Rescue Workers Forge Ahead at Collapsed Condo

SURFSIDE, FL—Tuesday’s sunrise over Surfside marked the sixth day since the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo building, as rescuers forged ahead with their painstaking search for survivors amid a deepening gloom over the fate of 150 people who are still reported missing.

The official death toll stands at 11 and is expected to rise.

Family members of those unaccounted for remained hopeful. A couple of hundred people gathered Monday night on the beach to remember the victims of the building collapse, with both relatives and strangers joining in the silence and the pain.

“I have not lost any hope or faith,” said Martin Lagesfeld, whose 26-year-old sister Nicole lived in unit 804 of Champlain Towers South with her husband, Louis. “I know she’s still there, I know it,” Lagesfeld told WPLG-Local 10.

On Tuesday morning, cranes at the scene on Collins Ave. and 88th St. moved slowly but steadily to remove buckets of rubble. Apartments still standing next to the collapsed sections of the tower were numbered 2 through 11 in green spray paint to identify the levels.

One street away, on Harding Ave., hydrangeas, roses, orchids and lilies hung from the tennis court fence at a memorial wall, which overflowed with photos of the missing, messages of love and small artifacts. The flowers created a pleasant scent and quick respite from the sound of generators and vans.

A few first responders took advantage of the quiet—and dry—morning to pay their respects at the makeshift memorial. Inside the tennis court, huge brown tents had been set up. The clothes of rescuers, including T-shirts, coats, jeans and underwear, had been lined up and hung up to dry.

Rescue crews continued digging a large trench through the rubble of the collapsed Surfside condo tower. They used heavy equipment to create the trench, which is described to be 125 feet long, 20 feet wide and 40 feet deep. It was created for two purposes.

One of the reasons is to let rescuers search for survivors in other parts of the pile with their dogs, cameras, sonar and infrared technology. It was also part of an effort to combat a “deep” fire that Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava described over the weekend as “hampering” search efforts.

Levine Cava said the smoke was the “biggest barrier” for the search-and-rescue mission. She said crews worked nonstop under the rubble to stop it, using infrared red technology, foam, water and other tactics to contain the fire and minimize the smoke, which had spread through the pile.

The fire was eventually extinguished—“one less thing the men and women in the pile have to worry about now,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said.

As the grim search for survivors and the recovery of bodies continued, heightened attention turned to newly uncovered information about the structural problems in certain areas of the condo tower at 8777 Collins Ave.

An engineer’s 2018 report flagged “major structural damage” in the pool deck, entrance ramp and garage areas of the Champlain Towers South, yet the chief building official for the town of Surfside told residents the condo building was “in very good shape,” according to minutes from a November 2018 board meeting obtained by the Miami Herald.

Ross Prieto, who left the post last year, had reviewed the engineer’s report, the minutes say. Records show condo board member Mara Chouela forwarded a copy to him two days earlier.

An e-mail posted on the town’s website showed that Chouela sent Prieto two reports: the “structural field survey report” by engineer Frank Morabito of Morabito Consultants detailing the building’s structural deficiencies, and a mechanical and electrical engineering report by Thomas E. Henz P.E.

More recently, a commercial pool contractor who visited the condo building last Tuesday, just 36 hours before half of the structure unexpectedly collapsed, said he discovered water and related damage throughout basement-level garage.

“There was standing water all over the parking garage,” the contractor, who asked not to be named, told the Miami Herald. He noted cracking concrete and severely corroded rebar in the pool equipment room.

He also took photos, which he shared with the Herald.

The contractor visited the condo building last week to put together a bid for a cosmetic restoration of the pool as well as to price out new pool equipment—a small piece of the multimillion-dollar restoration project that just was getting underway at the 40-year-old building.

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