SURFSIDE, Fla. — The search for a miracle in the ruins hasn’t stopped.
Between 80 and 120 first responders — members of Miami-Dade’s renowned Urban Search and Rescue Team bolstered by teams rushing in from around the state — worked the Champlain Towers South collapse site Friday. Through sweltering heat and acrid smoke, crews cautiously probed for signs of life under a mountain of debris in danger of shifting underfoot, potentially dooming anyone still alive somewhere below.
They will stay at it through the weekend. But there were unstated signs the mission was shifting from rescue to recovery.
No one had been pulled alive from the collapsed 12-story building for more than 36 hours. Search dogs trained to find the living were joined by dogs trained to find the dead. Teams began placing little red flags on spots on broken concrete slabs, some that one source briefed on the search said might indicate human remains — critical for DNA identification of victims.
“I’m not optimistic,” said Frank Rollason, who directs Miami-Dade’s Office of Emergency Management. “But we always have hope.”
Though only four people had been confirmed dead by Friday afternoon, the fear of a far worse toll had begun to sink in — especially after Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the official number of people unaccounted for had risen to 159.
For some family members desperate to know what happened to missing loved ones, the pace of the search might seem excruciatingly slow. And it became more difficult Friday for relatives to stand vigil and monitor the work. From a few blocks away where police had set blockades, fire rescue workers atop a two-story high mound of concrete bristling with twisted steel rebar could barely be seen. When they could, they appeared to be mere ants on a giant hill. Much of the work underground was far from view.
The frustration was reflected in an afternoon news conference when county leaders were asked why giant front loaders on site weren’t already digging into the piles of concrete and hauling them away as quickly as possible.
“Our people are working as hard as they can to try and find your loved ones,” said County Commission Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz.
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky explained the process in more detail. With an unstable and shifting ruin, bringing in heavy equipment too soon — less than two days had passed since the unexplained collapse — could prove deadly to anyone who still might be alive under the rubble or to the rescue teams working above or below it. Though hopes appear dim, survivors have been rescued after more than a week buried in wreckage in some locations.
In Surfside, teams were searching in grid patterns honed from experience on past disasters across the country and globe. Only intermittent downpours and crackling lightning halted the work.
“It may look haphazard,” said Cominsky. “But it’s methodical.”
The most dangerous obstacle: Some of the tons of rubble was still shifting, Assistant Fire Chief Ray Jadallah said earlier in the day. There was a risk that pulling away any single piece could lead to a collapse, similar to pulling apart pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Before any major excavation could begin, he said, surveyors and engineers would need to determine the stability of the piles.
Jadallah said crews working underground had begun using jackhammers to break through the concrete. He said when workers heard sounds overnight, along with turning to sensitive high-tech listening equipment, they stood silently hoping to hear something that could lead to a living being. He said he didn’t believe any of the sounds heard Friday were from survivors.
Surveillance video from a nearby building showed the horror of the 12-story building’s collapse at 1:23 a.m. Thursday morning, when the middle pool area virtually disappeared, and the tower on its south side pancaked to the ground in about 10 seconds, leaving behind a choking cloud of dust and thousands of tons of unstable debris.
The rush to help and find survivors was immediate — first the Miami-Dade search team, which has worked disaster sites around the county and world., along with more than 80 fire rescue units from around the county, responded. Long before dawn that first morning, huge bright LED lights lit up the slabs of concrete and rescuers began pulling a few survivors from the section of the condo that didn’t collapse like a house of cards.
They pulled one young boy and his mother from under the rubble. The boy lived. His mother did not.
As dark turned to light and the teams pinpointed gas leaks and other dangers, K-9s joined the search. Ultrasensitive microphones, cameras and sonar equipment were brought in. With the stunning collapse pancaking floor slabs tightly together, rescuers hunted for a better entry under the building through its parking garage. That led to narrow tunnels and gaps between the slabs — work that was caught on camera and broadcast to the world through the county fire department’s Twitter account.
Leading the way underground were structural engineers, peeking into the knee-high water and finding where the walls and ceilings were steady enough for rescuers to do their work. As the day wore on, units from Miami and around the state joined Miami-Dade’s famous Task Force 1.
The conditions were difficult in places. Fans were deployed to blow in fresh air and blow aside possible toxins. Rescuers underground wore aspirators. Occasionally fires broke out, possibly sparked from leaking gas lines or fuel from the ground-level vehicles damaged in the catastrophe. A stubborn one burned for most of Friday, filling the air with a bit of an acrid smell.
By Friday dozens of other search and rescue teams, some from Naples and Tampa, joined the search, giving a much-needed break to some of the county’s fire rescue workers — many of whom didn’t want to stop.
The grim search, with only a few early survivors, was clearly difficult, even for veterans of this kind of difficult work.
On CNN Friday afternoon Miami-Dade Chief Fire Officer Andy Alvarez got emotional discussing the dangers of leading his troops into the unknown as they continue to search for life under the rubble.
He explained the difficulties rescue team members were having burrowing through tunnels underground as concrete fell and they had to cut through vehicles and how they had to be aware of their surroundings and possible smoke and gas leaks — even as smoke continued to pour from a building behind him.
Asked what his message was to loved ones of those missing, Alvarez said, “Have hope. There’s always hope.” Then he told the story of finding a woman alive under the rubble eight days after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Halfway through, he broke up and had to take a breath.
“We’re doing everything we can to bring your family members up alive,” Alvarez said. “It’s hard. It’s personal. And our job is to bring people out safely.”
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(Miami Herald staff writers Joey Flechas, Samantha J. Gross and Mary Ellen Klas contributed to this report.)
