SURFSIDE, Fla. — The news was expected but no less gut-wrenching to hear.
On the 14th day of the search through the rubble in Surfside, families and loved ones were told that the around-the-clock search and rescue effort for live victims at the Champlain Towers South has come to an end.
Fire authorities said there is no longer hope that there are any survivors of the June 24 collapse and that the transition to a recovery effort will begin Wednesday at midnight Eastern time.
In a video stream of Miami-Dade Fire Chief of Operations Ray Jadallah’s briefing to families Wednesday afternoon, he said the announcement was “some of the hardest news I’ve ever had to deliver in my professional career.”
He attributed the decision to the lack of voids, or spaces where there could be victims.
He said when a wall collapses, it could create a triangle-shaped pocket space. If a floor collapses, it can create a “W” shape.
In a pancake collapse like the one in Surfside, it’s “a floor on top of a floor on top of a floor,” he said to media Wednesday night, noting that in one section of the parking garage six floors of the building were located stacked on top of each other.
Through tears, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava called the move an “extremely difficult decision” and that rescuers have “exhausted every option.”
“To share this news to families this evening who are missing their loved ones was devastating,” she told media Wednesday night. “We have all asked God for a miracle.”
The death toll in the Surfside collapse now stands at 54, after the most victims were found in any 12-hour or 24-period. Three of the victims identified Wednesday were engineer Simon Segal, 80, and Graciela and Gino Cattarossi, whose daughter and 7-year-old granddaughter also died in the collapse. Their other daughter, Andrea, is still missing.
Since the demolition of the remaining part of the building Sunday night, 22 victims have been recovered from the rubble, and officials have said the demolition of the remainder of the collapsed building allows rescue workers to search a wider area. Significant removal of the pile has allowed rescuers to get into areas they couldn’t access before.
Jadallah said search crews have not found any possible signs of life — an alert from a dog, sonar detection or image captured on camera — since the early hours of the search and rescue mission.
As rescue teams probed deeper into the rubble pile, authorities concluded that the force of the collapse on the walls and floors of the Champlain Towers South showed there was “no chance of life,” Jadallah said.
The lack of food, water and air makes it nearly impossible for survival.
Search dogs will be replaced with dogs trained to sniff out human remains, said Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue firefighter Margarita Castro.
Jadallah said rescue crews will continue searching the pile for victims at the same rate they have been, but that they will no longer use sound devices or the dogs that sniff for survivors.
“The frequency of the search remains the same, nothing else changes,” he said. “Our sole responsibility at this point is to bring closure, to find your family members — our family members.”
The switch to a recovery mission will be more careful than many people may think.
“When we say recovery, people think that means a big bulldozer comes and takes all debris to a big warehouse ... it’s not the reality,” said Israeli Col. Golan Vach, who heads a specialized search and rescue unit of the Israel Defense Forces that is working with the South Florida crews. “The reality is that we work with machines, we know where to dig, where to look. We search by hand, we find the victims and the relatives and we pull them out very carefully.”
Jadallah said rescuers will continue searching the new areas. There are still 86 people missing in the rubble, and while several of the nine search grid sections have been “de-layered,” there are still other areas to be cleared.
The number of people unaccounted for has fluctuated as detectives try to verify the names of the missing victims, notify family and confirm who was and was not in the building at the time of the collapse.
A choked-up Levine Cava spoke through tears at the briefing.
“Our first responders have truly searched that pile every single day since the collapse as if they were searching for their loved ones,” she said.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said while “the possibility of someone alive is near zero,” people should continue to pray.
“In the end, God is still in charge,” he said Wednesday. “Today is a heartbreaking day. But I have not lost hope that there could be a miracle.”
On Twitter Wednesday night, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said a grand jury agreed to explore how to prevent a similar disaster “not just in Surfside, and not just in condominiums, but in all buildings and structures in the coastal, intercoastal and surrounding areas of our county.”
Burkett said crews are still investigating the sister condo building, Champlain Towers North, using ground radar and other technology to assess the structural integrity of the building, which was built around the same time by the same developer with the same types of materials.
He said the town plans to work with the north building to do a deep dive on the structure, which has 24 units fewer than the 12-story south tower did. They were built one year apart and from the outside seemed of similar design.
Many residents were concerned enough about the south tower tragedy to move out, but some were not.
The north condo’s management company went door to door last week to survey residents. About half of the building’s 113 units are unoccupied as second homes. Of the units that are occupied, half of the residents have left on their own accord, while the other half have stayed.
The Miami Foundation is providing resources to relocate those families because they do not qualify for federal aid.
Surfside Vice Mayor Tina Paul said Wednesday that several condo owners have reached out to her with concerns about the structural integrity of their own buildings, unrelated to the sister Champlain Towers condos. The town will be assisting in advanced geotechnical surveys to look at structural integrity, she said.
At a news conference about Tropical Storm Elsa in Tallahassee on Wednesday, Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke of the determination of the rescue teams and the outpouring of community support.
“It’s going to be a deep wound for a long time,’‘ he said. “But as tragic as it’s been, I think the outpouring of support has shown a lot of great parts of our community.”
He said the members of the rescue teams from across the country “are leaving a very impressive legacy.”
“They get very invested in it and, so to see that, and to see that singularity of purpose, has really been heartening. ... I don’t think the state’s ever going to quite be the same.”
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(Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas and Herald staff writer Ben Conarck contributed to this report.)
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