Newsman: Two weeks after a massive waterfront condominium building crashed to the ground, workers continued to dig through rubble Thursday, now without hope of finding any survivors.
The death toll rose to 64 after the discovery of 10 more bodies. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava updated the total Thursday afternoon after announcing in the morning that six had been found. She said 76 people remain unaccounted for.
Levine Cava also urged anybody with photos or videos of the collapse to share them with the authorities for evidentiary purposes
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced Tuesday morning that four more bodies were recovered from the rubble. In the evening, she announced another four bodies had been recovered, bringing the official death toll then to 36.
Three more victims, Nancy Kress Levin, 76, Jay Kleiman, 52, and Francis Fernandez, 67, were identified Tuesday, according to investigators. In total 29 victims have been identified as of Tuesday evening.
At least 64 people, including three children, have been confirmed dead and 109 others remain unaccounted for after a 12-story residential building partially collapsed in South Florida‘s Miami-Dade County last month.
The disaster occurred on June 24 around 1:15 a.m. local time at the Champlain Towers South condominium in the small, beachside town of Surfside, about 6 miles north of Miami Beach. Approximately 55 of the oceanfront complex’s 136 units were destroyed, according to officials. Since then, hundreds of first responders have been carefully combing through the pancaked piles of debris in hopes of finding survivors.
Meanwhile, investigators have confirmed that 70 of the 109 people who are still missing were in fact inside of the condominium at the time of the partial collapse. Another 191 people who were living or staying in the building at that time have been accounted for and are safe, according to Levine Cava, who has stressed that the figures are “very fluid” and “will continue to change” as detectives continuously audit the list.
Although officials wouldn’t say when the search and rescue operation will formally transition into a recovery mission, Levine Cava told reporters that the crews will “continue as now to thoroughly, carefully sift through these piles,” looking for “bodies and belongings.” The process is a “very thorough and exhaustive” one, she said.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky said the rescue workers have been “aggressively” searching for any voids or “liveable spaces” within the debris where there could be trapped survivors but that they are “not coming across that.” No survivors have been discovered in the wreckage of the building since the morning it partially collapsed.
“We’re not seeing anything positive,” Cominsky told reporters on Tuesday morning.
Crews have hauled away nearly 5 million pounds of concrete from the vast scene of wreckage, but large piles of rubble still remain.
The massive search and rescue mission is now in its 13th day, as teams are able to operate at full capacity and search in areas that were previously inaccessible.
The part of the building that remained standing was cleared of any people or pets before it was demolished on Sunday night, due to concerns about its structural integrity. However, it was too dangerous for surviving residents to enter the building to retrieve their belongings, officials said.
