Miami Condo Collapse

A startling discovery awaited an engineer who drilled into the ground-level concrete slab at Champlain Towers South last year. He could find no waterproofing in two separate sections, the engineer wrote in a letter to the condominium board.

Without that essential layer for a high rise facing the punishing Atlantic Ocean, rainwater and salty sea spray likely had seeped in for decades, slowly weakening the steel rebar and concrete holding up the condo building. Indeed, the engineer reported at the time seeing significant concrete deterioration.

The identification of a 98th victim in the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, brought the painstaking process of searching for missing people to a close.

At a press conference Monday, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced that the final missing person's family had been notified following the identification of the individual's remains, formally ending the search.

The remains belonged to Estelle Hedaya, 54, her brother, Ikey Hedaya, told The Associated Press.

Authorities searching for victims of a deadly collapse in Florida said Sunday they hope to conclude their painstaking work in the coming weeks as a team of first responders from Israel departed the site.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 90 deaths have now been confirmed in last month’s collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Surfside, up from 86 a day before. Among them are 71 bodies that have been identified, and their families have been notified, she said. Some 31 people remain listed as missing.

Two weeks after the building collapse at Surfside, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 60 bodies have been recovered from the rubble, as authorities pledged on their first official day of search and recovery to find every single victim.

“The work continues with all speed and all urgency,” said Levine Cava during a press briefing on Thursday morning.

First responders paused their work briefly at 1:20 a.m. to honor the victims of the collapse and mark two full weeks since the partial collapse. As of Thursday morning, 80 people remained missing, Levine Cava said.

At least 60 are confirmed dead and 80 unaccounted for after the search at the site of a collapsed Florida condominium building shifted from rescue to recovery overnight, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a press conference Thursday morning.

“The work continues with all speed and urgency, all task forces are being deployed from across the country and the world,” Levine Cava said. “We are working around the clock to recover victims, and to bring closure to the families as fast as we possibly can.”

The number of confirmed dead at the site of the collapsed Florida condo building jumped to 60 overnight, with rescue workers pulling six more bodies from the rubble, officials said at a briefing Thursday morning.

“It’s officially two weeks since this unthinkable and unprecedented tragedy shook our community and the world,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said as she announced the additional fatalities since the previous total of 54.

As the massive search effort in Surfside, Fla., has shifted from rescue to recovery, crews on Thursday are hoping to give some closure to families who know that no additional victims of the condo tower collapse are thought to be alive.

The confirmed death toll now stands at 54 after authorities said Wednesday that they found 18 additional victims, the highest number recorded in a day. Officials are expected to announce more confirmed deaths in the days ahead. The number of people unaccounted for at Champlain Towers South remains at 86 as of early Thursday.

The remaining structure left behind after the Miami building collapse has been brought down by demolition crews using explosives, after warnings that a tropical storm could render the site unsafe.

Rescue teams are expected to resume the search for survivors once the demolition is complete at the Champlain Towers South condo building. They have so far recovered the remains of 24 people, with 121 still missing.

No one has been pulled out of the rubble alive since the first hours after the 24 June collapse at Surfside in southern Florida.

Rescuers were given the all-clear to resume work looking for victims at a collapsed South Florida condo building after demolition crews set off a string of explosives that brought down the last of the building in a plume of dust.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told the Associated Press that the demolition went “exactly as planned” around 10:30 p.m. Sunday.

Search crews resumed their work after the still-standing portion of the partially collapsed condo building in Surfside, Florida, was brought down using explosives Sunday night.

The demolition occurred after 10 p.m. ET, 11 days after the shocking collapse of much of the residential Champlain Towers structure on June 24 that resulted in 24 confirmed deaths, with 121 people still unaccounted for, according to Miami-Dade County officials.