SURFSIDE, Fla. – Heavy machinery scooped debris at the site of the collapsed Champlain Towers South Friday morning, ushering in the third weekend of a grim recovery effort in the town of Surfside since the tragic disaster.
As excavators turned over heaps of broken cement and twisted steel, smaller backhoes combed through the pile — no longer in search of survivors but victims, 14 more of whom were found in the rubble overnight, emergency managers said.
The overnight recovery raises the death toll to 78 people confirmed dead from the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo on June 24, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a press briefing Friday.
“This is a staggering and heartbreaking number that affects all of us very deeply,” she said.
At least 47 of the recovered bodies have been identified and their families notified, Levine Cava said. An additional 62 people remain potentially missing.
As the recovery continues, the search for answers has accelerated, with more scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST arriving in Surfside to comb for clues to the unprecedented structural failure, Levine Cava said.
“NIST has made significant progress in tagging and transporting pieces of forensic evidence from the pile,” she said. “They’ve now collected over 200 pieces of evidence and they recently deployed scientists from the physics measurement lab in Washington to assist with the analysis.”
Over the past three weeks, crews have removed 13 million pounds of concrete and debris from the disaster site, with 60 trucks a day hauling away heaps of rubble.
The chug of heavy machinery and the smell of exhaust formed the backdrop for a single lane of morning traffic heading south on Harding Avenue and past scattered visitors at the memorial wall where family and friends have posted pictures of their missing loved ones.
Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez told 610 WIOD news radio that work was continuing at a “swift tempo.”
“We’re going to be doing it until we’re done. I can’t really predict a time,” Ramirez said. “What I can tell you is that our fire-rescue officers are working 24 hours a day to bring closure to the families and then to go into that investigative phase” with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology as well as the state attorney. “Our number one priority is to recover the victims.”
Amid the persistent presence of emergency vehicles and miles of orange traffic cones redirecting drivers around the disaster site, many Surfside residents tried to resume their everyday lives.
Customers lined up outside Surfside’s Rolling-Pin Kosher Bakery, waiting to buy challah for the third Shabbat dinner since the collapse of one of their community’s most storied buildings.
An immense void of sky now fills the space where the 12-story Champlain Towers South once stood for 40 years. A bigger hole lies in the hearts of those whose lives are now forever changed by the catastrophe.
Though Friday morning was busy at the Rolling-Pin, the losses from June 24 have weighed heavily on the bakery and the community it serves, said Veronica Algaba, who has been working there for seven years.
Some of the bakery’s most beloved customers perished in the collapse, she said, including children who stopped by every morning to get a free cookie on their way to school.
“Now, we don’t see them, and it’s like missing something,” Algaba said. “It has been very difficult for us.”
Earlier in the week, on Monday, Algaba said she noticed a familiar customer who was examining the shop’s window display with what looked like an empty stare. When the woman finally got to the counter, she appeared to not know what to do, Algaba recalled.
“She told me, ‘I’m sorry, dear. I’m one of the survivors’,” Algaba said. “And I was crying with her, because she was confused”
Algaba said the pain has been laced with inspiring moments. Many members of Surfside’s Jewish community launched aid efforts out of their own bakery on the morning of the collapse. And survivors who have received donated challah bread have called to express their gratitude for the bakery.
“For us, it’s something easy,” Algaba said. “But thankfully, it’s one thing we can do to help.”
Although authorities have determined there is no chance of survival in the rubble, some loved ones of those still unaccounted for in the collapse said they are holding out hope that a miracle will happen.
Miami-Dade’s mayor said on Thursday that finding someone alive in the rubble “seems really outside of the realm of any human possibility,” but that rescue crews will continue searching just as quickly and thoroughly as they have for the past two weeks. Aiding their efforts now, however, are dogs that look for the dead — not the living. Following the demolition of what remained of the Champlain Towers South on Sunday, rescue crews searching in areas that were previously inaccessible have found “an accelerating number of people — all who had perished,” she said.
“We knew always that there would be a point at which we’d switch from rescue to recovery,” Levine Cava said. “Of course we hoped at the outset that there’d be lots of people who were somehow miraculously in spaces where they could survive.”
Levine Cava said search crews will continue looking for personal items during the recovery process, including legal documents, photo albums, wallets, jewelry, school graduation documents, religious items, phones.
Particular care is being taken to ensure proper Jewish burial rituals are observed and rabbis are present on site to perform ritual prayer over recovered Jewish bodies, she said.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky said he did not know how many floors rescue crews have tunneled through or how long the operation may take. He said heavier machinery is being used on the rubble pile and that authorities are “expecting the progress to move at a faster pace with our recovery efforts.”
