SURFSIDE, Fla. — Heavy machinery scooped debris at the site of the collapsed Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside on Friday as more forensic scientists arrived in South Florida to investigate the disaster and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order intended to bring some financial relief for those whose homes were destroyed by 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 Thursday and one additional body recovered Friday, emergency managers said.
The death toll now stands at 79 people confirmed dead from the partial collapse of the condominium tower 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 51 of the recovered bodies have been identified and their families notified, Levine Cava said. An additional 61 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.”
Additional reinforcements have also arrived for first responders working at the site. Miami-Dade’s medical examiner was relieved by counterparts at the Broward County office filling in on the scene in Surfside on Friday. And emergency managers have added more state and federal mental health counselors and other resources for first responders working on the site, Levine Cava said.
For owners of the 156 units that once made up Champlain Towers South, the governor announced that he had signed an executive order Friday indefinitely suspending the statutes — and their related deadlines and other requirements — for paying property taxes for all those whose homes were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable due to the collapse.
“The families of Surfside have gone through a tragedy that no one should ever have to experience,” DeSantis said in a message posted to his social media account on Twitter.
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.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said he has spent a good amount of time at the collapse site and the pile of debris that was originally four stories high is now at ground level or below.
Burkett said that all valuable items, including keepsakes and other items recovered from the site, are being collected and inventoried.
“We owe a duty to the families and I’m proud of the Dade County team,” Burkett said. “This undertaking is very, very important.”
Burkett said he’s also focused on helping local business owners affected by the disaster. He said they are not interested in federal disaster loans currently being offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration.
“Loans are no good,” he said. “They don’t solve the problem. These people need to be made whole for the losses they’ve experienced. They need grants.”
The Surfside mayor said he is trying to push through the creation of a city-sponsored GoFundMe to help local businesses, but asked the wider community to step up.
As for Champlain Towers North, Burkett said evacuations there remain voluntary even as work continues to examine the south tower’s sister structure to get at the root cause of its collapse.
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 loved ones who died or are missing after the collapse.
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 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.”
Many have found solace in the Surfside Wall of Hope & Memorial, a collection of heartfelt notes, flowers and photographs of victims and those still missing after the collapse. The memorial at 88th Street and Harding Avenue has become a national symbol of the tragedy, with President Joe Biden and other dignitaries making personal visits to the site.
On Friday afternoon, Dallas-based artist Roberto Marquez, 59, was adding details to the untitled, impromptu mural he is painting to memorialize the tragedy. Marquez said his work, a Cubist-style painting spread over some nine canvases about 10 feet tall, will be informed by what he sees and hears in Surfside.
“I’m trying to be truthful in my work,” he said. “You have to be here to catch the emotions you need to create the piece.”
Nearby, Abiezer Rodriguez had just finished sweeping the memorial of detritus. Rodriguez, a pastor for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Coral Gables, said he has spent up to 12 hours a day at the site keeping it clean, something he said must be done out of respect for the victims — especially Jewish ones, for whom Rodriguez said cleanliness and propriety is a key part of the faith.
“We’re not here trying to bring people to our faith, only to provide strength and spiritual support,” he said.
As Rodriguez swept up dead flowers, Leo Soto, 26, was adding new ones. It was Soto who selected the western wall of the tennis court to place names and photos of victims in the hours after Champlain Towers South fell; Soto’s high school classmate at Ronald Reagan Senior High School in Doral, Nicky Langesfeld and her husband, Luis Sadovnic, are among the dozens of residents and others still unaccounted for.
Now, Soto has made looking after what has grown into a one-block-long memorial his full-time job. His hospitality school classes are on indefinite hiatus. Through Soto’s work, local florists Galleria Farms have donated some 30,000 palms and hydrangeas.
“I feel proud and honored about what it has become,” Soto said of the memorial wall. “It’s become a sacred place.”
He said Surfside officials have indicated to him that the memorial is likely to become permanent.
Experts reviewing a 2018 engineer’s report about the Champlain Towers South say the town of Surfside’s building official should have acted more aggressively to investigate the findings, which pointed out “major structural damage” to a concrete slab and “abundant” deterioration of garage columns supporting the condo tower.
Under Miami-Dade County’s building code, the building official, Rosendo Prieto, had a duty to contact the engineering consultant who drafted the report and inspect the problems to see if the 136-unit condo was at risk of endangering residents, according to construction experts interviewed by the Herald. They said the report identified significant structural concerns — including severe concrete cracking in the pool deck and garage areas and waterproofing failures — that meet the county code’s “presumed to be unsafe” standard and trigger a follow-up examination.
Instead, after a Champlain condo association sent him the engineer’s report, Prieto met with the condo board and assured members that “it appears the building is in very good shape,” according to the minutes of a Nov. 15, 2018 condo board meeting.
It is not clear what other actions, if any, Surfside’s building official may have taken, such as meeting with the engineers who drafted the report or inspecting the condo tower for structural problems. Prieto’s actions are not reflected in the public records posted on the town of Surfside’s website or in the condo association’s records made public to date. The Herald has asked town officials for all records pertaining to Prieto’s correspondence and actions involving Champlain Towers South, but has not yet received them.
Prieto, a veteran building official who left Surfside last year, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, and his attorney could not be reached. But three days after the condo’s collapse, Prieto told the Herald that if there had ever been any major concerns with the condition of Champlain Towers South, “they would have been addressed right away.”
Investigators helping the town of Surfside identify the causes of the condo tower’s partial collapse issued a list of recommendations for property owners to ensure the structural integrity of all oceanfront buildings, regardless of their age.
KCE Structural Engineers advised those building owners to hire the necessary experts to investigate the foundations of their towers, review drawings used for construction and perform other examinations to ensure the buildings are safe.
The recommendations are intended to reassure residents and prevent a similar catastrophe, Surfside’s mayor said in a letter to building owners, managers and residents.
“We believe it is important to understand the extent to which the conditions that may have contributed to the apparent structural/foundational failures at Champlain Towers South are occurring elsewhere among the Town’s beachfront properties,” Burkett wrote.
The recommendations add to the suggestions raised in a letter issued last week by Surfside Building Official James P. McGuinness, who also advised inspections of multi-story residential buildings and their foundations.
Although authorities have determined there is little chance of finding survivors 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 on Friday confirmed media reports that a missing cat named Binx had been reunited with its family, which she declined to identify, after Binx was spotted by an eagle-eyed volunteer at a cat feeding site.
Levine Cava 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.”
Among the few people pulled alive from the rubble were Stacie Fang and her 15-year-old son, Jonah Handler.
Though her son survived, Fang, 54, would later die of her injuries. Her family has now filed a lawsuit against the building’s condo association — one of the latest in more than a dozen filed against the association since the disaster.
Fang and Handler, who lived in a unit on the 10th floor, had been awakened by the rumbling in the building. According to the lawsuit filed Thursday, “the two sat side by side in his room when their entire condo unit collapsed.”
“They free-fell to what they thought was certain death. Stacie and Jonah landed several floors below and miraculously were still alive. First responders arrived at the scene and used Air Jacks to remove Jonah from the carnage. Jonah lived, but with devastating injuries,” the lawsuit said.
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(Miami Herald staff writers Sarah Blaskey, Aaron Leibowitz, David Ovalle, Martin Vassolo and Jay Weaver contributed to this report.)
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