Collapsed building in Florida: a month later, the research is coming to an end

Published on : 07/25/2021 – 8:30 AM

A month after the Champlain Towers South building collapsed in Florida, the search for victims was coming to an end after the firefighters stopped their operations on site. The disaster left at least 97 dead.

“It’s hard to believe that a month has passed since what is perhaps the greatest tragedy in the history of our community,” Daniella Levine Cava, Mayor of Miam County, tweeted Saturday, July 24. Dade, in which the town of Surfside is located.

“Although the site of the collapse was limited to one block,” “its impact was felt far beyond our county, affecting lives around the world,” she added in a statement. video posted on the social network.

Rescue teams ended their search for remains in the rubble of the building on Friday, local authorities said. They had been working on the site since June 24, when the twelve-story waterfront building collapsed in the middle of the night.

With the exception of a teenager rescued during the first hours, the rescuers could not save any of the inhabitants of this building, and announced on July 7 that they would abandon the search for survivors in an attempt to find the remains.

Search for a 98th victim

After the evacuation of thousands of tons of rubble, the site is now empty, and only a few foundation walls still mark the location of the building, north of Miami Beach.

Authorities, who managed to identify 97 bodies, believe a victim is still missing, Daniella Levine Cava said this week.

Miami-Dade County Police continue to search for the 98th victim at the site where the rest of the debris was stored.

If, a month after the disaster, its reasons are still unknown, the first elements of the investigation revealed that the structure of the building seemed in places degraded.

The rest of the building had been evacuated and underwent a controlled demolition on July 4, as authorities believed its instability endangered rescue teams.

With AFP