Rubble and debris of the Champlain Towers South condo can be seen on Tuesday at Surfside, Florida. Officials overseeing the search at the site of the Florida condominium collapse seem increasingly somber about the prospects for finding anyone alive. Photo / AP
Rubble and debris of the Champlain Towers South condo can be seen on Tuesday at Surfside, Florida. Officials overseeing the search at the site of the Florida condominium collapse seem increasingly somber about the prospects for finding anyone alive. Photo / AP
The search for victims of the collapse of a Miami-area high-rise condominium reached its 14th day today, with the death toll at three dozen, more than 100 people still unaccounted for and authorities sounding more and more grim.
Crews on Tuesday dug through pulverised concrete where the Champlain Towers Southbuilding in Surfside once stood, filling buckets that were passed down a line to be emptied and then returned.
The up-close look at the search, compliments of video released by the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department, came as eight more deaths were announced — the most for a single day since the search began. It also came as rain and wind from now Hurricane Elsa disrupted the effort, though the storm was on track to make landfall far across the state.
"Right now, we're in search and rescue mode," the county's police director, Freddy Ramirez, said at a news conference on Tuesday evening. He soon added: "Our primary goal right now is to bring closure to the families."
A memorial for the Guara family is posted on a fence near the Champlain Towers South. Photo / AP
No one has been rescued from the site since the first hours after the building collapsed on June 24 when many of its residents were asleep.
Searchers were still looking for any open spaces within the mounds of rubble where additional survivors might be found, said the county's fire chief, Alan Cominsky.
"Unfortunately, we are not seeing anything positive," he said.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the families of the missing were preparing for news of "tragic loss." She said US President Joe Biden, who visited the area last week, called on Tuesday to offer his continued support.
"I think everybody will be ready when it's time to move to the next phase," she said.
A worker make her way past the rubble. The officials said on Tuesday that crews have detected no new signs of life in the rubble nearly two weeks after the disaster struck at the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside. Photo / AP
Reporters got their closest in-person look at the site on Tuesday, though it was limited to the portion of the building that workers tore down on Sunday after the initial collapse left it standing but dangerously unstable. A pile of shattered concrete and twisted steel stood about 30 feet (9 meters) high and spanned roughly half the length of a football field. A pair of backhoes pulled rubble off the pile, which blocked any view of the search effort.
Severe weather from Elsa hindered search efforts to a degree. Lightning forced rescuers to pause their work for two hours early on Tuesday, Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said. And winds of 32km/h, with stronger gusts, hampered efforts to move heavy debris with cranes, officials said.
However, the storm's heaviest winds and rain would bypass Surfside and neighbouring Miami as Elsa strengthened along its path to an expected landfall somewhere between Tampa Bay and Florida's Big Bend.
Crews have removed 112 tonnes of debris from the site, Cominsky said. The debris was being sorted and stored in a warehouse as potential evidence in the investigation into why the building collapsed, officials said.
Workers have been freed to search a broader area since the unstable remaining portion of the building was demolished.
