Just after 8 a.m., Rollason told the Miami Herald emergency workers believed they had cleared all easily reachable survivors from inside the tower. A mother and child were saved, but the mother’s leg had to be amputated to free her, said Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management. “Thank God.”Īs the sun rose, the rescues got trickier. It felt like an earthquake,” Mejil said.Īs he recounted rushing over to the beach from their home near Miami International Airport, his phone rang. She is an overnight caretaker for an elderly disabled woman. Santo Mejil, 50, was roused out of bed when his wife called from a unit on the ninth floor of the south condo, one of three buildings that make up the Champlain Towers complex. “I was worried it was all going to go down,” Cohen said. They made their way back to their condo, where they shouted for help from the balcony. The couple tried to escape through the garage, but water poured in and rose above their shins. The couple started down the stairs, but warped metal blocked the doorways. After the explosion woke them up, he and his wife gathered some belongings and opened the door of their condo to find a large pile of rubble and dust. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue used a cherry picker bucket to rescue residents trapped on their balconies, like former Surfside Vice Mayor Barry Cohen. “Exiting the pool area, I could hear people crying and screaming for help,” he said. By that time, emergency lights cut through the clouds of dust as his neighbors, trapped in the building’s remains, cried out. Unable to exit through the lobby door, the group moved down into the flooded parking garage, where cars had been pancaked by the collapse.Ĭarrying an older woman who was frozen from shock, Lopez and others made their way through a crack in a crumbling wall and past a destroyed pool deck, and onto the beach. He and his family turned the other direction and headed down the emergency stairwell with about 10 other people who were rushing down. Staring at dust and sky where there should have been a hallway, he said he gingerly stepped out of his unit, fearing the floor might cave. All my neighbors’ apartments were gone,” he said. Using his phone as a flashlight, he walked to his front door and opened it. Looking out the window to the west, facing Collins Avenue, the view from his sixth-story corner unit was completely shrouded by dust. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Weston Democrat who represents the area where the collapse occurred, according to the official. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain also spoke with Rep. The president spoke with Miami-Dade Mayor Danielle Levine Cava earlier in the day to offer federal assistance, according to a White House official. “I spoke with the mayor, I spoke with the congresswoman, and I’ll have more to say about that as well,” Biden said from the White House. News of the disaster also reached the White House, where President Joe Biden said that he had been briefed about the building collapse and offered federal assistance if needed. “You’re not going to have those answers immediately,” he said. He said engineers would probe the scene to determine what went wrong. “It is really, really traumatic to see the collapse of a massive structure like that.”ĭeSantis thanked first-responders for risking their lives searching for survivors when it was unknown if the building was stable enough to enter.
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