Who are the people sifting through the rubble at the Surfside building collapse?

The disaster in Surfside has drawn emergency crews from across Florida. The number of people on the ground is equal to what was deployed in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, a Category 5 hurricane that devastated the Panhandle in 2018, officials said.

“What is different is that I can’t recall anytime that we’ve deployed all eight teams in the history of Florida for one single catastrophic collapse,” Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie told the Miami Herald in a phone interview Monday afternoon. The division is tasked with the state’s response to disasters like hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guthrie is referring to Florida’s eight Urban Search and Rescue task force teams, about 370 people, who are assisting in the search and rescue efforts in Surfside. They’re trained to work together and are specialized in a variety of disaster responses, including underwater rescues, trench rescues and rescues from structural collapses.

They include the Miami-Dade Urban Search and Rescue team — two groups known around the world for their lifesaving efforts, including during 9/11. The team is composed of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel and outside specialists, and is divided into groups that include command, rescue, search, medical and planning. The team also has nine FEMA-certified canine groups, each with one handler and one search dog.

The other task forces are from across the state, including Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Tallahassee and Ocala. There’s also teams of search-and-rescue specialists from Israel and Mexico. Crews are using heavy equipment such as cranes, excavators and nibblers, dogs, cameras, sonar and infrared technology.

Some of the K-9’s searching the rubble are trained to find survivors. Others are trained to find the dead.

“This is the largest ever deployment of task force resources in the history of the state of Florida that’s not a hurricane,” said Florida’s Chief Financial Officer and State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis during a news conference Monday morning.

“The same number of men and women that are on the ground right now is the same that was deployed to Hurricane Michael, which was a 12-county storm event,” he said. “... They come and they leave their families. They come to work around the clock. Their reward is the lives they save.”

Why are all 8 of Florida’s Urban Search and Rescue teams at Surfside?

Not all of the task forces arrived to Surfside on the same day. On Thursday, shortly after the Champlain South Condo Tower collapsed, a regional coordinator for the state’s emergency management division arrived to see what support local officials needed.

It wasn’t long before the state’s fire marshal office, which oversees the urban search and rescue task force teams, activated Miami-Dade’s team, also known as Task force 1 and 2. Then, as the search and rescue mission became more complex, decisions were made in “real-time” to call for back-up depending on what local officials said they needed, Guthrie said.

The final task forces arrived in Surfside Sunday night, completing the cavalry.

All eight teams are needed because of the “complexity” surrounding Surfside’s collapse, Guthrie said.

“If you have a single family house crash down, then you’re not going to need every resource in the state of Florida. If you have an apartment complex fall down, a structural collapse, probably one team might be able to handle that,” Guthrie said. “When you have a 12-story concrete condominium” collapse with more than 150 people unaccounted for “you need everything you possibly can.”

The rubble of the structure, which “pancaked,” also complicated things. So did the deep-seated fire crews had to battle for days.

“These are heavy, heavy slabs. The concrete is so mired together. There’s rebar running through all of that concrete. It complicates the response,” Guthrie said. Eventually, he said that Miami-Dade Fire Rescue decided that they needed all eight teams. “And I agree that’s the right call.”

The teams rotate in 12-hour shifts, from midnight to noon and noon to midnight. This means not every team member is working in the pile at the same time. Some of this can be attributed to safety reasons but it also has to do with maximizing resources.

During their 12-hour shifts, each individual team member will work in the rubble for 45 minutes and then will stop to get their oxygen level and temperature checked by a physician to make sure they’re OK.

Once the doctor gives them medical clearance, they get back to work.

“And these guys, it’s not that they’re tired, they would just keep going and going and going. But, you know, at some point in time, we had to think about their health and their safety, “Guthrie said. “And there’s only so long you can work in the South Florida sun for so many days without it, you know, really impacting your health.”

A search dog from Mexico is at the Surfside collapse site, working with a global crew

Counseling, housing and other aid

Other departments and agencies are assisting in aid efforts.

▪ The Florida Department of Transportation is providing additional excavators, dump trucks and front-end loaders to help crews search through the debris.

▪ The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is providing traffic control in the area.

▪ The Florida Department of Health is coordinating with the Miami Poison Control Center to review personal protective equipment and respond to potentially public health hazards.

▪ The American Red Cross, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and Catholic Charities are assisting displaced residents and those who are waiting to find out about missing loved ones. This includes helping them with temporary housing and mental health and spiritual health counseling.

▪ The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity has a mobile unit to help people complete housing assistance applications and coordinate other resources for businesses impacted by the search and rescue operation.

▪ Hatzalah of South Florida is working with pharmacies to ensure anyone affected by the collapse still has access to their medications, according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.