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Fourteen more bodies were recovered as searchers used heavy equipment to move the broken mounds of concrete and steel.
The death toll from a high-rise apartment building in the city of Miami rose to 78 on Friday, the mayor said the numbers were “heartbreaking” as recovery workers were working to find victims among the rubble.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a media conference that the work to recover the victims “is moving forward with great urgency,” to provide closure to families who have been waiting for two new agonizing weeks.
“It’s a staggering and tortuous number that affects us all in a very profound way,” Levine Cava said of the number of recent deaths. Another 62 people remain unaccounted for.
The Paraguayan foreign minister reported on a radio that he was among the dead sisters of Paraguay’s first lady. Several Latin American citizens complained when the building collapsed. No one has been found alive since the first hours of construction on June 24.
“We know there will be long-term impacts for teams on the front line,” Levine Cava said. “They’ve given so much in these first two weeks.”
Rescue workers and emergency aid teams in Florida and several other states have worked 12-hour shifts, working 24 hours a day, 16 days a day to physically and emotionally tax each other in the face of oppressive heat and dangerous conditions.
Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said the primary response is to take care of mental health and well-being. He said it is critical to communicate the first answers to each other. “It’s important for us to talk,” he said.
To that end, Levine Cava said officials have added equal support staff to fire stations.
He went on a week-long search for a survivor in a search after authorities said authorities had concluded there was “no chance of survival” among the rubble of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside.
Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have been searching for traces of the building’s collapse.
“NIST has made great strides in labeling and transporting pieces of forensic evidence from the pile,” Levine Cava said.
“They’ve now collected more than 200 pieces of evidence and recently distributed them to scientists in Washington’s physics measurement lab to help with the analysis.”
The focus was based on the 2018 engineering report structural deficiencies.
Federal investigators send more than 200 pieces of Champlain Towers South condominium to Washington, DC to be examined in court [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
The hope of the survivors was rekindled after the workers demolish the rest of the building on July 4, allowing access to new waste sites. There were some gaps that survived, mostly in the basement and parking lot.
Sadly, rescue workers are now focused finding traces instead of surviving.
State and local officials have provided financial support to the families of the victims, as well as to the residents of the building who have survived but lost all property. Meanwhile, authorities are launching a grand jury investigation into the fall. And at least six families have filed lawsuits.
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