Death toll climbs to 11 in Florida condo collapse, 150 missing
SURFSIDE. KAZINFORM Search-and-rescue teams pulled two more bodies from the concrete and steel rubble of a partially collapsed Florida condominium tower on Monday, bringing the death toll to 11 with 150 people still listed as missing four days after the disaster.
Pouring rain and slabs of cement hampered round-the-clock efforts to pick through debris left from the unexplained cave-in of nearly half of the 12-floor, 156-unit building, in what may end up as the deadliest unintentional structural failure in U.S. history, WAM reports.
No survivors have been pulled from the ocean-front ruins of the Champlain Towers South condo in the town of Surfside, near Miami, since the first hours after the building abruptly crumbled into a heap early on Thursday as residents slept.
«We have people waiting and waiting and waiting. That is excruciating,» Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told an afternoon news briefing on Monday, referring to friends and family members of the missing.
What caused the 40-year-old high-rise to give way remained under investigation, but initial attention focused on structural deficiencies identified in a 2008 engineer's report released by Surfside city officials.