Unanswered questions, arduous research and mounting anger.

Five days after the collapse of a building near Miami, the death toll rose to 11 dead on Monday, as searches continued to find 150 people missing in the rubble while questions were increasingly pressing on the causes of the tragedy.

“In recent hours, rescuers have found another victim.

The confirmed death toll is 11, ”Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at an early evening press conference.

150 people are still missing, including dozens of Latin Americans from Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Chile and Uruguay.

Relief operations continue "relentlessly", "24 hours a day," said the mayor.

Hope to find survivors is fading

Hundreds of Miami-Dade County rescue workers, supported by reinforcements from across Florida and even Israel and Mexico, are busy trying to locate possible survivors in Surfside, South. is from the United States.

This is where the twelve-story Champlain Towers building collapsed in a cloud of dust before dawn Thursday.

Two large cranes are used to carefully remove the debris.

Firefighters working in the heat and humidity are supported by image and sound search technologies to locate air pockets with people potentially still alive, although hope is fading. as the days go by.

"We have to search a huge pile of rubble in a methodical and strategic way," Maggie Castro, a member of the Miami-Dade fire department search and rescue unit, told AFP.

The building did not fall vertically but "in all directions", she said.

"There will be a thorough and complete investigation into the reasons which led to this tragedy", assured Daniella Levine Cava.

Alert in 2018

For the families, who wait in anguish and have erected a makeshift memorial in front of the site, the need for explanations is becoming more and more urgent.

“Buildings don't collapse like that in America,” said Charles Burkett, Mayor of Surfside, at a press conference Sunday.

A report on the condition of the building had noted as early as 2018 "major structural damage", as well as "cracks" in the basement of the building, according to documents released Friday evening by the city of Surfside.

"The waterproofing under the edge of the swimming pool and the access road for vehicles (...) has exceeded its service life and must therefore be completely removed and replaced", wrote in this document the expert Frank Morabito , calling for repairs "within a reasonable time" without however raising the risk of collapse.

Work to bring the building up to standard estimated at nearly $ 12 million was to begin shortly before the disaster and the roof was being repaired, according to several officials.

The images of a surveillance video showing the collapse also seem to indicate a weakness at the bottom of the structure, at the level of the parking lot or the first floors, according to experts interviewed by the

New York Times

. A resident of Champlain Towers would have also seen from her balcony the formation of a hole near the swimming pool, according to her husband who was on the phone with her, reports the newspaper.

Attention was also drawn to another study conducted in 2020, which showed that the Champlain Towers, built in 1981, had subsided by about 2 millimeters per year between 1993 and 1999. In a joint press release with its university, the author of the report said, however, that subsidence alone would not cause a building to collapse.

A building built at the same time as the Champlain Towers and by the same architects is under close surveillance.

World

Collapsed building in Florida: "structural damage" noted in 2018, report reveals

  • United States

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  • Florida