I’m Nicole Carroll, USA TODAY’s editor-in-chief, and this is The Backstory, an insight into our biggest stories this week. If you want to have The Backstory in your inbox every week, Register here.
USA TODAY reporter Romina Ruiz Guerina He was at the site of a Surfside condominium collapse just a few hours after first light last Thursday. A large part of the building collapsed to the ground during the night.
Fire trucks filled the streets, but they were eerily quiet.
The police tape was blocked, but no one stopped her.
She walked to the ruins – and went to work.
I quickly learned that the families were directed to a consolidation center up the street. She walked towards the center while interviewing a health aide who was also heading there. She was one of the first and remained one of the only reporters at the center all day.
The Surfside area has large Latino and Jewish communities and some are located at the intersection of both. Ruiz Guerina Jew and Latin. Miami is her hometown. I felt similarly comfortable giving interviews in English, Hebrew and Spanish.
In the center, I took hints from the people there. Those who look you in the eye are approaching. Those who openly grieve or refuse, you leave alone. When I approached, it was sympathetically. Every conversation began with “I’m so sorry.”
“We’ve talked to a lot of people on probably one of the worst days of their lives,” she said. “And they will always remember how you made them feel.”
Some wanted to share their story. Some wanted to express their frustration. Some wanted to be left alone. Respect Ruiz Guerena everything.
The families felt comfortable talking to her. Pablo Rodriguez told her how his mother and grandmother were in the building. His 6-year-old son kept asking him to call his grandmother’s mobile phone. “Her cell phone might be broken, but try again,” he told him.
Rodriguez’s mother, Elena Blaser, 64, and grandmother, Elena Chavez, 88, are among the 145 people still missing. At least 18 deaths have been confirmed.
The family was supposed to go swimming on Saturday.
“What am I going to tell my son?” Tears roll down his cheeks, said Rodriguez, 40. “Saturdays are the days of Abuela.”
Health aide Ruiz Guerena walked with a family looking after the building. I left on Wednesday around 9pm. It was a beautiful day, she said, “that she even took pictures of the birds on the balcony that afternoon.”
One family gave Ruiz Guerena a message that led to an important and exclusive story. President of the Society of Champlain Towers South He said damage to the collapsed building’s basement garage has “significantly worsened” since an inspection was conducted about two and a half years ago, and found that the deterioration of concrete in the building was “accelerating.”
“If they trust me enough with the other heavy things, if they can trust us with their feelings, they can trust us with their documents,” said Ruiz Guerena.
Investigative reporter Kyle Bagnestos I also broke an important story this week. He has a background in environmental reporting and knows his way around scientific research.
He found a 2020 study that showed the building Sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s.
Bagnstuz immediately contacted the researcher, Shimon Wodwinsky, a professor at Florida International University.
When Wdowinski saw the news of the collapse of the Champlain Towers South complex, he said he immediately remembered it from studying.
“I looked at her this morning and said, ‘Oh my God. We found out.’
The study did not use the building’s name, but Bagnestos found it out by examining the maps in the research and comparing them to existing maps of Surfside.
Wdowinski asserted that he was right. “He said they specifically identified movement in that building,” Bagnestos said.
But that’s just one of the factors that could be wrong.
In 2018, an engineering consultant hired by the condo association noted a “fatal error” in the building’s design and structural issues that needed fixing.
There are historical reports on issues related to the pool area, slab and mainly water.
A few months after the release of the FIU study, in July 2020, the Roof Moisture Survey found that “significant groundwater has been detected within building roof systems” and that “water intrusion will typically take the path of least resistance, and may eventually enter buildings” .
“Is it basically one thing or another?” asked Bagnestos. “I think that will be revealed over time. I think the really interesting thing for me is whether or not this turns out to be a severe problem. So this building uniquely had a set of issues and somehow it missed the inspection or this could be more scarier?
“This will take a long time to investigate.”
USA TODAY reporters have joined dozens of reporters from our network’s Florida newsrooms to cover the tragedy. Reporter Wendy Rhodes He was at Surfside for the Palm Beach Post.
For everyone else, they balance their duty to report and report with the emotion of the task. Rhodes headed to what she called the “Wall of the Missing,” the chain-link fence near the collapse as family members post pictures of their loved ones in the tower.
On Saturday, I saw a woman standing there.
“She had a baby on her hip,” Rhodes said. “And I had no impression that she knew someone. She would walk from picture to picture and would look at them and read them, and she would reach out and touch each picture.” Her voice is striking.
“I don’t know if she liked to pray or what she was doing, but it was so tender and the baby was so sad and so calm. It was really a touching moment because I didn’t feel like she knew anyone there. She was just someone who cared.”
Ruiz Guerina She said she never lost sight of the people in that building, the missing, the confirmed dead, “especially because I was with the families, with the affected people.
“For me, the best thing I can do is report, is literally put their words and their pain on paper. These families have questions. The best thing I can do is do my job.”
Dramatic background: How a Florida newspaper ended up on the moon — and then became our first NFT
Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] or Follow her on Twitter here. Thank you for supporting our press. You can subscribe here.
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