First police videos released in Surfside condo collapse: Scenes of shock, confusion, chaos
Body camera video from three of the first Surfside officers on the scene of the Champlain Towers South condo collapse captured scenes of almost unthinkable chaos: Thick clouds of dust, a landscape strewn with wreckage and cries of help from unseen, seemingly unreachable victims.
The town released the footage on Tuesday. The images are difficult to watch, reviving the shock and horror that faced the very first responders to the catastrophe early in the morning of June 24.
Officer Ariol Lage, whose body camera started filming about 1:24 a.m. — minutes after the collapse — scurried past debris and down a walkway, dust floating overhead and bright lights in front of him. He rushed into the parking garage to see half of it had collapsed. He peered down and asked if anyone was there. Then he heard a voice.
“Where are you? Are you OK?” he asks.
A woman responds: “No.”
“Anybody down there injured?” asks the officer.
“Yes,” is the response. “An old lady.”
Lage ran around to the beach access path on 87th Terrace to reach the survivors but a precarious wall stood in his way. It’s unclear what happened to the old lady or the woman he was communicating with.
“I started running in and I almost fall in the hole. The parking garage, half of it is gone,” Lage later told a firefighter before helping evacuate the nearby Blue Green Solara hotel.
The videos provided to the Miami Herald Tuesday afternoon offer the first detailed glimpse at the confusion police faced when they arrived at the scene at 8777 Collins Ave., dust still billowing around them.
The east side of the Champlain Towers South condo pancaked at about 1:20 a.m., while most residents slept. Police know that because many of the victims were recovered in bed or in their bedrooms. Why the tower went down is still unknown. Police were able to identify 98 bodies found under more than 26 million pounds of concrete and twisted steel during the monthlong rescue and recovery effort.
Each of the three body-worn camera videos is about 20 minutes long and taken between 1:24 a.m. and 1:45 a.m. What’s clear in the three videos is how impossible it was for first responders to assess the enormity of the catastrophe that would consume the small beachside community of about 5,700 for the next month.
That was abundantly clear when Surfside Officer Kemuel Gambirazio emerged from his patrol car and informed a supervisor or dispatch that officers needed help from neighboring Bal Harbour and Miami Beach. Making his way toward the rubble, the officer seemed to at first believe that only the garage had caved in.
When he asks someone “What happened?” and asks if he can climb over the wall, someone replies, “No.”
“This is what fell. It’s a hole here. We have to go the other way,” the man says.
Making his way around the fallen structure, Gambirazio is confronted by a man who said he just came down from the 12th floor penthouse.
“I was on my phone. I heard something, like, fall. Not a big deal,” the man said, clearly out of breath. “All of a sudden I hear, like it’s a f---ing jet like through my bathroom. Got up and said that a f---ing plane?” Then the man tells the officer, “That building was an L. The whole side came down.”
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said the videos took him back to the minute he arrived at the scene. It was just after 2 a.m.
“It was horrific — and inspiring at the same time,” said the mayor. “When we arrived there were rescue personnel climbing all over the pile [looking for people]. It was eerie and spooky and reminiscent of what we saw on the TV after 9/11. There were people covered in dust. People were wandering around sort of in a total fog.”
On yet another video, Surfside Officer Craig Lovellette calls his supervisor while he’s making his way down a walkway. Haunting, hollow, faraway voices can be heard wailing in the background.
“Help me,” a person cries.
“Captain,” the police officer says into his radio. “The Champlain Towers, the building collapsed. The Champlain Towers building collapsed. The back part of the building collapsed.”
Then, after taking a breath, “We don’t know. It just, somebody heard a loud noise and it just came down. Fire Rescue is on the way. This is huge. I mean humongous.”
As the officer walked away from the scene, got into his patrol car and rolled slowly down the street, a man banged on the vehicle. The officer told him not to hit the car. When the man asks the officer if he speaks Spanish, the officer says no, he’s sorry, he doesn’t.
“Esta lastimada mi mujer,” or my wife is injured, the man says as the officer drives off.
Lovellette then reaches some other Surfside cops on Collins Avenue who seem clearly frustrated when Miami-Dade Fire Rescue shows up and tells them it’s too dangerous for them to go into or near the building. The damage was so massive that even on Collins Avenue, directly in front of the section of the building that remained upright, there were broken chunks of concrete.
At about that time, Champlain Towers South Security Guard Shamoka Furman reached Lovellette. She was working the night shift when the building came down around her. She heard a series of loud bangs and called 911, then helped two kids and an older man and woman to safety through the garage as she escaped harm.
Still trying to understand what happened, Furman told her story.
“I didn’t think we had earthquakes. I don’t know what went on,” she said. “I don’t even know how I made it out. By the grace of God. I can’t even do this stuff anymore.”
