• Miami, a 12-storey building collapses: at least 4 dead and over 150 missing

  • Miami, a 12-storey building collapses: three dead.

    They are digging in the rubble, 99 missing

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By Tiziana Di Giovannandrea

June 27, 2021The death toll from the collapse of the 12-story condominium on Thursday in Surfside, near Miami, has risen to nine confirmed deaths, while more than 150 people remain missing. This was announced by the mayor of Miami-Dade, Daniella Levine Cava, specifying that the increase in the budget is due to the fact that one of the victims died in the hospital and other bodies were recovered under the rubble.



The search for the missing by the rescuers, however, continues and remains the priority, even if the hopes of finding someone still alive, among the rubble of the collapsed tower, are fading more and more. The first citizen of Miami-Dade,

Daniella Levine

Cava

he asked: "To the community and the world to be patient, please stay close to us, continue to pray for us, we will not stop".



The collapse of the building occurred at 2 am at 8777 Collins Avenue, where the Champlain Towers South in Miami are located; an elegant condominium of about 100 apartments overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built 40 years ago, on a marshy area and exposed to the erosion of salt. The building is located north of the city limits of Miami Beach, in the Surfside resort, south of Bal Harbor, where there are numerous condos and luxury hotels.



In the collapsed tower lived

people and families from

different

countries and languages

: Argentines, Paraguayans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Israelis. The US press spoke of a multicultural tragedy. 



According to what has been learned, the

building was in need of repairs and

structural

work

. In 2018, about three years before the collapse that took place Thursday in Surfside, an engineering firm estimated that the building needed repairs and major works for over 9 million dollars, of which 3.8 million dollars alone. garage and swimming pool, which should have been properly waterproofed. This is what emerges from some emails from the engineering firm that were disseminated by the Municipality of Surfside. 



The publication of the estimate of the costs of repairs and works for 2018 follows the publication, which took place yesterday, of another technical document, that is an engineering report in which it referred to "serious structural damage" in the building.



The document specified that the structural damage was to the slab under the pool edge as well as to concrete columns, beams and walls of the parking garage, therefore with possible corroded foundations and requiring extensive repairs, but there was no mention of an imminent danger due to the damage . In addition to the search for the missing, we are now trying to reconstruct the chain of responsibilities of a catastrophic event, which seems to have been announced.