‘Pile of rubble’: 1 dead, 99 feared missing in Miami condo collapse
According to those countries ' diplomats and news reports, the missing included 20 citizens of Israel, 10 from Argentina, six from Paraguay, six from Colombia and four from Venezuela. The Shul, one of five synagogues within walking distance of the tower, released a list of 10 of its members who vanished in the collapse.
The sister of Paraguay’s first lady and her husband and children were missing in the collapsed building, in one of two units that the family-owned. So was Arnie Notkin, a legendary PE teacher and coach at Miami Beach schools. So was Brad Cohen, an orthopaedic surgeon who lived on the 10th floor. The building crumbled at 1:30 a.m. It fell in less than 10 seconds. The sound was horrific. The earth shook. Many of the residents, most presumably asleep at that hour, have not been heard from.
On Wednesday afternoon, Jenny Urgelles texted with her mother, Mercedes, and spoke by phone with her father, Ray, both in the pharmacy business in South Florida. “Everything was fine,” she said. Then, early Thursday, after she heard about the collapse, she called her parents. Their phones went straight to voice mail. By late Thursday, she was still in an information vacuum.
“We haven’t gotten anything,” she said. “They’re not allowing anyone to go down there,” to the building where she had lived, where she often visited, using the pool, walking the beach. The people in charge of the search hoped the rescues did not know exactly how many victims they were looking for. Relatives and friends gathered on nearby streets and frantically searched social media, desperate for any word about their loved ones.
Security camera footage of the sudden collapse looked eerily similar to a demolition, minus the flash of explosives. The cause of the collapse of the 40-year-old building is unknown, with one expert deeming it “an oddity of biblical proportions.”
Nearly 12 hours after the collapse, the death toll was uncertain. Officials confirmed at least one death and said 35 people were pulled from the wreckage, with 10 injured people treated at the scene and two sent to a hospital. Officials estimated that 55 units were involved in the collapse.
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