After the partial collapse of a twelve-story apartment building in the US state of Florida, the death toll continues to rise. Four more lifeless bodies were found in the rubble, said the mayor of Miami-Dade district, Daniella Levine Cava, on Wednesday at the accident site in Surfside near Miami. The number of deaths had risen to 16. However, 147 people are still missing.
Not all of them have to have been in the building, not all of them have to be buried. But the fact that the investigators were unable to locate people elsewhere after several days of intensive search gives rise to fears for the worst. Experts expect that the number of deaths will increase significantly.
The building near the beach with around 130 residential units had partially collapsed on Thursday night. The misfortune surprised people in their sleep. The search for survivors has been going on ever since. The forces at Surfside have been working around the clock for days. The chances of finding survivors are dwindling every hour.
Emergency teams started work immediately after the collapse. Several dozen people were saved right from the start. The building collapsed out of nowhere, as shown by images from surveillance cameras of neighboring houses.
Relatives will be asked for DNA samples
The mayor said that the emergency services also discovered “human remains”, that is, parts of bodies that were torn apart by the force of the collapse. Family members were asked for DNA samples to identify the victims. This process is not easy, says Levine Cava. The search for survivors has not yet been given up.
District fire department deputy chief Raide Jadallah said Monday it was a misunderstanding to believe that the search for survivors ends automatically after a certain amount of time. “That is by no means the case.” Such a decision depends on many factors.
In the rubble of the house, the search parties with cameras discovered cavities that were potentially large enough for people to be there, said Jadallah. The teams would not have been able to get into these areas themselves, but they were working on it. According to Levine Cava, they dug a kind of trench in the middle of the mountain of rubble in order to be able to penetrate deeper into the rubble.
The concrete is partially pulverized
The search teams are on duty with sniffer dogs, special cameras, listening instruments and heavy equipment. According to the authorities, rubble that is removed from the building will be transported to a warehouse for investigations into the cause of the accident. It is still unclear why the residential complex known as Champlain Tower South from the 1980s collapsed.
Jadallah said the situation was “complex”. The emergency services would have to deal partly with betine, which is pulverized, and other parts that are the size of basket balls or baseballs. The rubble moves with every movement. You couldn’t just lift a huge chunk of concrete to one side and that was the end of it. “It’s a twelve-story building,” he emphasized. “It will take time.”
Fire chief Alan Cominsky said the situation was demanding, difficult and “extremely dangerous”. In the meantime, a fire in the rubble and heavy rain had hampered the search.
Some relatives have given up hope. Pablo Rodriguez, for example, was initially confident that the search teams would be able to save his mother and grandmother. Now he no longer believes in it, said the 40-year-old Washington Post: “I have no hope that you will find her alive and that I can actually see or speak to you again.” He just hopes that the search parties will find “something” “so that we can properly bury them”.