Number of missing drops in Surfside as death toll hits 95

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Exhausted crews neared the end of their search for victims of a Miamiarea condominium tower collapse Tuesday as the death toll reached 95 with just a handful of people still unaccounted for.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference that the number of people considered missing has dwindled as authorities work to identify everyone connected to the building. The mayor said 14 people remain unaccounted for, which includes 10 victims whose bodies have been recovered but not yet identified — leaving potentially four more victims to be found.

“It’s a scientific, methodical process to identify human remains. As we’ve said, this work is becoming more difficult with the passage of time,” Levine Cava said

Of the 14 people considered not accounted for, the mayor said 12 are the subject of missing persons reports and detectives are trying to verify information about the other two.

Twenty days after the disaster, Levine Cava said crews had removed 18 million pounds of rubble from the site.

“They have given of their heart and soul,” Levine Cava said of the crews that have worked around the clock for nearly three weeks. “We are totally walking among superheroes.”

As they search through tons of broken concrete and twisted rebar for more remains, authorities are also trying to recover keepsakes for families that have lost relatives and for surviving residents of the building. They have set up a database for people to upload information about property.

Each time crews find personal possessions, they take photos and log the location using GPS. They have made a grid of the pile, knowing approximately where each family’s condo unit should be. Detectives place the objects into a bin. They are taken to an area to be cataloged and sealed in bags. Then they are placed in a locked and guarded cargo container for later shipment to a warehouse.

For the possessions of the deceased, there will be an “estate process” to claim items to make sure they get to the proper heir, Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said.

It will take much longer for experts to figure out what caused the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium to fall into a tangled heap of concrete and steel on June 24. The building was set for its four-decade recertification review when it collapsed.

Engineers and others investigating the cause of the collapse have been identifying key pieces of the 40-year-old building to determine what happened, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said.

“We’re looking at how the building lines up with what the plans say,” he said.

The search for answers includes an engineer hired by the town of Surfside, a team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, experts hired by lawyers representing families and others.

Part of the investigation will include what decisions were made by government building officials and the condominium board, which knew of serious structural problems with the tower as early as fall 2018. Some residents were reluctant to pay assessments in the tens of thousands of dollars for the repairs, leading to acrimonious board meetings.

There is also concern about the stability of Champlain Towers North, a nearly identical building next door built at the same time and by the same developer as its doomed sister structure.

Discussions continue about what to do with the site with families of the victims, Burkett said. Some residents who escaped the disaster want the tower rebuilt; others want some kind of memorial site.