Two more bodies were recovered on Monday from the debris of a Florida apartment building that collapsed last week in the United States, taking the toll to 11, Reuters reported. Officials said another 150 people still remain unaccounted for.
On June 24, the 12-story Champlain South Towers abruptly collapsed while most of the residents were sleeping. The cause of the collapse has been under investigation, but a report in 2018 had found major concrete deterioration in the underground parking garage. The report’s author, Frank Morabito, had warned that the damage would “expand exponentially” if not repaired.
The rescue mission continued into its fifth day on Monday, but was hampered because of heavy rain. An Indian-American couple and their one-year-old-daughter, are among those missing.
“We know time is of the essence,” said Maggie Castro, a firefighter and paramedic for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, according to CNN. “We are still in a rescue mode, but as you can imagine, we are starting to understand that it’s going to be less likely that we are going to be finding survivors.”
Search-and-rescue teams from Mexico and Israel have also joined local firefighters and other emergency personnel to find survivors.
“This the largest deployment of task force resources in the state of Florida that’s not a hurricane,” said Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer and state fire marshal.
He added the same number of people were on the ground in Surfside, the shore town near Miami where the building stood along the beach, as during Hurricane Michael, a devastating Category 5 hurricane that hit 12 counties in 2018.
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