Florida apartment collapse death toll hits 5

SURFSIDE (United States) – The death toll from the partial collapse of a Florida high-rise apartment rose to five yesterday, as officials continue to hold out hope for survivors following the release of an engineering report from three years ago that warned of “major structural damage”.

The increase in the death toll by one underscores the slow and painstaking search process more than two days after part of the 12-storey oceanfront building here, near Miami Beach, pancaked into a mountain of debris as residents slept inside.

“Today, our search-and-rescue teams found another body in the rubble,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters yesterday evening.

With the identification of three previously recovered bodies and notification of the next of kin, “it means that the unaccounted has now gone down to 156; confirmed deaths are now at a total of five”.

Rescuers were able to battle back a fire that hampered their efforts earlier in the day, and workers dug a trench through the debris to control the “very deep” blaze.

The passage of time with no further survivors being found raises fears of a much higher death toll as rescuers sift through the debris with heavy machinery and sniffer dogs, and as increasingly frustrated families continue their agonising wait.

At a makeshift memorial on a nearby street, well-wishers piled flowers and lit candles, while family members posted dozens of pictures of missing persons on a chain-link fence.

Two big cranes yesterday continued shifting debris as the acrid smell of burnt rubber and melting plastic hung in the baking Florida heat.

Authorities and experts have stressed that the causes for Champlain Tower South’s collapse are still unknown. 

But, the report of an engineering consultancy that studied the building in 2018, and released late Friday by officials, underlines early concerns.

It said its inspectors found “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below a ground-level pool deck, and “abundant” cracking and crumbling in the parking garage.

“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” said the report from the Morabito Consultants firm.

Most of the damage “was probably caused by years of exposure to the corrosive salt air along the South Florida coast”.

The report did not indicate that the 40-year-old building risked collapse, but said it required repairs to maintain “structural integrity”.

A lawyer for the building’s owners told The New York Times that work was “just about to get started" on the multimillion-dollar repairs.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters yesterday that local officials are “considering potentially evacuating” a nearby building constructed by the same developers around the same time as the collapsed structure.

But, he said there are no indications of immediate danger there.

A study led by Florida International University found signs of land subsidence – a phenomenon affecting much of the Atlantic coast – at the site in the mid-1990s.

Cava said the county will immediately undertake a one-month safety audit of all buildings 40 years or older. – AFP, June 27, 2021