The death toll continues to rise seven days after a building collapsed in Surfside, Florida. “We have found four new victims,” Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a press conference. This tragic discovery brings the death toll in the accident to 16.
This figure could increase further in the coming days, as 147 people are still missing. Among them are dozens of Latin Americans from Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay.
1,300 tons of concrete already excavated
Most of the twelve-story building, dubbed Champlain Towers, collapsed around 1:20 a.m. Thursday in a cloud of dust, causing one of the most serious urban disasters in US history. If the rescue teams have discovered new tunnels in the rubble, the hope of finding survivors on the seventh day of the search is now very “weak”, according to Colonel Golan Vach, commander of the unit of Israeli rescuers who lend. help to American help, Wednesday morning on CNN.
More than 1,300 tons of concrete have already been excavated. Two large cranes are used to carefully remove the debris. Firefighters who work day and night in the heat and humidity are supported by image and sound search technologies to locate air pockets where victims could have taken refuge.
“Major structural damage”
A makeshift memorial has been erected at the site and members of the Miami Heat’s NBA basketball team are expected to drop flowers there on Wednesday. Accompanied by his wife Jill Biden, the American president will visit the scene of the tragedy on Thursday to thank the rescue teams and meet the families for whom the wait seems endless and the need for answers increasingly urgent.
A report on the condition of the building noted as early as 2018 “major structural damage”, as well as “cracks” in the basement of the building, according to documents released by the city of Surfside. The publication on Tuesday of a letter dated April from the president of the assembly of co-owners, alarmed by the state of the building, also fueled the debate as to whether the disaster could have been avoided. The building suffered from “degradation” which “accelerated”, she warned, according to the letter unveiled by several American media.
A “thorough” investigation into the causes of this collapse
It is also unlikely that climate change could explain the collapse of the building, according to Stephen Leatherman, beach specialist. “Hurricanes, beach erosion, floods are a big concern here. But the collapse of a building is new. We have never seen this before, especially for a large building, ”he emphasizes. However, this expert wonders about the quality of the sand used for the concrete and wonders if the builders had installed enough reinforcement to reinforce the concrete structure.
A law passed in 1982 requires that a concrete base be dug and poured under the foundations of buildings, but the erection of Champlain Towers South was completed in 1981. Local authorities have promised a “thorough” investigation into the causes of the damage. this murderous collapse but it will probably take months.