“Any loss of life – especially given the unexpected, unprecedented nature of this event – is a tragedy, but the loss of our children is too great to endure,” said Cava.
One of the girls was a Miami-Dade County public school student, principal Alberto Carvalho said. A total of 17 of Carvalho’s students lived in the building; he contacted 15 and one remains missing, he said.
Now he says he prayed that their district doesn’t have to mourn another student. “The weight in my heart is unbearable,” Carvalho told CNN.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden travels to Florida Thursday to meet with search and rescue personnel, first responders and the families of the victims and those still missing.
In hopes of providing answers to the families of the missing, rescue teams have worked endlessly to break through 13 to 16 feet of concrete that collapsed while many residents were sleeping.
Those at the Champlain Towers South location went to such lengths that a member of a fire team had to be hospitalized for exhaustion treatment, Florida State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis told CNN.
Finding the dangerous and unstable rubble is challenging, Miami-Dade County’s chief fire officer Alan Cominsky told reporters on Wednesday, but officials are putting more resources into making sure the job gets done and the emergency services can rest .
Seventy members of Pennsylvania Task Force 1 left the country to help with search and rescue operations. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said in a tweet Wednesday. The team is complemented by task forces from New Jersey, Ohio and Indiana.
A new obstacle looms as Tropical Storm Elsa forms in the Atlantic, with Surfside in its expanded forecast cone.
Residents offered full policy from the insurance company
Meanwhile, officials, investigators and community members have asked about the structural integrity of the building and whether more could be done to prevent the horror.
A class action lawsuit was filed on Monday became the third lawsuit against the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association. It states that the homeowners association is obliged to keep the building in a safe and functional condition.
In response to a lawsuit last week, an attorney for an insurance company for the condominium association said the company would provide plaintiffs with its entire million dollar policy.
In a letter filed before a Florida judge overseeing the lawsuit, attorney Sina Bahadoran wrote that James River Insurance Company, the association’s commercial liability insurer, “made a decision to voluntarily withdraw its entire amount from the attached policy for attempting to resolve any claims in this matter. “
A National Construction Safety Team has been set up to investigate the collapse, James Olthoff, director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told a news conference on Wednesday.
“Based on the information we have collected, we can recommend a full technical investigation under the National Construction Safety Team Act. We will now form a team to begin carefully collecting and analyzing any information that could help us.” determine the technical cause of the error, “says Judith Mitrani-Reiser, who heads the NIST team on site.
The investigation is a technical investigation – not troubleshooting – and it won’t interfere with ongoing search and rescue operations, Olthoff said.
Some reports suggest that damage to the building was made clear to the board prior to the collapse.
A Letter from April 2021 from the chairman of the condominium to the residents said some damage was in one Engineering report 2018, even in the garage, “has gotten significantly worse”.
“Concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation has deteriorated significantly, so that extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated, ”says the letter from President Jean Wodnicki.
The 2018 report didn’t say whether the structure was in danger of collapsing. Homeowners Association attorney Donna DiMaggio Berger said CNN on Monday that she did not believe the building was in a state of disrepair before it collapsed.
“We have months and years to look into what happened and we will. The board is already in the process of hiring an engineer to try to figure out what happened and they will assess who will do it responsible for.”
CNN reached out to homeowners association representatives for further comments.
Stories of precious moments emerge in order to escape
The collapse happened in the early morning hours of June 24th, and while some families told wondrous stories of the seconds it took them to process what had happened and flee, others spoke of terror.
Ashley Dean’s sister Cassie Stratton is one of the missing. Stratton called her husband to say the pool collapsed and the floor was shaking, Dean told CNN.
Stratton started screaming loudly, and then the phone was dead, said Dean.
“It was very hard to know that these were my sister’s last words and just the awful moments she endured in those last moments before and as they broke down,” said Dean.
Iliana Monteagudo was awakened from her sleep by a “rare force” at around 1 a.m. that day. she told CNN. She thought she had left the balcony door open, so she ran to close it. But then she saw the ceiling where a crack had formed and it came down quickly from there, she said.
“Something inside of me said run,” she said. “You have to run and save your life.”
Adriana Sarmiento and Roberto Castillero stayed in a hotel near the Champlain Towers South and happened to be there record a video that shows debris and gushing water in the building’s garage minutes before it collapsed.
The couple watched as people rushed to their balconies in the building, confused by the noise. Sarmiento and Castillero climbed into the street and tried to wave to residents that they were being evacuated, but they couldn’t understand them, she said.
Videos they took after the collapse showed rubble and debris even up to their booth after walking back to their hotel.
They were incredulous.
“I said, ‘Where are the people on the balcony?'” Said Castillero. “I didn’t know the balcony wasn’t there.”
CNN’s Rosa Flores, Dave Shortell, Chris Boyette, Rebekah Riess, Boris Sanchez and Theresa Waldrop contributed to this report.
