Rescue crews pull in more resources as children are identified among the 18 killed in a Florida condo collapse
“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 bear,” Cava said.
One of the girls was a student of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the school district’s superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. In total, 17 of Carvalho’s students lived in the building — he has made contact with 15 and one remains unaccounted for, he said.
Now he says he prays their district won’t have to mourn another student. “The weight in my heart is unbearable,” Carvalho told CNN.
Hoping to bring answers to the families of the missing, rescue teams have been working endlessly to break through 13-16 feet of the concrete that came crashing down as many residents slept.
Those at the Champlain Towers South site have been exerting so much effort that one member of a fire rescue team had to go to the hospital for treatment for exhaustion, Florida State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis told CNN.
The search, in the dangerous and unstable rubble, is challenging, Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky told reporters Wednesday, but officials are bringing in more resources to ensure that the work gets done and responders can get rest.
A new obstacle looms as Tropical Depression Five is forming in the Atlantic — with Surfside in its extended forecast cone.
Residents offered full policy from insurance
Meanwhile, officials, investigators and members of the local community have been asking about the building’s structural integrity and if more could have been done to prevent the horror.
A class-action lawsuit filed Monday became the third suit filed against the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association. It states the condominium association had the duty to maintain the building in a safe condition and good working order.
In response to a suit last week, a lawyer for an insurance company for the condo association said Tuesday that the company would make its entire million-dollar policy available to claimants.
In a letter filed before a Florida judge overseeing the suit, lawyer Sina Bahadoran wrote that James River Insurance Company, the commercial general liability insurer for the association, “has made the decision to voluntarily tender its entire limit from the enclosed policy towards attempting to resolve all the claims in this matter.”
A National Construction Safety Team has been established to investigate the collapse, James Olthoff, Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology said at a press conference Wednesday.
“Based on the information that we have collected, we are able to recommend a full technical investigation under the National Construction Safety Team Act. We will now establish a team to begin the painstaking process of collecting and analyzing any and all information that might help us determine the technical cause of failure,” said Judith Mitrani-Reiser, who is leading the NIST team on site.
Olthoff said the inquiry will be a fact-finding, not fault-finding technical investigation and will not interfere with any ongoing search and rescue operations.
Some reports suggest that damage to the building was made clear to the board before the collapse.
“The concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation got much worse, so extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated,” the letter from board President Jean Wodnicki reads.
“We have months and years to dig into what happened, and we’re going to. The board is already in the process of hiring an engineer to also try to figure out what happened, and they will be evaluating who’s responsible.”
CNN has reached out to representatives of the condominium association for further comment.
Stories emerge of the precious moments survivors had to escape
The collapse happened in the early morning hours of June 24, and while some families have told miraculous stories of the mere seconds they had to process what was happening and escape, others talked about the terror.
Ashley Dean’s sister, Cassie Stratton, is among the missing. She told CNN that Stratton called her husband to say the pool was collapsing and the ground was shaking.
Stratton began to scream loudly, and then the phone went dead, Dean said.
“It was very hard to know that that was my sister’s last words and just the terrifying moments that she endured in those last moments before, you know, before and while it was collapsing,” Dean told CNN’s John Berman.
Iliana Monteagudo was woken from her sleep that day around 1:00 a.m. by what she described as “a rare force,” she told Cuomo. 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 begun to form, and from there things started coming down fast, she said.
“Something inside of me said run,” she said. “You have to run and save your life.”
CNN’s Rosa Flores, Dave Shortell, Chris Boyette and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.
