s no elevators. This is nothing. I mean, it almost resembles the Trade Center,” he said in the released audio.
Currently, at least 12 people are dead and 149 people are unaccounted for. Rescue teams are entering their seventh day searching the scene for victims.
Listen to what the first responder said:
At least 2 people remain hospitalized after Surfside collapse
From CNN’s Rosa Flores and John Couwels
Six days after the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building, two people remain hospitalized at Jackson Health System, according to the hospital system’s media relations manager, Lidia Amoretti-Morgado.
Jackson Health System says it doesn’t have consent to release more information about the two patients in their care.
These are some of the challenges Surfside rescue teams are facing
From CNN’s Theresa Waldrop
Rescue teams are entering their seventh day searching the rubble of a collapsed building in Surfside, Florida – still holding out hope they will find the 149 people unaccounted for.
“We’re moving debris piece by piece and searching through,” Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said Tuesday, describing what he called a “tedious process.”
Crews from all over the state have been helping out. The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has sent assistance, and crews from Israel and Mexico are also helping.
These are some of the challenges impacting teams on the ground:
- Debris is falling – The pieces of concrete the crews are dealing with are the size of basketballs and baseballs, Raide Jadallah, the assistant fire chief of operations for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, said Monday. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Friday that debris is falling on crews at the site as they do their work. “We have structural engineers on site to assure that they will not be injured, but they are proceeding because they are so motivated,” Levine Cava added.
- Debris is also shifting – Overnight into Tuesday, debris fell from portions of the building that remain standing, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. And workers were steering clear of a “45-foot area next to the building” because of concerns about overhanging debris from the standing portion, Cominsky said. The west side had to be cordoned off “because it was becoming excessively dangerous to work there,” Burkett said. The pile of rubble shifts as the crews work, officials said. “The situation at hand is we’re not lifting floor by floor,” Jadallah said. “We’re talking about concrete. We’re talking about steel. Every time there’s an action, there’s a reaction.” He said on Sunday as crews were looking through the rubble, a rescuer fell 25 feet down the pile of collapsed building.
- There’s a lot of rubble to move – The building was 12 stories high. The crews have so far moved about 3 million pounds of concrete, Kominsky said Tuesday. “That’s over 850 cubic feet,” he said. While crews were looking for empty spaces in the rubble where survivors might be by digging in from the bottom, heavy machinery has been lifting pieces from the top. But people who were sleeping in their bedrooms when the building fell in “are under four or five meters (13 to 16 feet) of concrete,” Col. Golan Vach, the commander of the Israeli National Rescue Unit that’s assisting in the search, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Tuesday. “So this is what they’re doing right now, penetrating the concrete,” Vach said. He added that of all the places he has done similar work – Turkey, Haiti, Albania and Mexico, for example – this site is the most difficult because of the way the building pancaked in on itself.
- A few fires broke out at the site – When a few fires broke out at the site over the weekend, crews had to work to get that and the smoke under control. Levine Cava said Saturday that progress had been made with the fire and smoke that was hampering the search effort.
- Wind and rain can make the rescue more dangerous – It’s the rainy season in Florida, and the wind and rain only made a dangerous situation even more so, officials pointed out. Some work had to stop at times because of lightning. On Sunday, Burkett said rescuers’ luck had “seemed to turn” as far as fires and weather were concerned. Now, he said, “we just need a few more miracles each day.”
As rescue teams enter their seventh day, here’s what we know
After a residential building collapsed in Surfside, Florida search and rescue teams are working to find dozens of residents who are unaccounted for. As teams continue to tirelessly search the site, 149 people remain unaccounted for and 12 have been confirmed dead.
- Col. Golan Vach, commander of the Israeli National Rescue Unit, said search and rescue personnel found more bodies overnight. However, he would not reveal how many people were found because the next-of-kin has not been notified. “At the last 12 hours we found some more people,” Vach told CNN. “We found people. Unfortunately, they are not alive.”
- Vach said first-responders discovered new tunnels in the rubble Tuesday night, which allowed for the discovery of more bodies. “These tunnels that we found right now were almost the first to be big enough to enable people to stay between them,” he told CNN. Vach said search and rescue teams were working in the space between the collapsed balconies. Teams are also looking for bedrooms buried under 13-16 feet of concrete.
- Moreover, debris remains an issue for rescue teams. Overnight into Tuesday, debris fell from portions of the building that remain standing, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. In addition, Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said workers were steering clear of a “45-foot area next to the building” because of concerns about overhanging debris from the standing portion.
Read more about the search and rescue efforts here.
CNN’s Madeline Holcombe, Gregory Lemos and Alyssa Kraus contributed to this post.
USPS safeguarding mail and packages of Surfside collapse victims
From CNN’s Joe Sutton and Tina Burnside
The United States Postal Service says it is keeping all mail and packages of residents in the Surfside, Florida, building collapse in a secure location, according to a news release.
“The U.S. Postal Service joins the rest of the nation and the world in expressing our sadness and sympathy for the victims and others impacted by the tragedy in Surfside, FL,” Debra J. Fetterly, USPS spokesperson of the South Florida District, said in the release.
Mail and packages for residents of the Champlain Towers have been secured and are being kept safe at the Surfside Post Office at 250 95th Street, according to the release.
The postal service is also encouraging residents and businesses in the Surfside area who have not received their mail in recent days to visit their local post office.
“The U.S. Postal Service will continue to take steps to ensure we can provide reliable and safe delivery for all customers in the Surfside, FL community,” the release stated.
This is what we know about the victims of the Surfside condo collapse
From CNN’s Theresa Waldrop, Alisha Ebrahimji and Ray Sanchez
The dead and unaccounted for residents of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, reflected the area’s rich cultural diversity, an international tragedy that has touched members of a tight-knit Jewish community and families from as far away as Argentina, Paraguay and Colombia.
Dozens of people remained unaccounted for after the collapse of part of the 13-story residential building. Search and rescue teams have been feverishly scouring the site since shortly after 55 of the building’s 136 units fell on Thursday.
Twelve deaths had been confirmed and have been identified: Michael David Altman, 50; Marcus Joseph Guara, 52; Frank Kleiman, 55; Leon Oliwkowicz, 80; Luis Bermudez, 26; Anna Ortiz, 46; Christina Beatriz Elvira, 74; Antonio Lozano, 82; Gladys Lozano, 80; Manuel LaFont, 54; Stacie Fang, 54; and Hilda Noriega, 92.
Fang’s teenage son was pulled injured but alive from the rubble, according to family members. The Lozanos were the uncle and godmother of Phil Ferro, the chief meteorologist for CNN affiliate WSVN. Hilda Noriega was the mother of Police Chief Carlos Noriega.
Read more about all of them here.
Family confirms identity of 12th victim of Surfside collapse
From CNN’s Rosa Flores, Gregory Lemos, and Mel Alonso
A 12th victim of Champlain Towers South collapse has been identified.
According to a tweet from the North Bay Village Government on behalf of the Noriega family, Hilda Noriega perished in the collapse.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the tragic passing of Hilda Noriega, the mother of Police Chief Carlos Noriega. The Noriega family was notified last evening of the recovery and positive identification of his mother from the Champlain Towers South catastrophic scene,” the tweet says.
Hilda Noriega was 92, according to a release from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The family expressed their gratitude to first responders and local and state leaders.
“The Noriegas have lost their ‘heart and soul’ and ‘matriarch’ of their family, but we will get through this time by embracing the unconditional love Hilda was known for.”
The commander of the Israeli National Rescue Unit told CNN Wednesday that search and rescue personnel found more bodies overnight in rubble.
A news conference at 11:30 a.m. ET in Surfside will provide an update on the latest developments in the collapse.
“Three seconds” separated her from life and death, woman who escaped portion of collapsed condo says
From CNN’s Madeline Holcombe and CNN affiliate WPLG
Iliana Monteagudo, 64, woke up in the middle of the night Thursday to a strange sound. Then, she saw a crack snaking down her wall.
Barefoot, she ran from her sixth floor unit down the stairs, hearing thunderous noises and climbing over several walls as she raced toward safety, according to CNN affiliate WPLG.
““The ceiling, down,” she told the affiliate. “When I see that, something inside of me said run because this building will collapse.”
“I start going down, fast, and I hear crack, crack, crack,” she said. “I start to scream, ‘Come on God, I want to see my son, I want to see my grandson. Don’t let me die in this condition.'”
Once outside she called her son to say she was OK, but that the building behind her had collapsed.
“Three seconds separate me, the life to the death. Three seconds,” she told the station.
After seeing the the portion of the Surfside building his mom had called home collapsed, Monteagudo’s son told the station that the magnitude of his mother’s decision became even more apparent.
“You know when it really hit, is when I called her probably a day or two afterwards,” Alvarez said. “I said to myself, I want to call my mother and see how she is. And when I called her, it hit me. It gets me a little bit now, it hit me knowing that I could call her.”
Read more about the escapes and rescue efforts here.
Israeli commander aiding Surfside rescue says more bodies and tunnels were discovered overnight
From CNN’s Gregory Lemos
The Commander of the Israeli National Rescue Unit said search and rescue personnel found more bodies overnight in the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida.
“At the last 12 hours we found some more people,” Colonel Golan Vach, Commander of the Israeli National Rescue Unit, told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day” Wednesday. “We found people. Unfortunately, they are not alive.”
Vach said first-responders discovered new tunnels in the rubble Tuesday night, which allowed for the discovery of more bodies. Vach said search and rescue teams were working in the space between the collapsed balconies.
“These tunnels that we found right now were almost the first to be big enough to enable people to stay between them. Most of the collapse is very, very tight. The collapse was major,” Vach said.
Vach would not reveal how many people were found because the next-of-kin has not been notified.
Vach said he had “very minor” hope teams on the pile would be able to find survivors.