A sad family awaits by the site as team of rescue workers are working during a rescue operation of Champlain Tower partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida, United States on June 30, 2021.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Search-and-rescue operations at the collapse of a Florida condominium building have resumed Thursday after a temporary day-long halt, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a press conference Thursday evening.
The decision to resume operations came at approximately 4:45 p.m. Thursday after structural engineers said conditions were safe enough to do so, Levine Cava said.
“I am grateful to their hard work that got us back to work on the search-and-rescue as soon as possible,” Levine Cava said. “We are continuing, of course, to assure that we do everything to protect our first responders.”
The death toll remain unchanged as of late Thursday, with 18 people confirmed dead and 145 unaccounted for, according to Levine Cava.
Authorities are restricting access to parts of the collapse zone that pose safety concerns, Levine Cava said. Technology, such as cameras and drones, is continuing to be used to search these areas of the building that are inaccessible.
A team of engineers is also conducting tests and evaluations to expand the search area safely, she added.
While search-and-rescue operations are the first priority of authorities, plans to demolish the building are currently underway, Levine Cava told reporters.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky said the halt in operations, which began Thursday morning, was based on “additional concerns for building stability” identified by subject matter experts.
Those concerns included six to 12 inches of movement, a large column hanging from the building that could fall and damage support columns in the underground garage, and slight movement in the concrete floor slabs in the south side of the structure that “could cause additional failure of the building,” according to Cominsky.
Levine Cava told reporters that the decision to halt search-and-rescue operations was unconnected to President Joe Biden’s visit to the area later Thursday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis also provided updates on Tropical Storm Elsa, which is continuing to move swiftly through the Caribbean Sea. DeSantis told reporters that the storm is not expected to impact Florida through Saturday but is expected turn northwest near South Florida by Monday.
DeSantis said the state Department of Emergency Management is developing contingency plans for the storm.
In recent days, a growing body of evidence has come to light indicating that the 40-year-old condominium building showed signs of major structural damage as far back as 2018.
A newly uncovered video taken the night of the collapse shows water pouring into the parking garage of Champlain Towers.
On Wednesday evening, the National Institute of Standards and Technology announced it had launched a federal investigation into the causes of the building collapse.
“We are going in with an open mind,” Judith Mitrani-Reiser, associate chief of the materials and structural systems division at NIST, told reporters Wednesday at a press conference near the site of the collapse.
“With any building collapse, we would want to understand how the building was designed, constructed, modified and maintained,” she said.
Several lawsuits have already been filed on behalf of the families of victims, some of whom are still missing.
But the question of who, if anyone, is at fault for the collapse is not likely to be resolved in the near future.
James Olthoff, the director of NIST, told The Miami Herald the federal investigation would not seek to assign blame for the collapse.
“This is a fact-finding, not fault-finding, type of an investigation,” he told the Herald. “It will take time, possibly a couple of years.”
Correction: This story was updated to correctly describe Tropical Storm Elsa.
