On Friday, firefighters announced the end of the search for dead bodies at the scene of the accident. Collapsed Florida apartment The building ended a month of hard work, clearing away the dangerous debris layer that had been piled up several stories high.
On June 24, the collapse of the Champlantan South Beach caused 97 deaths, and at least one missing person has yet to be identified. Most of the site has been cleaned up and the rubble has been moved to the Miami warehouse. Although forensic scientists are still working, including checking debris in the warehouse, no more bodies can be found where the building once stood.
Except for a few hours after the collapse, the survivors never appeared. The search team spent several weeks battling the dangers of rubble, including shaky and unstable parts above buildings, recurring fires, and the suffocating summer heat and thunderstorms in Florida. They have gone through more than 14,000 tons (13,000 metric tons) of broken concrete and steel, often working piece by piece, stone by stone, and finally declared their mission complete.
Police confirm the remains of a Montreal woman dragged from the collapse of a Florida apartment
The urban search and rescue team of the Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue Team left the scene on Friday in a convoy of firetruck and other vehicles and slowly drove towards their headquarters for a press conference, announcing the official end of the search.
At the ceremony, Fire Chief Allen Kominsky paid tribute to the firefighters who worked 12-hour shifts while camping at the scene.
“This is obviously devastating. This is clearly an overall difficult situation,” Kominsky said. “I am extremely proud of the men and women who represent Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.”
Officials declined to clarify whether they still have a group of human remains that pathologists are trying to determine, or whether they are still searching for the last group of remains.
If found, Estelle Hedaya will bring the death toll to 98.
Hedaya is an outgoing 54-year-old who likes to travel and chats with strangers. Her brother Ikey provided DNA samples and visited the website twice to learn about his search work.
“When we entered the second month alone, without any other families, we felt helpless,” he told the Associated Press on Friday. He said he often gets the latest news from the forensic office.
Leah Sutton (Leah Sutton) has known Hedaya since she was born and thinks she is her second mother. She is worried that she will be forgotten.
“They seem to be packing up and congratulating everyone on their excellent work. Yes, they deserve all the praise, but after they find Estelle.”
Victims of Surfside apartment collapse will receive initial compensation of US$150 million: Judge
The dead included members of the large Orthodox Jewish community in the area, the sister of the Paraguayan first lady, her family and their nanny, as well as a local salesman, his wife and their two young daughters. Three Canadians were also killed.
The collapse sparked a race to inspect other aging residential towers in Florida and elsewhere, and raised broader questions about the National Association of Managed Apartments and building safety regulations.
Soon after the disaster, it became clear that the warning about Champlain Tanan, which opened in 1981, was not heeded. An engineering report in 2018 detailed the cracking and degradation of concrete support beams in underground parking lots, as well as other problems that would require nearly US$10 million to repair.
Repairs did not occur, as the owner of the building’s 136 units and its management apartment committee disputed the cost, especially after the Surfside town inspector told them that the building was safe, which is estimated to increase to US$15 million this year.
A complete collapse is almost unimaginable. As many officials said in the first few days of the disaster, a building of this size not only collapsed outside of a terrorist attack in the United States. Even tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes rarely knock them down.
The final fate of the property where this building was once has not yet been determined. A judge who presided over several lawsuits filed after the collapse hoped to sell the property at market prices, which would bring in an estimated income of $100 million or more. Some apartment owners want to rebuild, while others say a memorial should be erected to commemorate the dead.
“All options are on the table,” Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman said at the hearing this week.
This disaster is one of the deadliest engineering failures in the United States. In 1981, a group of elevated walkways in a Kansas City hotel collapsed, causing 114 people to participate in the dance. But this is not the structure itself. A movie theater in Washington, DC collapsed in 1922, killing 98 people. But that happened after a blizzard poured several feet of snow on the flat roof.
In the weeks following the collapse, a 28-story courthouse (built in 1928) and two apartment buildings in downtown Miami were closed after inspectors discovered structural problems. They will remain closed until maintenance is carried out.
The first call to 911 was around 1:20 in the morning, when the residents of Chiipurang reported that the parking lot had collapsed. A woman standing on the balcony called her husband who was on a business trip and said that the swimming pool had fallen into the garage.
The remains of the third Canadian who was evacuated from the collapse of the Surfside apartment: GAC
Then, in an instant, part of the L-shaped building fell directly. Eight seconds later, another part followed closely, with 35 people remaining in the standing part. In the first few hours, a teenager was rescued, and the firefighters believed that others might still be alive. They got hope from the noise made inside the pile that may have been knocked by the survivor, but in retrospect, the sound came from the moving debris.
Rescuers worked tirelessly, even if the smoke and heat from the fire in the standing part of the building hindered their efforts. When the temperature rises to more than 90 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Celsius) in the scorching sun, they are still there, and some people will work hard until they need intravenous injections to replenish their fluids. When Tropical Storm Elsa passed nearby and it rained heavily, they continued to advance. They only leave the pile when lightning strikes.
The still standing part of the building poses another serious threat because it hangs precariously above the workers. The authorities ordered it to be demolished on July 4.
Kominsky said that in the end, the staff found no evidence that anyone who was found dead had survived the initial collapse.
Associated Press writer Kelli Kennedy of Fort Lauderdale, Florida contributed to this report.
© 2021 Canadian Press
