No survivors were found Friday, and the number of people unaccounted for rose to more than 150. Their families were increasingly losing hope.
By the time yet another fire broke out amid the dusty wreckage of the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South condo complex near Miami Beach on Friday, firefighters working with search-and-rescue crews in a desperate attempt to find survivors made an unusual decision: They would not immediately put the fire out. Crews were already wading through thigh-deep water in some places, from gusty rains, rising groundwater and previously doused fires. Pouring more water onto the site could risk destabilizing the dangerous pile of rubble and anyone still trapped inside, said Billy McAllister, the head of a local firefighters’ union. Instead, emergency workers let the fire burn, tearing through the debris to get to the source of the flames and yank it off the site. “Can you imagine adding all that weight?” he said. Such were the painstaking and frustrating calculations being made during the second harrowing day of search operations in Surfside, Fla., where emergency responders were still in rescue mode — looking to find people alive — even though no survivors had been found since shortly after the 13-story structure partially collapsed after midnight on Thursday. After an initial two rescues, only bodies had been recovered, three of them overnight. The number of people unaccounted for rose to more than 150 — dozens more than officials had estimated a day earlier — and their families were losing their last threads of hope. Family members of the missing were asked to provide DNA swabs in case they were needed to identify remains. President Biden said federal mortuary services would be available if needed. “Speaking with a lot of these family members, when they’re unaccounted for, it’s a really, really difficult thing because they just don’t know,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said from the scene. The governor promised a timely investigation of what went wrong. “We need a definitive explanation for how this could have happened.” The Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department identified one of the victims as Stacie Fang,54, who was pronounced dead at Aventura Hospital and Medical Center. Her family said her son had been pulled safely out of the ruins early on Thursday after being heard screaming for help. The boy, Jonah Handler,15, is a 10th-grade junior varsity baseball player. “There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Stacie,” her family said in a statement. “The many heartfelt words of encouragement and love have served as a much needed source of strength during this devastating time.” Underneath the parking garage of the exposed building at 8777 Collins Ave., search-and-rescue teams drilled through concrete and inserted probes with cameras to peer through the rubble. Specialized hearing devices alerted them to any sounds that could indicate a person was waiting for help — tapping, scratching, falling debris, twisting metal.
