Miami building collapse: Aussies feared missing in Miami disaster – ‘It’s devastating’
Two Australians are believed to be among those missing in the Miami apartment building collapse, as dramatic video footage emerged of the moment it collapsed.
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Two Australians are feared to be among those missing in the Miami apartment building collapse.
Local Joseph Waks said he was friends with two elderly Australians who lived in the beachfront complex.
“It’s devastating,” he told the ABC.
“They both became grandparents yet again a few hours before the tragedy. We still cannot believe it.”
Waks, a broadcaster who previously lived in Australia, said that he believed the couple lived in the impacted area of the building.
“We’re hoping for the best, we’re hoping that there will be a miracle here in Surfside,” he said.
Waks said he was friends with the adult children of the couple, who were originally from Sydney before moving to Melbourne, and that they split their time between the US and Australia.
He said he had seen the Australian man “a few days ago” outside the building but that he wasn’t certain they were inside the building when it collapsed.
The Australian government was working to confirm the involvement of any Australians.
“DFAT is aware of media reporting that Australians may have been involved in the collapse of the Champlain Tower South Condominium in Surfside, Florida,” a DFAT spokesperson said.
“The Australian Embassy in Washington is closely monitoring developments and making urgent inquiries to determine if any Australians were affected.”
It came as dozens of residents of a north Miami high-rise were missing after the dramatic collapse of a beachside building in the Florida city.
Authorities said 99 people remained unaccounted-for on Thursday night, local time, after parts of the Surfside apartment complex crumbled to the ground about 1.30am.
One woman was confirmed dead and at least two others critically injured but the toll was expected to climb as rescuers combed the wreckage of the 12-storey building with cadaver dogs.
An unknown number of residents are feared to have been asleep in the building at the time of the tragic incident.
The search could take as long as a week, said Surfside Town Manager Andy Hyatt, and it was being complicated by an approaching storm.
“This is not something that is going to be brief. It’s going to be something that is for the long term and possibly at least a week,” Hyatt said.
Fire Rescue assistant chief Ray Jadalla said: “This process is slow and methodical. Anytime we started breaching parts of the structure, we get rubble falling on us.”
Desperate families gathered near the site as salvage crews combed tonnes of debris from the collapse, which was captured in dramatic video.
Footage of the moment the building fell can be seen in the video above.
“One side of the building just fell completely. It doesn’t exist anymore,” said Nicolas Fernandez, 29, an Argentinian resident of Miami who had yet to hear from friends who were staying overnight in his family’s unit in the building.
“I don’t know about them. I don’t know if they are alive,” he told AFP.
“The building has literally pancaked,” said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett.
“That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean to me that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
Miami Mayor Daniella Levine Cava described “a massive search and rescue” effort.
Authorities said it was unclear how many of the building’s residents were present when it collapsed and that many foreign residents lived or had holiday homes there.
So far 102 others have been accounted for, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a news conference.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will step in to help with recovery efforts, she said.
“So we are all praying. We are all crying. We are all here with the suffering families,” Levine Cava said.
At least 18 Latin American nationals are known to be among the missing, according to the country’s consulates. They are three Uruguayans, nine Argentines and six Paraguayans, among them the sister of the country’s first lady.
Surfside also has a large Jewish population and several rabbis were at the scene to help with rescue operations.
Among the missing were Sophia López Moreira, the sister-in-law of Paraguay’s president and her young family, as well as dozens of nationals from Colombia and Argentina.
Burkett said there was indication of what caused the collapse and that Miami Dade police were leading the investigation.
“It’s hard to imagine how this could have happened. Buildings don’t just fall down,” he said.
One researcher said he believed the building had been “sinking” for decades.
The building was occupied by a mix of full-time and seasonal residents and renters, and officials have stressed it is unclear how many people were actually inside at the time.
“It’s hard to get a count on it,” Miami-Dade County Commissioner Sally Heyman told CNN. “You don’t know between vacations or anything else,” she said. “The hope is still there, but it’s waning.”
Some residents were able to walk down the stairs to safety while others had to be rescued from their balconies.
One death was confirmed by Surfside mayor Charles Burkett, and Heyman said some 14 survivors had been recovered from the rubble.
Professor Shimon Wdowinski from Florida International University told USA Today that the building had been undergoing a structural inspection.
“I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that,” Wdowinski told the outlet on Thursday.
Wdowinski said the coastal building was erected in 1981 and had been sinking into the ground since the 1990s.
His findings were in a 2020 research report into the impact of rising sea levels and coastal flooding.
He said the Champlain Towers South in Surfside had been sinking at a rate of about 2mm a year in the 1990s.
Some 55 of 136 apartments were destroyed and at least 15 families had been moved to emergency accommodation by Thursday afternoon.
President Joe Biden offered federal rescue assistance.
“We’ve gotten in touch with FEMA. They’re ready to go,” he said.
“They’re down inspecting what they think is needed, but I’m waiting for the governor to ask for a declared emergency.”
“I say to the people of Florida, whatever help you want that the federal government can provide, we’re waiting,” he continued. “Just ask us. We’ll be there.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis visited the site and said it was “traumatic to see.”
“It’s a tragic day. We still have hope to be able to identify additional survivors,” he said.
Relatives of the missing described their efforts to locate their loved ones.
“I can’t believe that this is actually happening,” said Jenny Urgelles on NBC of the search for her parents Ray and Mercy Urgelles.
“I just feel like it’s like waves of emotion that I’m going through right now. You see the photos (of the damage) and they’re so awful.”
Surfside’s mayor said the reasons for the collapse were still unclear. “It looks like a bomb went off, but we’re pretty sure a bomb didn’t go off, so it’s something else,” Burkett said.
Fernandez, the Argentinian resident of Miami, said that when his mother called him in the early hours to say the building had collapsed, he thought it was a joke — and hung up.
“She calls me again and tells me: ‘Nico, you know I would never joke about this. I need you to go over there.’ We came running.”
One witness, 25-year-old Julian Targowski, described the sound of the collapse. “It was like a very bass-y, like boom boom, boom boom, that kind of thing,” he told local television WFOR.
“Like, a ton of bass on a subwoofer, basically, like just two of them,” he said. “Then my friend texted me that a building had exploded.”
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