Video After The Jump
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP) — A wing of a 12-story beachfront condo building collapsed with a roar in a town outside Miami early Thursday, killing at least one person & trapping residents in rubble & twisted metal. Rescuers pulled out dozens of survivors and continued to look for more.
Nearly 100 people were still unaccounted for at midday, authorities said, raising fears that the death toll could climb sharply. But officials did not know how many were in the tower when it fell around 1:30 a.m.
Hours after the collapse, searchers were trying to reach a trapped child whose parents were believed to be dead. In another case, rescuers saved a mother & child, but the woman’s leg had to be amputated to remove her from the rubble.
Video showed fire crews removing a boy from the wreckage, but it was not clear whether he was the same person.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who toured the scene, said television did not capture the scale of what happened.
Rescue crews are “doing everything they can to save lives. That is ongoing & they’re not going to rest,” he said.
Teams of 10 to 12 rescuers were entering the rubble at a time with dogs & other equipment, working until they tire from the heavy lifting, then making way for a new team.
Patronis said he was deeply moved by the image of a bunk bed near the now-exposed top of the building.
“Somebody was probably sleeping in it,” he said. “There’s all those what-ifs.”
Authorities did not say what may have caused the collapse. On video footage captured from nearby, the center of the building appeared to fall first, with a section nearest the ocean teetering & coming down seconds later.
Work was being done on the building’s roof, but Burkett said he did not see how that could have been the cause.
“The building is literally pancaked,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. “That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean, to me, that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
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