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(L-R) Israeli Consul General in Miami Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, Tallahassee Chabad Rabbi Schneur Oirechman and Florida Senator Rick Scott at the scene of a condo building collapse in Surfside, Florida on June 25, 2021. (Consulate of Israel in Miami) |
Florida officials have yet to respond to an Israeli offer to send in a search and rescue team to aid efforts to locate survivors following the collapse of an oceanfront apartment building near Miami Beach.
But it appeared unlikely that the US would take up Israel’s offer to send the Israeli military’s search and rescue team, which has assisted in major disasters around the world in recent years, including in Mexico and Brazil.
“We do not have a resource problem, we have a luck problem,” said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett on attempts to find survivors under the rubble.
Four people were confirmed dead and 159 unaccounted for Friday following the collapse, as rescue teams scoured a mountain of rubble in a desperate search for survivors.
As shock set in among the local community in Surfside, the state’s governor called for full light to be shed without delay on the causes of the freak disaster — which reduced one wing of a 12-story tower to a gigantic pile of debris.
Miami-Dade County’s first Jewish mayor Daniella Levine Cava said authorities were still without news of 159 people who may have been asleep in Champlain Tower South at the time of the collapse, fueling fears of a much higher death toll.
“We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope that we will find people alive,” she told a news conference — describing the dedication of dozens of rescuers on site.
“They are totally, totally motivated to find people. They have to be pulled off the shift.”
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIME
Rescue teams with sniffer dogs worked through the night and into a second day — with recovered bodies put into yellow bags and transported away as homicide detectives worked to confirm the identities of the victims.
But faced with the painstakingly slow search operation, some began to voice their frustration.
“Not enough is being done,” said Mike Salberg, who came from New York after the accident. Five of his family members, including his parents, are unaccounted for.
“I want answers,” he told AFP. “The families are sidelined. We’re being told that they have the best crews but they don’t have the ability and the capacity… 40 hours later, four dead.”
He said he hoped the rescue team being offered by Israel would be able to take part in the search.
Jewish community prays
Israel’s Consul General Maor Elbaz-Starinsky told The Times of Israel on Friday that 35 of the 159 people unaccounted for were Jewish. While several had “Israel connections,” he said it was not yet clear whether any of the victims were Israeli citizens.
The consul general noted, “the community over here — not only the Jewish and Israeli [communities] — has shown outstanding solidarity. Everyone came together bringing food, blankets and equipment. They even built a kosher kitchen.”
He added that the condo building includes owners who only live there for the holidays or certain parts of the year so it was unclear how many might still be under the rubble and how many were out of town when the building collapsed.
Elbaz-Starinsky said Israel is providing food, clothes, medication and other aid as rescue teams continue digging through the rubble of the collapsed condo building home to dozens of Jewish families.
Later, speaking to Channel 12, Elbaz-Starinsky conceded that Israel’s aid at this stage was “largely symbolic,” but Israel wanted to “help in any way possible.”
Numerous members of an Orthodox synagogue are among those missing.
Rabbi Sholom D. Lipskar, the founder of the Shul of Bal Harbour, said that his community is praying for miracles as rescue teams on Friday continued to search for survivors among the rubble.
“It definitely needs miracles … because the circumstances are very, very grim,” said Lipskar, who is a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to the area.
Lipskar could not say exactly how many members of his congregation were missing. But he said that many members of Surfside’s Jewish community were unaccounted for.
“It’s a very large group of people, unfortunately,” he said. “From the synagogue, everybody knows somebody. It’s like one big community, so [there were] a lot of people that lived in that building.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis visited the Shul on Friday afternoon. Reporters were not allowed inside and the governor entered and exited through an underground garage.
The Shul is located about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) north of the building that collapsed.
“We are a very tight community,” Zalmi Duchman, a 41-year-old who lives a few blocks away from the disaster scene at the Champlain Towers complex, told AFP. “We know many of the family members who live in the building, or relatives.”
Duchman, who has lived in Surfside for 20 years after growing up in nearby Miami Beach, lent a helping hand Friday at the local community center.
“Something like this is just impossible to expect — you go to sleep at night and then…” Duchman said.
“Obviously, it has hit us very hard, but there is still hope. As Jews, we believe heavily in miracles and never giving up, resilience, trying to stay positive in dark times.”
President, governor speak out
President Joe Biden — who has ordered federal assistance for the relief effort — sent a message of support to the families, calling it a “tough, tough time.”
“There are so many people waiting. Are they alive? What will happen? So our heart goes out to them,” he said at the White House.
Biden spoke earlier Friday with Governor Ron DeSantis, who said the families deserved “a definitive explanation for how this could have happened.”
DeSantis said it was important to “do this right, but also to do it timely — so that we get the answers to the families and that we get the answers to the people of Florida.”
The Surfside 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 of the collapse, which pancaked around 55 apartments.
Relatives of the missing have been gathering at a local community center, while occupants lucky enough to have been away when disaster struck are contemplating sudden homelessness.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue assistant chief Ray Jadallah said that search teams were being guided by sound.
“It’s not specifically, you know, human sounds — it could be, you know, tapping, it could be steel, you know, kind of twisting, it could be some of the debris kind of raining down,” he explained to reporters.
“We have hope. And every time that we hear sound, we concentrate in that area.”
Questions over building
While the reasons for the collapse remain unclear, the condition of the 40-year-old waterfront building is certain to face scrutiny.
Completed in 1981, Champlain Towers was due to be recertified this year in line with Miami-Dade county safety regulations, and was undergoing construction work on its roof as part of that process.
According to a study led by Florida International University environment professor Shimon Wdowinski, based on space-based radar data, the site showed signs of land subsidence in the mid-1990s.
“I don’t know if the collapse was predictable. But we did detect that the building moved in the 1990s,” Wdowinski told CNN Friday, describing what was happening as a “slow process” of settling, rather than sinking.
Another of the university’s experts, Atorod Azizinamini, chair of its department of civil and environmental engineering, said in an online video that it was too soon to speculate on a cause.
He said structural engineers would collect vast quantities of data on design plans and construction methods, take samples of steel and concrete, look at signs of corrosion, examine the foundation, and try to detect any unusual event before the collapse.
“Once we have all the information we can simulate exactly different scenarios, and we can pinpoint how the collapse took place,” Azizinamini said. “Unfortunately that is not going to be happening in a matter of days, weeks.”
“It’s going to take some time.”
Israel offers prayers
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Friday said he was praying for the victims.
“Our prayers are with the families anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones in Miami. We hope for the recovery of the survivors and send heartfelt condolences to those who have lost family members,” Rivlin said.
Earlier Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said he was following the “difficult images” from Florida with concern.
“Our Foreign Ministry representatives in Miami and Israel are doing everything possible to assist and address the situation,” he said in a statement. “The entire nation of Israel prays for the safety of those injured and missing in the disaster.”
He added: “From here we send support to our brethren in the Jewish community in particular, and to all Florida residents in general, and express our sorrow following this tragic event.”
Army radio reported Friday that Bennett was sending Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai to Florida and he would depart Israel on Saturday night.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said he had spoken to Elbaz-Starinsky and the head of the local Jewish Federation to offer support.
“Foreign Ministry staff in Miami and Israel are doing everything they can to help those on the ground, the wounded and the families. It is a difficult and complex event and it will take time to deal with it. We are at their disposal for any assistance they may need,” Lapid said in a Foreign Ministry statement.
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIME
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