Presidential visit follows call to suspend search at Surfside condo collapse over ‘structural concerns’

SURFSIDE, Calif. — Search and rescue crews were forced early Thursday to stop work at the site of the Surfside condo building partial collapse, hours before the arrival of President Joe Biden.

Local officials said structural engineers expressed concerns about movement of a portion of the Champlain Towers South complex that did not collapse when other sections fell one week ago. It’s not clear when the rescue effort, now in its eighth day, will resume after the pause began at 2:11 a.m. local time.

“President Biden’s visit will have no impact on what happens at the site,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters. “The search and rescue operation will continue as soon as it is safe to do so. The only reason for this pause is concerns about the standing structure.”

Families of missing relatives were told about the reasons for the delay, as teams of state experts study the problem.

“We’re doing everything we can to ensure that the safety of our first responders is paramount and to continue our search and rescue operations as soon as it is safe to do so,” Levine Cava said.

No survivors have been found since the initial hours after the disaster. But Wednesday brought a grim discovery as the bodies of two little girls, sisters ages 4 and 10, were recovered. With the recovery of the siblings — Emma and Lucia Guara — and two others on Wednesday, the official death toll grew to 18.

Complications of the search and commemoration of the victims create the backdrop for the site on Thursday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said emergency managers were watching Tropical Storm Elsa, which has formed in the Atlantic. All of South Florida is in its current forecast path, though no storm impacts are expected through Saturday.

The president and first lady Jill Biden arrived in Miami about 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

The president began the visit by receiving a briefing from DeSantis, Levine Cava and other officials at the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort. Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose district includes Surfside, also attended the session with the president.

“I want to pick up 100% of the cost from the county and the state over the first 30 days,” Biden said in his opening remarks. “I think I’m quite sure I can do that.”

The president said federal support is critical because “there’s going to be a lot of pain, and anxiety and suffering, and the need for psychological help in the days and months that follow, and so we’re not going anywhere, for real.”

“Mr. President, we cannot thank you enough for being here with us, for showing your extraordinary support from day one,” Levine Cava said. “We are going to be examining every inch of this catastrophe.”

DeSantis also thanked Biden for the federal government’s assistance, noting that it’s been free of any bureaucratic obstacles.

“What we just need now is a little bit of luck, a little bit of prayer,” the governor said. “We would like to see some miracles happen.”

Just before noon, the Bidens met with around 50 uniformed first responders in a hotel ballroom.

“What you’re doing now is just hard as hell to deal with, even psychologically, to deal with,” Biden told a group of first responders gathered at the resort, not far from the collapsed condo tower. “I just want to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Until we need you, no one fully appreciates what you do,” Biden added. “But I promise you — we know. We know. What you’re doing here is incredible, having to deal with the uncertainty, and worrying about the families.”

The Bidens then proceeded to meet with the families.

Karine Jean-Pierre, principal deputy White House press secretary, told reporters on board Air Force One that wasn’t clear if Biden would visit the Surfside disaster site, citing the logistical challenge of the president visiting an active search and rescue operation.

Meanwhile, 145 people remain unaccounted for, with hope dimming each day.

“Obviously we believe that continuing searching is something that’s very, very important,” the governor said.

Before the unexpected pause on the search efforts, the work had accelerated Wednesday with the addition of a new ramp and a crane to haul away massive pieces of concrete — offering a glimmer of hope to families of missing residents.

“Bringing the heavy equipment in ... could lead to those incredible good news events,” State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis said in a Miami television interview, adding that workers found tunnels under the rubble. “We’re doing everything possible to make sure every life that can be saved is saved.”

Mindful of the fears gripping relatives of the suspected victims, authorities had vowed to continue the search around the clock despite the potential for bad weather and still-dangerous conditions for workers on the mound.

The Surfside emergency has received the state’s largest disaster response for any nonhurricane event. More than 500 workers from across the state and from Israel and Mexico are at the scene, working 12-hour shifts in treacherous conditions.

Rescuers spoke with one woman who was still alive immediately after the collapse, according to WPLG-TV. The woman was trapped inside the garage after one of the lower levels fell.

“Everybody that was there, that’s what we’re trying to do, get this lady out and comfort her. ... She was asking for help and she was pleading to be taken out of there,” one rescuer who requested to remain anonymous told WPLG.

The rescuer later learned the woman didn’t survive, according to the channel.

While several state and federal agencies are conducting numerous investigations into why the 40-year-old tower fell and took lives with it, The Washington Post on Wednesday reported interviews with experts have raised questions about whether existing damage to a deck in the pool area contributed to the disaster.

Yet the examination also cautioned there may be “no single definitive cause.”

“There is a possibility that part of the pool (area) came down first and then dragged the middle of the building with it, and that made that collapse,” said Allyn E. Kilsheimer, a veteran engineer hired by Surfside to investigate the collapse. “And then once the middle of the building collapsed, No. 2, then the rest of the building didn’t know how to stand up and it fell down also, No. 3.”

The Post cited that of the more than a dozen experts interviewed for its article, including nine structural engineers, most agreed the collapse appeared to involve a failure at the lowest levels of the building or in the parking garage under it. Four experts viewing images of the rubble saw indications of “punching shear failure,” in which concrete slabs that make up the floors of a building detach from the structure’s vertical support columns.

The newspaper’s report came on the heels of intense media coverage Tuesday about a letter sent to homeowners April 9 outlining how damage to the building’s basement garage had “gotten significantly worse” since an inspection about 2 1/2 years earlier.

The letter informed residents about signs of an “accelerating” concrete failure and that the building’s roof required additional major repairs, with total price tag for all of the work soaring from about $9.1 million in 2018 to $16.2 million this year.

“A lot of this work could have been done or planned for in years gone by. But this is where we are now,” wrote Jean Wodnicki, president of the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association, according to The Associated Press.

These issues were first highlighted in a 2018 inspection by Morabito Consultants. That review found a “major error” in the design of the building, crumbling concrete columns in the garage area beneath the structure, and predicted that failure to fix the problems in the “near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.”

These and other findings are the focus of multiple civil lawsuits and a criminal grand jury that will decide who to hold accountable, and how to prevent it from happening someplace else.

The Washington Post reported that five of the seven members on the condo’s board resigned in a two-week span in the fall of 2019. The board’s president, Anette Goldstein, said she resigned, in part, because she felt the board was lagging in addressing the issues mentioned in the 2018 report.

“We work for months to go in one direction and at the very last minute objections are raised that should have been discussed and resolved right in the beginning,” Goldstein wrote in a September 2019 resignation letter, according to the Post. “This pattern has repeated itself over and over, ego battles, undermining the roles of fellow board members, circulation of gossip and mistruths. I am not presenting a very pretty picture of the functioning of our board and many before us, but it describes a board that works very hard but cannot for the reasons above accomplish the goals we set out to accomplish.”

James Olthoff, National Institute of Standards and Technology associate director for laboratory programs, said at the Wednesday night press conference that the agency is orchestrating a team to begin investigating what caused the deadly collapse.

Olthoff and others have warned it could possibly take years.

A video posted to TikTok on Tuesday appears to show the entrance to the parking garage of the north side of Champlain Towers South Condo with water pouring out of the ceiling of the garage and chunks of concrete covering the floor, the Miami Herald reported.

Anaely Rodriguez, 42, and Andreas Giannitsopoulos, 21, were also found dead Wednesday, police said.

According to the Miami Herald, Rodriguez was the mother of the young sisters, Emma and Lucia Guara. Their father, Marcus Guara, was found dead Saturday.

“Any loss of life, especially given the devastating nature of this event, is a tragedy,” Mayor Levine Cava said Wednesday night, “but the loss of our children is a grief too great to bear.”

Photos of the family of four are among the cards, flowers and mementos at the growing memorial wall near the site of the collapse. One is a wedding photo of Marcus Guara and his wife in white, tenderly embracing. Others show their four smiling faces never too far apart from one another, including group photos of them with family and friends who now will be without them.

With the death toll rising to 18, authorities have released the names of 16 victims so far. All but one was found dead at the site.

139 residents have been counted as safe.

Miami-Dade police are asking for anyone who may have witnessed the collapse or has photos or videos to contact a tip line at (305) 428-4417 from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. Eastern time.

Families and individuals who have been displaced were told they can register at SurfsideReunite.com, an alert system created by the state of Florida, Miami-Dade County and the town of Surfside to provide updates and access to resources. People can register for alerts by visiting SurfsideReunite.com or by calling the toll-free number (833) 930-3701.