After pleas, anguished families visit Surfside condo ruins to pray and mourn the lost

After days of pleading, families on Sunday were allowed to visit the ruins of the Champlain Towers South condo to grieve and pray for loved ones lost somewhere under tons of concrete and steel.

The visits were raw moments of catharsis kept private, away from the crush of media that has descended on the small beach town of Surfside. In the early afternoon, many families boarded Miami-Dade County buses for the six-block trip from the Grand Beach Hotel to the search-and-rescue site now crawling with heavy equipment and dozens of workers.

Many wept, wearing T-shirts adorned with photos of their missing loved ones. Victims advocates helped shield families’ faces with clipboards and umbrellas as they boarded. When they arrived at the site, several people yelled out names at the mountain of debris in hopes someone might hear, according to an official who accompanied the families.

Many hoped the trips would help still-shocked relatives process an unprecedented and horrific building collapse. For the families gathered in the reunification center, the wait has been anguishing and some have lashed out at the pace of the recovery in meetings with county leaders and rescue commanders.

A video posted to the Instagram account @abigailpereiraok of the Saturday afternoon update meeting for families and loved ones showed an official telling families they were working on setting up a Sunday afternoon visit. In the same meeting, frustrations boiled over, with some family members yelling at Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Gov. Ron DeSantis over the slow pace of recovery efforts.

“Maybe other eyes have other ways of going at it!” said one mother, who questioned why an Israeli team wasn’t already on the scene. The room was later told another group from Israel was on the way in addition to the Israeli rescue workers already present.

When their voices echoed through the rubble and what was left of the Champlain tower during one visit, officials eventually had to tell the families to keep quiet as the 240 rescue workers and their dogs continued their mission. For them, silence is what will save lives, as officials continue to rely on tapping and scratching sounds permeating from beneath the concrete, acting on crucial guidance on where to start digging.

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Anguishing wait

In the hours before county buses arrived to ferry loved ones to the scene of the collapse, Sen. Rick Scott met with Nachman Shai, Israel diaspora affairs minister and members of the Jewish community at a long table in the bustling lobby of the Grand Beach, where families and loved ones sat and waited for news. Many of them have been waiting for days, with little sleep.

Scott then went to meet with families in a second-floor conference room set up with food, drinks, flowers and many volunteers. He met with people who told them they needed more information. He later told the Herald “it’s gotten a lot better.”

Families and friends huddled together in small groups in a place where it was difficult to feel comfortable. They held paper cups of coffee, tapped on cellphones, and locked hands with their loved ones. Their heads fell into laps, buried into sweatshirts, rested on shoulders. They shook back and forth as they recounted the horror of the last 96 hours. A stash of ibuprofen was available for those aching after hours of crying.

Pieces of notebook paper labeled nearby rooms and gave directions.

“Victim advocate.”

“Do not open.”

“Use other door.”

A wooden easel stands in the middle of the room to hold maps, which are updated through the day, that show the rubble divided into zones where workers are drilling into cement and battling spot fires. Counseling booths with free mental health resources line the hallways while therapy dogs like 14-month-old Oscar, a yellow Lab, roamed the floor. Strangers became familiar as they shared their grief and frustration.

After the visit, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she thinks the visit brought solace to some of the families.

“I think a lot of them who chose to go close to the pile today, just being in close proximity, seeing the magnitude and the gravity, I think that was helpful to them,” she said. “That is what they’ve been wanting.”

Herald staff writers Bianca Padró Ocasio, David Goodhue and David J. Neal contributed to this report.