Pretoria - Rescue workers were on Friday still painstakingly trying to locate nearly 100 missing people trapped in the rubble of a partially collapsed residential building in Surfside, a beach-side town in the north of Miami, CNN reported.
The US news channel quoted Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava as saying that at least one person was confirmed dead in Thursday's collapse.
About 55 of the 136 units at Champlain Towers South crumbled at around 1.30am on Thursday, leaving huge piles of rubble on the ground and materials dangling from what remained of the structure, the broadcaster quoted officials as saying.
MBPD and @MiamiBeachFire are assisting the Town of Surfside at a partial building collapse located at 8777 Collins Avenue in Surfside, Florida. Multiple police and fire agencies from across Miami-Dade are assisting. Please follow @MiamiDadeFire for updated information. pic.twitter.com/8tORIfZfjY
— Miami Beach Police (@MiamiBeachPD) June 24, 2021
"We're not giving up, that is the one thing we're not doing. We're searching 24 hours a day, and we're pulling as many people out as we can. That's the whole goal right now. Nothing else matters,“ Surfside mayor Charles Burkett told CNN on Thursday.
USA Today reported that on Friday, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency authorising funding and other disaster relief to Surfside, a small tight-knit community of about 6,000 residents.
The daily newspaper quoted a researcher at Florida International University as saying that the building was constructed on reclaimed wetlands and was determined to be unstable a year ago.
The building, which was constructed in 1981, has been sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s, according to a study in 2020 by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment, USA Today wrote.
According to ABC News, a White House statement confirmed that the president has authorised the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) ’’to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures.’’
NEW: Pres. Biden approves Florida emergency declaration after deadly building collapse, authorizing DHS and FEMA "to coordinate all disaster relief efforts." https://t.co/PEh5XXbL6j pic.twitter.com/Vy8KYxuPZW
— ABC News (@ABC) June 25, 2021
The US broadcaster had a different tally in terms of the fatalities. It quoted Daniella Levine Cava as saying that three more bodies have been pulled from the rubble, bringing the death toll to four.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue assistant chief of operations Ray Jadallah said that the sonar sound devices from various areas inside the debris have detected signs that could potentially be from some of the missing people, Independent UK reported.
“We did receive sounds, not necessarily people talking, but sounds. What sounds like people banging, well not people but sounds of a possibility of a banging. Short of that we haven’t heard any voices coming from the pile,” Jadallah was quoted as saying.
African News Agency (ANA)