1 dead, dozens rescued after condominium partially collapses

A massive search and rescue effort is underway after part of a 12-story residential building collapsed early Thursday in the South Florida town of Surfside, leaving dozens unaccounted for.
One person is dead, Surfside Mayor Charles W. Burkett said. Two people have been pulled from the rubble at Champlain Towers South since the collapse happened around 1:30 a.m., Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Ray Jadallah said, without addressing their conditions.
About 55 of the building's 136 units collapsed, Jadallah said, leaving huge piles of rubble and materials dangling from what remained of the structure in the beachfront community a few miles north of Miami Beach.
Rescuers helped a boy from the debris alive, a witness said, and video showed responders helping others leave the standing portions of the building, sometimes using a bucket atop a fire truck's ladder.
"We are going to do everything we can possibly to identify and rescue those who have been trapped in the rubble," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Thursday morning.
Besides the two pulled from rubble, 35 others had been helped from standing portions of the building, Jadallah said.
At least 51 people were unaccounted for as of around 10 a.m., having been reported missing to the county's emergency reunification hotline, Miami Dade County Commissioner Sally Heyman told CNN.
Surveillance video obtained by local Fox Sports radio anchor Andy Slater appears to show the collapse: A huge section of the building fell first, followed by another portion about nine seconds later.
A resident on the third floor, Barry Cohen, heard what he thought sounded like an explosion. His apartment was intact, but when he opened his door and tried to leave, he "looked down the hallway … and there was nothing there," he said.
"It was just a pile of dust, and rubble," and the building shook as he awaited rescue, Cohen told CNN's "New Day."
After about 20 minutes, a rescue crew used a cherry picker to help him, his wife and another resident from a balcony, he said.
#Newsroom #CNN #News

97 comments

  1. Those rescue workers shouldn’t be standing under that building!! Those supports are so skinny and they all look like they’ve been compromised!

    1. Exactly what I was thinking the posts look very insubstantial to be supporting a building of that size.

    1. @Faysal El idrissi It happened after midnight…I would think most people were sleeping, so the number of lights on wouldn’t come close to indicating who was home.

  2. I would not be surprised to hear that corrupt officials in the building department had something to do with allowing the building to be constructed to a substandard method. Who were the inspectors? Who was the structural engineer? Who was the contractor?

    1. @Friend
      Has zero to do with republicans. Or Democrats.
      These condos were all built with cocaine money . As was most of Miami Beach .
      It was most likely a payout to inspectors to simply just sign away . No one was turning their heads away from cash when most of this was built .
      Absolutely no one .

    2. @Katelyn Nordby cocaine money put up this building ,
      Love how every comment immediately try’s to blame trump or republicans for a building that had zero to do with politics at all .
      And everything to do with the entire city taking quick cash payouts from the cartels ..including building inspectors

    3. There is pretty good chance that based on the voting demographics, most of the victims were democrats….how cool is that?!

    1. @jeff giddens because when people didnt rely on machines as much construction was more advanced and better quality…. my family built a brick house in 1877 and it is still around today

    2. @jeff giddens materials were much better higher quality plus there was as much pride in building something to last forever
      1980s that was built with the cocaine $$ to clean so short cuts I’m sure we’re taken in Miami.

    3. Concrete cracks exposed Steel comes into contact with salt water over a couple years it could be fatally weakened
      A building inspector should have found that

  3. People need to realize when they take short cuts in massive projects like these they risk others lives, I wouldn’t be surprised if people are held accountable for negligence

    1. Lol I love when people that have no engineering or construction experience talk like they got all the answers. I got 15 plus years as an engineer doing buildings mainly mechanical design. People don’t take shortcuts with any buildings there’s eyes everywhere.

    2. @Mark Warren THE FORCES OF NATURE SHOULDN’T BE TAKEN LIGHTLY☠️
      ….’YES – LAND IS FALLING INTO THE OCEANS….JUST LIKE MELTING GLACIERS
      ….BIG TALL BUILDINGS BUILT NEXT TO THE BEACH COMMUNITIES SHOULDN’T BE NO DIFFERENT THAN THE SAND ITS SELF

    3. Yes, but those shortcuts saved the building owners money. Isn’t that more important than the lives of the people in the building?

  4. Sinkhole oe sea air? How old is the “ocean-front” wing & bldg.? I’ve seen re-bar cavities in crumbling cement.

    1. Sinkhole , it’s well known there is more sea than dirt under them structures and the seal level rose ,it’s not rocket science

    2. Buildings near or on the seafront have to be built to certain regulations. Poor building materials and contractors cutting corners to get the maximum profits.

  5. This reminds me of when Dave Rubin tried to say to Joe Rogan that building code regulations are too much. That the country needs less regulations in general.

    1. Republicans are human viruses, whose main purpose is to sit back and watch people die from gun violence, poverty, climate change, ignorance and lack of affordable health care, all in the name of deregulation and greed.

    2. there is no too much design. the computation of the loads in buildings must be balance always and the columns must be enough to carry the loads including the temperature, earthquake and hurricane.

  6. I heard a nearby resident on the news today, talking about how repairs were being made to the roof of the building, and that they had big heavy cranes and other heavy materials on the roof of the side of the building that collapsed. It’s possible that could have contributed to the collapse. Time will tell, nobody knows just what happened yet.

    1. If a crane could do that amount of damage their was definitely issues with the structure and foundation of that building.

    2. That makes sense now, the structure wasn’t designed for those additional loads. The contractor might be liable here. Means & methods.

    3. It is also possible over the building’s lifetime something weakened the structure and the new air conditioning unit pushed the building over the edge

    4. I am sorry but if an heavy crane can top a building like this the structure was not sound. When we know that many buildings are constructed with cutting corners by owners something tells me that was probably what happened here.

    1. OmG you’re right, all the battery powered emergency lights flickered lol. Call alex Jones to investigate 🤣

    2. Incorrect. This building has been sinking slowly over the past 15-20 years.

      “I looked at this morning and said ‘Oh my God.’ We did detect that,” Shimon Wdowinski, professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University, told the newspaper.

      Wdowinski said his research found the building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s, and the sinking could have slowed or accelerated in the time since. The study was not done for the purpose of determining the soundness of the building but as part of an ongoing project to identify which parts of Miami could be most impacted by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.

      “It was a byproduct of analyzing the data. We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” he told the newspaper.

      This was negligence.

    3. @John M I just made an observation, I could be right, I could be wrong. Either way it is a Tragedy.

    1. Every time the audit results are confirming Trump, these False Flags happen. It’s all about the audits.

    2. There is pretty good chance that based on the voting demographics, most of the victims were democrats….how cool is that?!

  7. It’s crazy how bad our infrastructure is right now, we need to reinvest in building up the country.

    1. Won’t happen under Sleepy Creepy Slimy Pervy Sniffy Handsy Grabby Lying Uncle Joey the Clown 🤡.

  8. Regular building inspections please. I personally hate highrise apartments. May those that passed RIP.

    1. Same. I could never live in a high rise because my worst fear would be either something like this happening, or being trapped on a higher floor during a fire.

    1. I was definitely selling my condo. This screams of undermined foundations and eroded infrastructure.

    2. @Lydia Lewis Could have been anything. It’s tough to review every building. The 80’s isn’t really an old building structurally. Got to look over the history of renovations etc. I got 15 plus years in infrastructure engineering. Mainly doing mechanical design now. Curious to see what happened here but if I had to guess this is a combination of geographic changes (plate shifting) or a structural renovation here that was done under false assumptions or bad building information.

  9. They need to stop using the term “partial,” it’s misleading. This was caused by a major structural failure. It’s not partial when 2/3 of a multistory building is nothing but rubble.

    1. But the roots and causes are coming from political and economics ideologies. Are not Florida a state pro less and less regulation for the advantage of Corporations and contractors. Republicans and Corp democrats trash trash people.

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