Death toll rises to 16 as rescue teams enter 7th day of searching collapsed condo

Four more bodies have been found in the rubble of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South, fire officials told families on Wednesday, as rescue teams entered the seventh day of scouring the site for survivors.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a Wednesday morning briefing that the death toll has risen to 16 people, though only 12 families have been notified of their loved one’s death. Levine Cava said 139 people who lived or worked in the portion of the tower that collapsed have been accounted for, but another 147 are still reported missing.

Teams have been working through the rubble at a faster pace after engineers and first responders built a ramp overnight Tuesday to bring cranes, backhoes and other heavy equipment closer to the sunken pool deck, which experts and survivors have said collapsed first, potentially triggering the disaster.

Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky emphasized that the priority is still search and rescue, and noted that conditions on the pile are becoming more dangerous as debris moves and shifts or falls from the portion of the tower that remains standing. Though heavy equipment is allowing workers to move larger and heavier pieces of debris, Cominsky said some large concrete slabs are not holding together.

“They’re crumbling as we try to move them,” he said.

While rescue teams burn through gloves, boots and other gear in the ongoing search for survivors, mental health counselors are helping families cope with the anguish and despair of the tragedy.

Charles Cyrille, deputy incident commander for Miami-Dade, said the “all hands on deck” response includes 26 organizations that are present at the family assistance center providing grief counseling, and help with housing and other needs.

Levine Cava pledged that officials would also get to the bottom of what caused the collapse. saying that she has spoken with Miami-Dade’s state attorney about asking a grand jury to investigate the catastrophe. Miami-Dade has also launched a mass inspection of buildings that are in the process of a 40 years or older and taller than five stories.

“As we continue our search and rescue efforts 24/7 without stop,” she said, “we’re also taking immediate action to provide answers and accountability,” she said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, speaking at the news briefing in Surfside on Wednesday, said the state is committing more resources to helping families cope with the tragedy in the long term. And he vowed that the search and rescue would continue until every person is accounted for.

“Rest assured,” he said, “that those folks are going to be working on that pile, and it’s not going to stop, and they’re going to get answers one way or another.”

Victims identified

One family confirmed Wednesday that the 12th person found dead at the site was Hilda Noriega, 92, the mother of North Bay Village Police Chief Carlos Noriega and a resident of Champlain Towers South unit 602. Hilda Noriega had lived at the condominium for more than 20 years and had recently listed her unit for sale, planning to move in with family.

“The Noriegas have lost the ‘heart and soul’ and ‘matriarch’ of their family, but will get through this time by embracing the unconditional love Hilda was known for,” said the family’s statement posted to the North Bay Village Twitter account.

Officials have not identified the four additional bodies recovered from the site because they are notifying family members first. A long line of Miami-Dade County police cars and medical examiner vans are at the site on Collins Avenue.

Reminders are everywhere of the gaping void that the catastrophe has left in so many lives.

Just before 8 a.m., one man approached a makeshift memorial affixed to a chain link fence one block away from the site and in the shadow of the Champlain Towers. He placed white roses near a baby doll and a toy Nerf gun — mementos arranged along with photographs of the missing and an array of carnations. The makeshift shrine is waterlogged after days and nights of persistent rain.

As he crouched down, alone on the sidewalk, his face cracked as he lifted his shirt over his face.

“It’s just so sad,” he said quietly, as he walked away.

The families

As teams continue the painstaking search and rescue — and families and friends of the missing await information about the fate of their loved ones — President Joe Biden said he will visit Surfside on Thursday and Miami-Dade officials pledged to find answers for the catastrophic collapse.

Family members of those unaccounted for said they remained hopeful, despite the strong undercurrent of despair and futility. Hundreds of people gathered Monday night at a beach vigil to remember the victims of the building collapse, with both relatives and strangers joining in the silence and the pain.

“I have not lost any hope or faith,” said Martin Langesfeld, whose 26-year-old sister, Nicole, lived in unit 804 of Champlain Towers South with her husband, Louis. “I know she’s still there, I know it,” Langesfeld told WPLG-Channel 10.

Levine Cava said police detectives are reviewing the list of missing persons — provided by friends and family members who reported the information — in order to remove duplicate names and get a more accurate account. She said the process is “slow and methodical,” and she urged anyone with information about a missing resident to call the county’s hot line at 305-614-1819.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said she would ask a grand jury to examine the condo collapse and safety issues raised by the tragedy. The structural engineer hired by the town of Surfside to investigate the building collapse began his work on-site Tuesday, focusing on the portion of Champlain Towers South that is still standing and whether it is safe for search-and-rescue teams.

The searchers

Rescue teams have contended with nearly a week of rain, heat, fires deep inside the rubble and the instability of the pile itself. Falling and shifting debris pose deadly risks for rescue workers, and those conditions can slow the search.

Teams have removed three million pounds of concrete from the site, Miami-Dade’s fire chief said on Tuesday night.

The commander of the Israeli National Rescue Unit told CNN early Wednesday that rescue teams discovered new tunnels in the rubble Tuesday night, leading them to find more bodies.

On Tuesday, Cominsky, the county’s fire chief, said rescue workers are not going back into the west section of the building facing Collins Avenue — the section that remains standing — because it is too dangerous. He also noted that they cannot enter a large area under the rubble on the eastern side because of the same risk.

Helping rescue teams search for survivors are at least two small unmanned devices sent from a Massachusetts-based company over the weekend to the Surfside collapse scene. They are equipped with thermal sensors and 360-degree-view cameras that can help teams search for people and that have previously helped rescuers in similar situations, including the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11.

Preparing for multiple disasters

Four weeks into hurricane season, emergency officials said they must be prepared for potential storms anywhere in the state.

With every Florida Urban Search and Rescue Task Force currently deployed to Surfside, officials said they have requested reinforcements in Surfside in case crews are needed to respond to a storm elsewhere in Florida.

Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said he and Cominsky made the decision together to request additional resources from the federal government.

Cominksy said officials had already requested to have three federal teams on standby in case they’re needed. One will now be deployed to Surfside, he added.

“Due to the recent five-day forecast with two storms, we decided that it would be best to go ahead and activate them,” he said.

Guthrie said on Wednesday that state emergency officials are working with the state’s chief meteorologist and the National Hurricane Center to track storms.

“The state emergency response team is extremely experienced in managing multiple disasters at one time,” he said.

Structural problems

While rescue teams continue their work, engineers and others have started what is expected to be a lengthy investigation. They are also working to inspect the condition of buildings adjacent to Champlain Towers South and ensure their structural integrity.

Allyn Kilsheimer, founder and chief executive of KCE Structural Engineers based in Washington, D.C., has consulted on major disasters like the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the Florida International University bridge collapse. He said the firm would perform an “in-depth evaluation” of the cause of the collapse.

Potential clues have begun to emerge about what caused the building at 8777 Collins Ave. to fail.

An engineer’s 2018 report flagged “major structural damage” in the pool deck, entrance ramp and garage areas below the Champlain Towers South, yet the chief building official for the town of Surfside told residents the condo building was “in very good shape,” according to minutes from a November 2018 board meeting obtained by the Miami Herald.

Ross Prieto, the chief building official who left the post in Surfside last year, announced Tuesday that he has taken a leave of absence as Doral’s temporary building official.

And an email posted on the town’s website showed that condo board member Mara Chouela sent Prieto two reports: the “structural field survey report” by engineer Frank Morabito of Morabito Consultants detailing the building’s structural deficiencies, and a mechanical and electrical engineering report by Thomas E. Henz, P.E.

USA TODAY reported on Monday that a letter sent in April from the president of the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association said that damage to the doomed building’s basement garage had “gotten significantly worse” since an inspection about two and a half years earlier and that deterioration of the building’s concrete was “accelerating.”

More recently, a commercial pool contractor who visited the condo building last Tuesday, just 36 hours before half of the structure unexpectedly collapsed, said he discovered water and related damage throughout the basement-level garage.

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar in the pool equipment room.

He also took photos, which he shared with the Miami Herald.

The contractor visited the condo building last week to put together a bid for a cosmetic restoration of the pool as well as to price out new pool equipment — a small piece of the multimillion-dollar restoration project that just was getting underway at the 40-year-old building.

Based on public records, video footage of the building’s collapse and other images of the property, several engineering experts told the Herald that they suspect the pool deck and parking garage area caved in first, which then caused the middle and oceanfront sections of the tower to crumble under their own weight.

Changes to building inspections

While the answers to the Champlain Towers South partial collapse won’t be known until a forensic investigation is complete, structural engineers and architects said there are a number of sophisticated sensing techniques and tests — sonar, radar, hand-held x-rays, salinity tests and magnetic imaging — that can help engineers detect problems early by assessing conditions inside a concrete beam or beneath the foundation.

Neither Miami-Dade County nor the state of Florida requires inspectors to use any of those techniques or tests.

Joel Figueroa-Vallines at SEP Engineers, an Orlando-based forensic structural engineer, said he hoped an evaluation of Florida’s dated building inspection laws would lead to more thorough examinations statewide.

“To do a complete evaluation on a structure you need to include the foundation,’’ Figueroa-Vallines said. “The building could be designed perfectly and if the foundation fails, the building is still coming down.”

Miami Herald staff writers Samantha J. Gross, Doug Hanks, Mary Ellen Klas, Aaron Leibowitz, Bianca Padró Ocasio, Charles Rabin and Martin Vassolo contributed to this report