Another 145 people have yet to be located. The tragedy shook a 12-story building overnight on Thursday, June 24.
Six lifeless people were found in the rubble of the building that collapsed last week in Miami-Dade. At the moment, the authorities have notified 18 deaths, two of them are children, as announced this Wednesday, June 30, by the county police.
Despite the bad news, authorities remain hopeful of finding survivors among the ruins. The figures that the rescuers handle invite hope, especially thanks to the new search and debris removal equipment, with which they hope to find air tunnels that help the trapped people to breathe.
But the truth is that no survivors have been found since the first hours of the collapse. Thousands of tons of pulverized concrete, iron, and wood from the 12 floors and basements fell on the same perimeter, something that makes it difficult for rescuers due to the huge amount of material they must remove.
Two teams of search dogs have been deployed: one to find possible people alive and the other to locate the bodies of the victims. Professionals from Israel and Mexico have joined these efforts by the authorities of the Miami-Dade and Florida metropolitan area.
The mayor of Surfside, the district where the apartment complex collapsed, was hopeful of good news. “We have not reached the bottom. We do not know what is down there,” said Charles Burkett at a press conference.
To this, he rejected any possibility of abandoning the rescue work: “We are not going to guess. We are not going to make a life or death decision to stop arbitrarily searching for people who may be alive among the rubble.”
Among those who are missing and the confirmed victims are numerous entire families
