Salvage work on collapsed Florida home suspended
– Workers examine the part of the building that is still standing © © 2021 AFP
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The approaching tropical storm “Elsa” made the rescue work on the partially collapsed house in the US state of Florida even more difficult.
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The approaching tropical storm “Elsa” made the rescue work on the partially collapsed house in the US state of Florida even more difficult. The search for people buried was temporarily suspended over the weekend to complete preparations for the demolition of the building in Surfside town. According to the head of administration for the Miami-Dade district, Daniella Levine Cava, the demolition will take place on Monday night (local time).
The urgency increased because tropical storm “Elsa” is due to hit Florida at the beginning of the week. One of the search teams also had to be disbanded due to a corona outbreak. Around ten days after the accident, however, there was little hope of finding survivors in the rubble. As of Saturday, 24 fatalities had been discovered, 121 people were still missing.
The standing remains of the building were also threatened with collapse due to the storm “Elsa”. This in turn posed a danger to the rescue teams when they were looking for victims in the rubble, as Levine Cava explained. The rescue operation will continue as soon as sections of the accident site are safe. “Small explosives” are to be used in the demolition, as she said at a press conference on Sunday.
According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the demolition work can be completed within 36 hours before “Elsa” is expected to hit Florida on Tuesday. In this way, the pause in the search for buried subjects is kept to a minimum. Initially, the authorities said the demolition work could take several weeks.
“Elsa” has already left a trail of devastation in the Caribbean. Three people died in the Dominican Republic and Santa Lucia. The authorities in Jamaica and Cuba warned of floods, squalls and mudslides. Hundreds of houses were damaged in Barbados. “Elsa” was downgraded from a level 1 hurricane to a tropical storm on Saturday and is said to continue to lose strength the closer it gets to the Florida coast.
Meanwhile, the head of the Miami-Dade fire department, Alan Cominsky, announced several corona cases in one of the search teams. All those affected have been isolated and their contact persons have been found.
The twelve-story residential building Champlain Towers South had partially collapsed on the night of June 24th. The exact cause of the accident is still unknown. In 2018, however, an appraisal had found “major structural damage” to the building, which was completed in 1981.
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