Condo collapse live updates: Two child bodies found in rubble, raising death toll to 18.
7/1/2021: Click here for Thursday’s updates on Surfside’s building collapse.
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Rescue crews continue to search through the rubble for survivors at the 12-story oceanfront condo tower that partially collapsed in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach. The portion of Champlain Towers South that crumbled faces the ocean.
People who have loved ones at the condo, unaccounted for or safe, should call 305-614-1819 to notify officials. Anyone who lives at the Champlain Towers and is safe is asked to complete a Wellness Check form to help the Miami-Dade County keep track of tenants.
Here’s what we know so far:
Police ask public to come forward with any videos, photos of collapse
9: 00 p.m.: As investigators continue to look into the Champlain Towers South partial collapse, Miami-Dade police are asking the public to come forward with anything they have that may help them.
If you witnessed the collapse, police have created the Surfside Collapse Witness Tip Line. It will open from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and can be reached at 305-428-4417.
Police are also asking those who have photos or video to call the tipline as well.
Death toll rises to 18 in Surfside collapse. Two young sisters among those found.
8:00 p.m.: Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said two more bodies were pulled from the rubble in her evening conference.
Both of the bodies found from the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South were children. As of now, the death toll stands at 18 with 145 people unaccounted for and 139 accounted for.
“Any loss of life, especially given the devastating nature of this event, is a tragedy—but the loss of our children is a grief too great to bear,” Cava said.
Miami-Dade police released the names of four more victims who died in the collapse: Lucia Guara, 10; Emma Guara, 4; Anaely Rodriguez, 42; and Andreas Giannitsopoulos, 21.
Beach barriers at Surfside site turn into collapse memorial
6:00 p.m.: Shan and David Luvista, of Orange County, California, walked along the sandy beach in the rain from their vacation condo to see for themselves what’s left of the Champlain Towers. “We live in earthquake country,” David Luvista, 62, said. “This resonates.”
Authorities placed plastic Jersey barriers along the beach to prevent people from walking up directly to the property. The bottom of the barriers are lined with flowers, candles and stuffed animals.
You can still see rescue workers on top of the pile and hear the heavy machinery and mechanical tractor treads going over the debris though.
Even from the beach, the sounds and sight of the wreckage is chilling.
“We had to pay our respects,” Shan Luvista, 61, said.
The couple also said the news of the tragedy made them wary of staying in a tall building in the area.
“How about being worried about staying in a high rise? We don’t live in high rises,” Shan said. “This is really unusual. And, all these buildings, they’re getting old, so you have to wonder, what happened. What failed?”
TikTok video shows water gushing from Champlain Towers South garage before collapse
3:00 p.m.: Water was scene gushing from the roof of the Champlain Towers South garage moments before the building collapsed.
The video was posted on TikTok Tuesday from what appears to be the north side. Adriana Sarmiento had captured the video and to;d ABC 7 Chicago she was on vacation and swimming in a nearby hotel pool
Where is the debris from the Surfside building collapse going?
1:22 p.m.: The debris from the Surfside building collapse could hold clues to what caused the 12-story building to come down.
As of Tuesday, more than 3 million pounds of debris had been removed, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.
But, where is it going?
Instead of sending the piles of concrete and twisted metal to a landfill, the debris is being hauled away to a Florida Department of Transportation warehouse in an undisclosed location.
Israeli-backed efforts bring trauma therapy to Surfside
1:20 p.m.: Just 72 hours after part of an oceanfront condo collapsed in Surfside, members of the Homefront Command of the Israel Defense Forces were on their way to assist search and rescue efforts.
Not only did they bring physics and engineering specialists to expertly dig through rubble, but they also offered tools to help families cope with unprecedented trauma of what may be the deadliest accidental building collapse in American history.
A team of 11 search-and-rescue experts flew out Saturday afternoon after Gov. Ron DeSantis and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava accepted help from Maor Elbaz-Starinsky — the newly appointed Israel consul general from Miami.
Miami skyscraper lighting up with Estefan anthem in solidarity
1:16 p.m.: Miami’s skyline will light up every night with hundreds of fluttering flags and the words, “One World, One Prayer,” until the more than 100 people missing in Surfside’s building collapse are found.
The 60-story Paramount Miami Worldcenter, 851 NE First Ave. in downtown Miami, first lit up in a show of solidarity with the affected families on Thursday night, just hours after the Champlain Towers South Condo partially collapsed.
“It is a beacon of hope,” Paramount Miami Worldcenter CEO-Developer Daniel Kodsi said in a Wednesday news release. “We are a community in mourning; and we ask the world to pray for the families of the victims of this tragedy, and to pray for hope that more survivors will be found.”
Surfside condo collapse death toll rises to 16, officials say
11:54 a.m.: Four more bodies were found overnight in the rubble of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South, fire officials told families on Wednesday, as rescue teams entered the seventh day of scouring the site for survivors.
Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members at a Wednesday morning briefing, The Associated Press reported. In addition, Jadallah said that crews also found other human remains.
Teams have been working through the rubble at a faster pace after engineers and first responders built a ramp overnight Tuesday to bring cranes, backhoes and other heavy equipment closer to the crumbled pool deck.
Mother of police chief is 12th body pulled from Surfside condo collapse
9:00 a.m.: Family members on Wednesday confirmed that a 12th person found dead in the rubble of the building collapse in Surfside is the mother of North Bay Village Police Chief Carlos Noriega.
Hilda Noriega, 92, who lived in Apt. 602, was the only person to be recovered Tuesday.
“The Noreigas have lost the ‘heart and soul’ and ‘matriarch’ of their family, but will get through this time by embracing the unconditional love Hilda was known for,” the family said in a statement sent through North Bay Village government.
Bunk beds seen at Surfside collapse were part of this ‘beautiful’ furnished penthouse
7:25 a.m.: Of all the haunting scenes from the Surfside condo collapse, one image stands out as a symbol of the unimaginable tragedy: a picture of bunk beds on the top floor of the ravaged building.
The white bed set stands hardly touched amid the heart-wrenching devastation, its ladder bent ever so slightly and the sheets and pillows adorning the bottom bed.
Many wondered in horror if a child had been sleeping there before the June 24 calamity. It turns out the bed was part of a furnished apartment, and a child was likely not sleeping there when the Champlain Towers South went down in the middle of the night.
Celebrities send support to Surfside after condo collapse
7:10 a.m.: Famous faces have been showing up at the site of the Surfside tower collapse, helping out with supplies, food and morale. Others, like fellow Surfside neighbor Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner, have quietly contributed to volunteers and emergency crews.
Among the visitors to the reunification center near the Champlain Tower South disaster site was pop star Joe Jonas, who delivered pizzas to families just hours after the middle of the night tragedy.
Miami firm offering free housing to displaced condo collapse families
6:30 a.m.: Andreas King-Geovanis knows what it’s like to not have a home. To have to sleep in hotels and on the couches of friends.
He lived it in 2001, when his family moved about five blocks away from the World Trade Center. He remembers his mother was on her way to the towers when they fell.
“I was extremely, extremely fortunate to not lose anybody in my immediate family. But I remember vividly what it was like to go back to a home covered in dust, have to go through security checkpoints for months, and really just trying to get things back to normal was a challenge,” King-Geovanis said.
The 31-year-old CEO of Miami-based short-term rental company Sextant Stays sees a lot of “parallels” between 9/11 and the partial condo tower collapse in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach. He said it “feels personal,” and like a “moral obligation” to help, which is why he opened his newest property in Sunny Isles Beach weeks earlier than planned to temporarily house displaced families for free.
Hurricane season may hamper Surfside collapse rescue efforts. Authorities work to split resources
6:30 a.m.: The possibility of a busy hurricane season, already with four named storms, has authorities working on a plan so rescue efforts are not hampered at the Surfside condominium collapse.
Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie and Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky have requested thatFEMA deploy an additional search-and-rescue team to Surfside to free crews to handle possible storms in the next week.
“Due to the recent five-day forecast with two storms, we decided that it would be best to go ahead and activate them,” Cominsky said.
Two disturbances are being tracked in the Atlantic, but it’s too early to tell where they will go or if they will make it to storm status.
Third lawsuit filed against condo association details survivor’s experience
6:30 a.m.: A new lawsuit has been filed against the Champlain Towers South Condo Association, the third in Miami-Dade Circuit Court since the collapse last Thursday.
The suit contends the association engaged in “reckless and negligent conduct” by ignoring long-needed repairs to the building.
The class-action suit ask that similar lawsuits be consolidated, and that evidence be preserved to “determine everyone who is to blame for this tragedy and all of them be held responsible.”
Raysa Rodriguez, a retired postal worker, detailed her survival story in the suit. She witnessed chilling scenes as she raced out of Champlain Towers South, where she lived for 17 years.
“The beach side of Champlain had collapsed, pancaked,” she wrote. “I screamed in horror.”
Key facts
6:30 a.m.: Here’s what to know Wednesday morning:
▪ The death toll is 12. The number of missing is 149. The Surfside building collapsed at 1:23 a.m. Thursday. The tower fell while residents slept. The side of the building that collapsed faces the beach.
▪ President Joe Biden will visit Surfside Thursday, one week after the collapse.
▪ The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a little-known sub-agency of the Department of Commerce that investigated the fall of the Twin Towers after 9/11, is at Surfside. The agency is deciding if it will launch a full investigation into the catastrophe, and then whether to begin the painstaking process of determining what went wrong.
▪ It will likely be months or even years before engineers and other experts know exactly why a part of the Champlain Towers South came crashing down.
This story was originally published June 30, 2021 at 6:38 AM with the headline "Condo collapse live updates: Two child bodies found in rubble, raising death toll to 18.."
