Search for collapsed Florida flat halted: ‘I heard screams for help’ | Abroad

Hurricane Elsa is en route to South Florida and is likely to make landfall on Tuesday as a tropical storm. Rescue workers try to get as far as possible before then. They are unlikely to find survivors. No one has been found alive under the rubble except just after the building collapsed last week.

A second residential building, containing 156 apartments, was evacuated in Miami Beach on Friday for safety reasons. According to the authorities, the decision was made after engineers discovered problems with the concrete structure and the wiring.

Witnesses

Two loud bangs and a lot of dust. “It flashed through my mind: this is it, we are going to die.” There was no longer a corridor, just a large gaping hole. The elevator had also collapsed, so survivors of the Miami disaster crawled past the remains of the stairwell to the ground floor. AP was able to speak to some of them.

Most of the victims and missing lived on the side of the building with a sea view. Those who lived on the street side could still get away, although that was very difficult. Part of the stairwell had collapsed. “When I opened the door to the stairwell and saw that part of the staircase had been destroyed, I knew we had no time to lose,” said Albert Aguero, an eyewitness. Little by little, he and his family clambered their way through the half-destroyed stairwell. Along the way, he and his wife helped other residents.

On the fifth floor, he heard a banging on a door. The party pried open the door and found, among other things, a young woman holding an elderly woman under her arm. Then the mass continues down, but the pace is too high for the older woman. “Don’t worry about me, I’m 88 years old, I’ve had a good life,” she told Aguero and his wife. She urged them to leave her for fear that the rest of the building would come down. Aguero refused, supporting her and leading her to the ground floor. “It’ll be okay,” he told the older woman. “We’re going to make sure you get to 89.”

On the first floor, Gabriel Nir had just come home from a shift. He works as a cook in a restaurant and wanted to bake a piece of salmon, but then the bang came. In no time, the apartment he shared with some family members was filling with dust. “We have to go now,” he told his sister. As they run down the hall to the stairwell, the building still shakes. Once on the ground floor, Gabriel makes a U-turn, back to the lobby of the collapsed building. “I have seen the building turn into a big cloud of dust. I’ve seen people trapped under debris and heard them screaming for help. I had to return to see if I could offer any assistance.” But really, he knew it was already too late.

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