Barry Cohen, the former vice mayor of Surfside, Florida, was sleeping in his third-floor condo at Champlain Towers when he awoke to what he called “a bang that just kept on going” on Thursday morning.
Cohen’s tale of survival comes amid a tragedy in Surfside in which a 12-story, 136-unit apartment complex partially collapsed around 1:30 a.m., Ray Jadallah, assistant fire chief of operations for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, said at apress conference.
Ninety-nine people are still unaccounted for, a spokesperson for Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo Ramirez confirms to PEOPLE. Another 53 people have been accounted for.
The aftermath of the collapse of the Surfside Condo.Miami-Dade Fire Rescue/Twitter
Of the 136 units, about 55 collapsed, and search and rescue teams were able to pull out 35 occupants trapped in the building. An additional 10 people were assessed and treated, and two of those people were hospitalized, Jadallah said.CNNreported that one of those two people later died of their injuries.
Footage captured from the scene showed heroic rescues of people trapped inside, and Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management, told theHeraldthat teams were working on bringing a child to safety.
The Surfside Condo building.Joe Raedle/Getty
“It’s bad,” Rollason told the outlet. “We got some people out. They had to cut away railings… Everyone who is alive is out the building.”
“They brought dogs who can sniff for survivors in the rubble,” Surfside Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer told theHerald. “They aren’t turning up very much. No one is celebrating anyone being pulled out.”
Rollason added that earlier, crews were able to save a mother and her child, though the mother’s leg had to be amputated to get her out of the rubble.
Surfside condo collapse.CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty
Also emerging safely from the disaster was the wife of Santo Mejil, 50, who told theHeraldthat she was rescued after hearing “a big explosion” that “felt like an earthquake” while in a unit on the ninth floor.
“The whole building shook like an earthquake,” a woman also on the ninth floor told ABC affiliateWPLG. “I opened my sliding glass and I saw a plume of dust and then I opened the door and I saw that the building had pancaked in the back.”
Salzhauer told theHeraldthat the roof of the building, which was completed in 1981, was in the process of being redone.
The cause of the collapse remains unknown, and the Miami-Dade Police Department is leading an investigation. Officials said that search and rescue efforts are ongoing.
source: people.com
