SURFSIDE, Fla. — One week after the Champlain Towers South building collapsed, rescue crews early Thursday stopped work amid concerns that the remaining structure could topple, as President Joe Biden touched down in South Florida to meet with first responders and grieving families.
The new challenges arose Thursday as Biden arrived to the Surfside area to meet with rescue workers and government officials, console relatives of the missing and deliver remarks about what could become one of the nation’s deadliest building failures.
Biden met with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and other elected leaders in a conference room at the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort. “I think there’s more that we can do,” Biden said, suggesting the federal government could possibly cover the full cost of the rescue and recovery.
“Mr. President, we cannot thank you enough,” Levine Cava said. “You called me that morning. You said whatever we need, and I said bring FEMA and here they are.”
Said DeSantis: “We thank you for the support. ... There’s been no bureaucracy. What we need now is we need a little bit of luck, a little bit of prayer.”
Biden, just before noon, met with around 50 uniformed first responders in a hotel ballroom. “I just wanted to come down and say thanks,” he told them, as first lady Jill Biden stood behind him.
At the collapse site blocks away in Surfside, rescuers have so far recovered the bodies of 18 people, and say another 145 remain missing. Late Wednesday, Miami-Dade police identified two sisters, 10-year-old Lucia Guara and 4-year-old Emma Guara, as the latest victims in the condo collapse. Their parents also died.
The massive rescue effort — featuring specialized emergency workers from around the country and as far away as Mexico and Israel — had been continuing around the clock, through stifling heat and frequent rain storms. But work stopped early Thursday morning after authorities voiced new, urgent concerns that the remaining structure of the 12-story Champlain Towers South could topple.
Levine Cava, in a news briefing Thursday morning, said search and rescue teams were forced to halt operations because of “structural concerns,” but would resume working “as soon as it is safe to do so.” Work stopped around 2 a.m. and had not yet resumed by 10 a.m.
“Our engineers are continuing to monitor the structure,” she said.
South Florida is also bracing for the possible arrival of a tropical storm later in the week that could affect the site.
Search and rescue team member Maggie Castro said structural engineers who lead the Urban Search and Rescue team members use extremely sensitive tools that monitor any movement in the building, down to millimeters.
“It’s very accurate,” Castro said.
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said engineers raised several concerns with structural issues of the building. Mainly, they documented 6 to 12 inches of movement in a large concrete column hanging over the subterranean parking area. There has also been “slight movement” in a concrete slab on the south side of the building that “could cause additional failure of the building.”
He said there has also been movement in the debris pile.
DeSantis, speaking at Thursday’s briefing, said “obviously last night there were issues with the remaining structure” of the Champlain Towers South Condo, but added that state engineers were helping Miami-Dade Fire Rescue get “different options on how to handle this.”
“Obviously we believe that continuing searching is something that’s very important,” DeSantis said.
As for President Biden, he arrived in South Florida Thursday morning along with the first lady. Residents and officials are hoping that Biden’s visit offers comfort to the small condo community just north of Miami Beach, and the frustrated rescue workers piecing through the gigantic heap of twisted concrete and metal.
“The president will at least energize them, so at least the families will know people care,” said Surfside resident Antonio Pons, who lives near the collapse site.
Biden is scheduled to meet Thursday at the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort with three Surfside police officers who responded to the Champlain Towers collapse and a dispatcher. The officers — Craig Lovellette, Ariol Lage and Kemuel Gambirazio — were the first officers on scene of the collapse for Surfside police, assisted by dispatcher Joseph Matthews.
The police officers in Surfside, which does not have a fire department, were the first agency to respond to the collapse about 1:20 a.m., the town said.
Karine Jean-Pierre, deputy White House press secretary, said it’s not yet clear if Biden will visit the location of Champlain Towers South, citing the logistical challenge of the president visiting an active search and rescue operation. But she said Biden was encouraged to visit Surfside on Thursday by local officials.
“The message we’ve been given is very clear from the mayor’s office, from the governor’s office, from local officials, which is they wanted us to come today,” Jean-Pierre said. “Now is the time to come.”
Not everyone was thrilled with Biden’s visit. Richard Silverstein, a Surfside resident whose fellow Shul of Bal Harbour congregants are among the missing, said the visit — one week after the partial condo collapse — comes “a little too late.”
“I think it’s going to impede and slow down the rescue efforts,” Silverstein said. “It is what it is.”
Levine Cava, in a tweet Thursday morning, sought to allay such concerns, saying that the presidential visit “will have no impact on our search & rescue mission.”
“We’re deeply grateful that our community remains a top priority for the president as he continues to provide the full support of the federal government,” she wrote.
The federal government has offered wide support, from helping victims relocate to dispatching scientists and experts to help determine what caused the 40-year-old building to suddenly collapse in the middle of the night, as residents and guests slept.
Jean-Pierre said more than 60 members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency are on site at Surfside, and five additional FEMA urban-search and rescue teams are set to arrive Thursday.
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, which has been in Surfside since Sunday, said Wednesday that it will launch a full investigation into the building collapse, and what changes in laws, building codes and regulations could be made to prevent a similar tragedy. The agency that pushed safety reforms after investigating the collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers in 2001.
____
(Miami Herald staff writers Marie-Rose Sheinerman, Colleen Wright, Allie Pitchon, Ben Conarck and Charles Rabin contributed to this report.)
