Search and rescue operations have stretched into a sixth day at the site of a partly collapsed Florida condominium complex where at least 11 people have been confirmed dead and another 150 remain missing.
With hopes fading by the hour of pulling anyone else alive from the rubble left when nearly half the 12-floor, 156-unit tower abruptly caved in on itself last week, authorities held out the possibility that survivors might yet be found.
Families of the 150 still missing were “coping with the news that they might not have loved ones come out alive and still hoping that they will”, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on Monday night (local time).
“Their loved ones may come out as body parts,” the mayor said.
Officials said late on Monday that teams picking through broken concrete, twisted metal and dust from pulverised building materials were still treating the round-the-clock operation – which has employed dog teams, cranes and infrared scanners – as a search-and-rescue effort.
But no one has been extricated alive from the ruins of the oceanfront Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, adjacent to Miami Beach, since a few hours after one side of the building collapsed early last Thursday.
Fire officials spoke of detecting faint sounds from inside the rubble and finding voids deep in the debris large enough to possibly sustain life.
“Not to say that we have seen anyone down there, but we’ve not gotten to the very bottom,” Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said.
City officials announced that two more bodies were recovered on Monday, bringing the confirmed death toll to 11.
The tragedy may end up ranking as the greatest loss of life from an unintentional structural failure in US history.
Two interior walkways collapsed into the lobby of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, during a party in July 1981, killing 114, while 98 people died when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, DC, gave way during a movie screening in January 1922.
The cause of the Miami collapse remains under investigation.
Initial attention focused on structural deficiencies identified in a 2018 engineer’s report released by Surfside city officials.
That report found severe concrete erosion in the underground parking garage and major damage in a slab beneath the pool deck.
The report’s author, Frank Morabito, wrote that the deterioration would “expand exponentially” if not repaired.
Ross Prieto, then Surfside’s top building official, met residents the following month after reviewing the report and assured them the building was “in very good shape”, according to minutes of the meeting released on Monday.
After the meeting, Mr Prieto emailed the town’s manager to say it “went very well … All main concerns over their 40-year recertification process were addressed”.
Reuters was unable to reach Mr Prieto, who is no longer employed by Surfside. He told the Miami Herald newspaper he did not remember getting the report.
The condo association president warned residents in an April 2021 letter that visible concrete deterioration identified three years earlier had “gotten significantly worse”, along with roof damage, and urged them to pay some $US15 million ($A20 million) in assessments needed to make repairs, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today each reported on Monday.
The letter’s author, Jean Wodnicki, survived Thursday’s collapse, the newspapers said.
On Tuesday, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said she would bring the deadly collapse before a grand jury.
“I am going to urge them to take a look at it,” Ms Rundle told the Miami Herald.
“Whether they do or not, it’s completely their decision.”
The grand jury’s investigation would examine factors and decisions that led to Thursday’s collapse.
-AAP
The post Hopes fade for survivors of Miami building tragedy, with toll at 11 appeared first on The New Daily.
**Know benefits of facebook marketing --http://bit.ly/2RgChw3