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The death toll from the collapse of a 12-story apartment tower north of Miami rose again on Sunday as search and rescue teams continued to pick up the rubble for a fourth day in hopes of finding survivors. .
Charles Burkett, mayor of the city of Surfside, promised residents that authorities would be fully focused on rescue operations, but that they needed more luck. “We’re not resource poor,” Burkett said. “We have no problem with resources, we have had a problem with luck. Now we just have to start being a little luckier. ”
Burkett said search and rescue teams had advanced “substantially” overnight. Officials said a fire burned in the rubble and hindering search efforts it became extinct around noon on Saturday.
Rescue efforts were stepped up by teams from Israel and Mexico. A trench 125 feet long, 20 feet wide and 40 feet deep was built at the site overnight, allowing lifeguards to find more human bodies and remains.
The collapse of the Champlain Towers South building on Thursday left 156 people unaccounted for and has fueled concerns about the safety of other apartment buildings, especially the nearby sister building Champlain Towers North. Burkett said Saturday he had requested an emergency inspection of that building.
County officials said they would conduct thorough security inspections of the old buildings. Daniella Levine Cava, mayor of Miami-Dade County, said there will be a “deep dive” over the next 30 days to assess buildings that are 40 years old or older.
This review, however, would not include city buildings, which have their own powers, Levine Cava told CBS News.
The New York Times reported Saturday that an engineering consultant found alarming evidence of “significant structural damage” in the fall of Champlain Towers South in 2018. Burkett said Sunday that city authorities would be looking “very, very, very thoroughly ”the 2018 engineering report on the building as well as review of other documents.
“We are now making a very deep dive into the documentation, into the communications that had been maintained over the years with that particular building and with the other buildings, but also specifically with the sister building,” he said.
But he reiterated that the rescue operation would be the top priority. “Buildings don’t fall in America,” Burkett told ABC News. “Obviously, there was something very, very wrong in this building, and we have to get to the bottom, but not today, or tomorrow or for a long time, because our first and only priority is to pull our residents out of that rubble. ”
Levine Cava said he would “support” anyone living in the sister block who wanted to evacuate and said building inspectors were being sent to do “a more detailed review of the structure of this building” after that. an initial inspection of the building found no cause for concern.
Burkett said the city would provide resources to any of those residents who wanted to relocate.
Earlier in the week, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered federal assistance to complement state and local response efforts and declared a state of emergency. The emergency action authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate “all disaster relief efforts,” a White House statement said Friday.
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