Nine golden retrievers from the Lutheran Church Charities K-9 Comfort Dog Ministry arrived at the site of the Champlain Towers South collapse to help families and first responders process their grief.
Officials have unveiled plans to boost security around the debris pile. "This has become much more than a collapsed building site," said mayor Charles Burkett said. "It has become a holy site."
Officials in Surfside, Fla., on Sunday said that four more bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of the Champlain Towers South building. Some 31 people remain listed as missing.
Seventeen days into responding to a condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla., officials cite progress in identifying victims and those still unaccounted for.
In 2020, the engineering firm Morabito Consultants found "severely deteriorated" concrete in the Champlain Towers South condo building. Town officials say they weren't alerted.
After 14 days of searching, the operation now turns to a "recovery" phase. None of the victims recovered from the wreckage as of Wednesday morning survived the initial collapse, authorities said.
The death toll from the June 24 collapse has now climbed to 46, officials in Surfside announced Wednesday. The 14th day of the search yielded the highest number of bodies found in a single day.
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Sandy Ala, a counselor working with Jewish Community Services of South Florida, who has been talking with survivors and families waiting for news in Surfside.
Some 109 people were unaccounted for, though local officials said they had only been able to confirm that about 70 of those people were in the building at the time of the collapse.
Authorities said that 117 individuals remain unaccounted for from the collapsed building in Surfside, Florida. Authorities say demolishing the rest of the building has aided the search.
Officials in Miami-Dade County leveled the remaining section of the Champlain Towers South condo ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa. They said the unstable building was a danger to search efforts.
Preparations are underway in Surfside, Fla. for the demolition of a portion of the Champlain Towers South still standing after much of it collapsed in the early morning of Thursday, June 24.
Officials say the unstable building poses a threat to the people involved in ongoing search operations. A storm expected to hit parts of Florida has exacerbated concerns.
Hurricane Elsa is expected to affect Florida early next week. Officials have begun preparations for potential impact as teams work at the condo site looking for those who remain unaccounted for.
Investigators say 22 people are known to have died and 126 are unaccounted for. The 7-year-old daughter of a Miami firefighter is among the dead. Another condo building was evacuated Friday.
The Champlain Towers South condo association will now be overseen by a receiver who will handle all of the association's financial matters. It comes as questions swirl about the condo's collapse.
A November 2020 presentation to residents of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., prepared them for the expensive repairs ahead and warned that "shouting at each other doesn't work!"
President Biden met with Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and pledged more help with the Surfside condo disaster. DeSantis said the federal-state coordination has gone well.
As recently as last month, Surfside officials were ordering changes at Champlain Tower South, one designed to protect turtle habitat. Demands never focused on the building's fundamental soundness.
It has now been nearly a week since rescue crews last pulled anyone alive from the rubble, but officials in Florida reiterated Wednesday they were not giving up hope.
The city of Miami Beach is cancelling its fireworks and other July 4th festivities out of respect for the families and victims of the condominium collapse in neighboring Surfside, Fla.
It's been nearly a week since part of the building in Surfside, Fla., collapsed. "We still remain hopeful because that's who we are," says Leon Roy Hausmann, a representative of one rescue group.
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