Yahoo Finance British mother among nearly 100 missing in Miami building collapse amid desperate search for life
A British mother and the family of Paraguay’s first lady are among 99 people missing after the collapse of a 12-storey beachfront residential building north of Miami.
Rescuers are desperately searching for any survivors trapped in the rubble.
They said they could hear people banging amid the debris.
Sky News reported a relative of Bhavna Patel, 38, confirmed the duel British and US citizen, her 42-year-old husband Vishal Patel, and their one-year-old daughter Aishani Patel are yet to be found.
Paraguayan Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo told local media that six people from the South American country are still unaccounted for after the collapse.
They are Sophia Lopez Moreira, the sister of first lady Silvana Abdo, her husband Luis Pettengill, her three children and the family’s assistant, according to Paraguayan authorities.
A wing of the 40-year-old condo came down “like thunder” in the community of Surfside around 1.30am on Thursday.
By late evening, nearly 100 people were still unaccounted for, authorities said, raising fears that the death toll could climb sharply.
We spoke to the family of missing British woman Bhavna Patel at the reunification site in Surfside, Florida. They are devastated and say she is “an angel”. Her husband Vishal and one-year-old Aishani are also missing. Bhavna is pregnant. A family friend gave @SkyNews this photo. pic.twitter.com/PpVsD4jDx7
— Sarah Gough (@sarahgoughy) June 25, 2021
Nine people from Argentina, six from Colombia, four from Venezuela and three from Uruguay, are missing according to officials in those countries.
Hundreds of rescuers were using sonar cameras and specially trained dogs to scour the rubble.
Teams tunnelled from an underground car park under the building in an effort to reach victims.
Although, they detected sounds of banging and other noises, no voices were heard.
Officials did not know how many were in the tower when it fell.
Hours after the collapse, searchers were trying to reach a trapped child whose parents were believed to be dead.
In another case, rescuers saved a mother and child, but the woman’s leg had to be amputated to remove her from the rubble, Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade emergency management, told the Miami Herald.
Video showed fire crews removing a boy from the wreckage.
Surfside mayor Charles Burkett said: “The building is literally pancaked.
“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.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who toured the scene, said television did not capture the scale of what happened.
Rescue crews are “doing everything they can to save lives. That is ongoing, and they’re not going to rest,” he said.
Teams of 10 to 12 rescuers at a time entered the rubble, working until they grew tired from the heavy lifting, then making way for a new team.
Florida chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis, the state’s fire marshal, told Miami TV station WPLG: “They’re not going to stop just because of nightfall. They just may have a different path they pursue.”
Authorities did not say what may have caused the collapse.
On video footage captured from nearby, the centre of the building appeared to fall first, with a section nearest the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighbourhood.
Work was being done on the building’s roof, but Mr Burkett said he did not see how that could have been the cause.
President Joe Biden promised to provide federal aid if requested.
Hotels opened to some displaced residents, the mayor said, and deliveries of food, medicine and more were being hastily arranged.
The tower has a mix of seasonal and year-round residents, and while the building keeps a log of guests, it does not keep track of when owners are in residence, Mr Burkett said.
Nicolas Fernandez said his calls to missing loved ones had gone unanswered.
“I think they’re gone,” he told CBS. “I don’t want to be pessimistic, but we’ve been calling them non-stop with no reply.”
His two friends who were staying in the building with their young daughter.
The family had come to the United States to avoid the Covid-19 outbreak in their home country of Argentina.
The collapse, which appeared to affect one leg of the L-shaped tower, tore away walls and ripped open some homes in the still-standing part of the building.
TV footage showed beds, tables and chairs inside. Air conditioners hung from some parts of the building, where wires dangled.
Barry Cohen, 63, said he and his wife were asleep in the building when he first heard what he thought was a crack of thunder.
The couple went onto their balcony, then opened the door to the building’s hallway to find “a pile of rubble and dust and smoke billowing around”.
Surfside city commissioner Eliana Salzhauer told WPLG that the building’s county-mandated 40-year re-certification process was ongoing.
The area’s neighbourhood offers a stark contrast to the glitz and bustle of nearby South Beach.
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