Search for victims ends at Florida apartment collapse site: NPR

The search for victims in one of the deadliest buildings in US history ended after four weeks. firefighter crews Clean up debris left at the disaster site without finding evidence of additional casualties.

Miami-Dade Police Station. Cowart assures me that fire department search crews have evacuated the site.

Officials vowed to continue searching for people among the nearly 11 tons of rubble that remained after the sudden destruction of the South Champlain Towers building in Surfside, Florida, on June 24.

In all, 97 people have been confirmed dead – a significant drop from initial estimates of potential casualties, which put up to 159 people dead. That number dropped when authorities identified remains or discovered people who were not in the building at the time of the fall.

One person is believed to be missing.

The only victims who survived were recovered from the site shortly after the tower collapsed.

Identification of remains has become more difficult over time

Of those found since then, all but one have been identified, officials said. However, the process has become increasingly difficult due to the heat wave and rain storms that have hit the region in recent weeks.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Cava said last week that the recovered remains could no longer be identified.

“We rely heavily on the work of the medical examiner’s office,” Levin Kava She said during a news briefing. “It’s a scientific process to identify human remains. Like we said, this work is getting more and more difficult with time.”

There have also been some setbacks in the round-the-clock research due to the dangerous and unstable conditions at the collapse site.

It may take a long time to investigate the cause of the apartment collapse

At least 22 million pounds of debris and concrete have been removed from the site and officials warn that the investigation is complex. Beware that it will be a slow and deliberate process and will take time to complete. The site was under the control of the Miami-Dade Police Department, classified as a crime scene.

Engineers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency that investigates collapses of buildings such as the World Trade Center, were deployed to Surfside on July 15. They will “gather evidence and determine how and why the South Champlain Tower collapsed,” Florida State Prosecutor Catherine Fernandez-Randel said in a statement. statment.

“To date, there have been many requests by engineers and lawyers to access this site due to their understandable desire to proceed with civil court proceedings. However, we cannot forget that the scene and all related materials are still under active investigation, preservation and examination and as usual the Law enforcement is responsible for the scene.”

Previous Reports Local authorities have shown warning residents of “significant structural damage” and “Fatal error“In construction of the building as early as October 2018 – three years before the building’s 40-year mandated inspection.

At the time, a local engineer discovered that the 12-story building’s structural slab was deteriorating. It was flat, not sloping. This caused water to pool on the surface, weakening the structure. Over the decades, according to the report, the concrete began to crumble, and the supporting columns rusted.

But despite the alarming revelations, residents of the Champlain Tower apartment have debated for years how to address the problems, as well as a $9 million price tag to fix the building’s problems.

They were reminded of the tragic results in a “state of the building” letter as recently as April. In it, the Apartment Council outlined the urgent need for $15 million in repairs, saying the construction discussion spanned months and years.

“The noticeable damage as in the garage has significantly worsened since the initial inspection,” the chairman wrote. “When you can visually see concrete cracking (cracking), it means that the rebar that holds it together is rusting and deteriorating beneath the surface.

It also sounded the alarm about the roof’s rapid deterioration, saying that “the situation has gotten worse” since the initial report was submitted.

Documents submitted to NPR show that the board approved a $15 million credit line request on April 13, 2021. However, structural repairs had not yet begun when the apartment collapsed two months later.