search for survivors, June 24 , June 24 On June 24, more than 80 rescue units responded to the collapse, according to the
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department. Surfside mayor Charles Burkett said in a news conference that ten people were treated at the scene, one person was dead, and two people were hospitalized. Both hospitalized victims – a mother and her daughter – survived with serious injuries, having fallen from the ninth floor to the fifth floor. They were pulled from the rubble by Miami Dade Fire-Rescue Aerial 19; it was originally erroneously reported by
WFOR-TV (CBS 4 Miami) that the mother rescued herself. Her husband did not survive. Their family cat was later found wandering near the collapsed building. At least 35 people were rescued on June 24 and up to 159 were unaccounted for. A woman's voice, later identified as 36-year-old Theresa Velasquez, was heard until around 11:00 a.m., but rescuers were unable to reach her.
Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava signed a state of emergency declaration at 4:33 p.m. on June 24 and called on Florida governor
Ron DeSantis to do so at the state level. Governor DeSantis viewed the site on the same day, and issued a state of emergency. The
White House and
Federal Emergency Management Agency stated that they were in contact with local officials and providing assistance. President
Joe Biden was briefed on the event, and spoke with Miami-Dade County mayor Levine Cava. Two
FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force teams,
Urban Search and Rescue Florida Task Force 1 based in the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and
Urban Search and Rescue Florida Task Force 2 based in the Miami Fire-Rescue Department, were activated. An additional three teams, one in Ohio and two in Virginia, were put on standby. Members of
Hatzalah of South Florida, a Jewish faith-based
ambulance service which was authorized to transport patients as part of a law signed the previous week in Surfside, were among the first to respond, setting up an onsite
triage station.
Israel offered clothes, medication, food, water, and other aid to the victims of the collapse, according to Israeli consul general Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, who came to the scene and conveyed an official offer from the Israeli government to send the
Israel Defense Forces'
Home Front Command search and rescue team to assist in the rescue efforts. The Command has assisted in many other disasters, such as the
2017 Puebla earthquake,
2010 Haitian earthquake, and
Typhoon Haiyan. Israel's President
Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister
Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister
Yair Lapid offered condolences and support. A unit specializing in providing psychological and emotional stabilization following traumatic incidents was dispatched from
United Hatzalah. At least 35 of those missing were Jewish. The
National Basketball Association's
Miami Heat staff handed out water and snacks to state emergency workers.
World Central Kitchen and
Direct Relief, both of which are beneficiaries of the Heat's charitable arm, were also helping.
American Red Cross volunteers assisted people displaced by the collapse. On June 25, Mayor Levine Cava announced that rescue teams from
Israel and
Mexico had joined the search and rescue effort, rotating in two daily 12-hour shifts of sifting through the rubble. On June 26, in a news conference, Mayor Levine Cava explained that a fire deep within the rubble, and subsequent smoke, were impeding the ability of fire and rescue personnel to search for survivors. She indicated that the fire "spread laterally throughout the pile", making it difficult to isolate the source. Officials said rescuers were in the tower's heavily damaged underground parking garage, under constantly changing conditions. Later that afternoon, the official toll was revised without elaboration to five dead and 156 missing. Surfside Mayor Burkett advised residents of the Champlain Towers North building, located about north of the fallen structure, to evacuate with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance "pending a thorough structural investigation", noting that the North and South buildings had been constructed by the same developer at about the same time, and likely using similar plans and materials. He did not immediately order the evacuation of the building or declare it unsafe. By late afternoon, voluntary evacuations were occurring at both Champlain Tower North and Champlain Tower East. Florida officials announced that THOR, a mobile command center, was being deployed from
Escambia County to help coordinate teams and operations. THOR, which includes cellular, satellite, and VOIP wireless systems and
UHF and
VHF radio systems, with built-in generators, was deployed for at least 10 days. On June 27, FEMA administrator
Deanne Criswell announced that the
US Army Corps of Engineers, which has significant experience with complex construction, demolition, stabilization, and forensic engineering projects, is providing onsite assistance. A search-and-rescue team from the Israeli Defense Forces' Home Front Command arrived in the morning, along with a six-person
psycho-trauma unit from the Israel-based
United Hatzalah including the K9 AACR therapy unit (with a first response therapy dog and her therapist handler), and members of
ZAKA, a volunteer team that specializes in rescues and gathering body parts for Jewish burial. In the evening, Mayor Levine Cava advised that nine people had been confirmed dead and 152 were missing. Four more names were released later that night, leaving only one of those confirmed dead not publicly identified. Two of the victims named were Venezuelan nationals. On June 28, an additional fatality was confirmed, bringing the number of dead to 10, with 151 people still missing. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Ray Jadallah stressed that, while the operation entered its fifth day, the effort was still focused on the search for and potential rescue of survivors rather than shifting to recovery. In the afternoon, Levine Cava announced that an eleventh body had been found, reducing the number of missing to 150. The names of three additional victims were released later in the evening, making all of the 11 known fatalities then publicly identified. An international nonprofit group of volunteers trained in
Israel called Cadena International (
cadena being a Spanish word meaning "
chain") was assisting the rescue mission. The
Miami Marlins, along with the Miami Marlins Foundation, created the Marlins Surfside Relief Fund. Matching $50,000 donations were made by Marlins majority owner and chairman, along with additional monies. On June 29, Mayor Levine Cava reported that no more survivors or victims had yet been found, but that 210 search and rescue workers were on site, each working 12-hour shifts. Workers were being medically evaluated regularly to ensure their fitness to work at the site. A massive fire deep in the rubble pile, which had hampered search and rescue efforts since the collapse, was finally extinguished. Small, radio-controlled
robots equipped with thermal sensors and 360-degree cameras were being deployed to assist in search and recovery efforts. President Biden was expected to visit the site on July 1, having not done so earlier to avoid disrupting rescue operations. In the evening, Mayor Levine Cava advised that 12 people had been confirmed dead and 149 were missing. Levine Cava said that authorities would audit the names of the missing to ensure none are duplicates, particularly because of provided Hebrew names. Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said of concrete had been removed from the site of the collapse. He said rescue workers would not reenter the west section of the building facing Collins Avenue, which was still standing, because it was unstable, making it too dangerous to do so. Rescuers could not enter a large area under the rubble on the eastern side of the site because of the same risk. Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie and Miami-Dade Fire Chief Cominsky requested that FEMA deploy an additional Urban Search and Rescue Task Force team, anticipating that emergency response to the
2021 Atlantic hurricane season would otherwise have an adverse impact on the number of rescue and recovery personnel available for deployment at Surfside. On June 30, an additional six bodies were found, including the wife and two children of a man whose body was found on June 26. This brought the death toll to 18 and reduced the number of missing to 145. In the afternoon, the rescuers discovered void spaces, including one described as "a big tunnel", in the rubble. On July 1, search and rescue efforts were halted at the site at approximately 2:00 a.m. due to concerns that the western portion of the structure, which had not collapsed, was increasingly likely to do so, creating unsafe conditions for workers. President Biden visited the site after meeting with Governor DeSantis, Mayor Levine Cava, other elected leaders, and uniformed
first responders in a conference room at the nearby
St. Regis Bal Harbour resort. Biden suggested that the federal government could possibly cover the full cost of the first 30 days of rescue and recovery efforts. Concern also mounted that Tropical Storm
Elsa could make
landfall in south Florida, further destabilizing the standing portion of the structure and the debris field and interfering with rescue operations. The search resumed in the early evening after a 15-hour delay, announced that it would launch a full investigation into the collapse, with an eye to determining
best practices to prevent similar disasters in the future. On July 2, the bodies of two more victims were found in the wreckage, according to comments at a morning news conference by Mayor Levine Cava, bringing the known death toll to 20. The mayor also revised the number of missing downward to 128, explaining that officials "originally received a report [regarding] a potentially missing person... That report was only marked as one person, but when the detectives were able to reach and verify... we discovered that there are in fact, several family members who could have been [ac]counted for... and now we can mark them as safe." At an evening news conference, Mayor Levine Cava announced the recovery of two additional bodies, bringing the death toll to 22. The mayor then ordered the remaining structure to be demolished as soon as it was feasible. Ongoing structural engineering assessments indicated that the standing portion of the structure was dangerously unstable, presenting a hazard to rescue and recovery teams working on site. She said the demolition would "take, most likely, weeks". A Chilean man, first cousin of
Chilean Air Force general
Alberto Bachelet and uncle to the general's daughter
Michelle Bachelet (who served as
President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 2018), and his
Filipino American wife, a retired senior budget officer at the
International Monetary Fund, were formally identified by authorities on Friday night among four previously recovered victims. On July 3, two more bodies were found at the site, bringing the known death toll to 24, and the number of missing was revised downward to 121. Demolition of the remaining structure was moved to an earlier date, due to Tropical Storm Elsa, which was expected to arrive in Florida the following week. The search was suspended as a result. Rescuers used visual searches, thermal cameras, drones, and animal traps to try to locate pets left behind in the standing portion of the building, but did not find any. On July 4, authorities announced that the still-standing western portion of Champlain Towers South would be
demolished by
Controlled Demolition, Inc. between 10:00 p.m. EDT Sunday night and 3:00 a.m. EDT Monday morning, after accelerating planning and placement of explosives in the building's foundation to complete the demolition prior to the arrival of
Hurricane Elsa (then a tropical storm). The
controlled demolition was expected to cause the standing structure to collapse mostly into the existing footprint of the building, with debris outside that perimeter expected to fall on the west (Collins Avenue) side to avoid disturbing the existing search and rescue zone on the east. The search for survivors of the initial collapse was set to resume almost immediately after the demolition was completed. A petition with over 18,000 people was signed to halt the demolition plans until all pets were found in the standing portion of the building. An hour before demolition, a county judge denied an attorney's emergency motion to delay demolition and allow people to retrieve their pets. The demolition took place at approximately 10:30 p.m. EDT on July 4, and the search for survivors resumed 20 minutes later. On July 6, the death toll continued to increase as workers searched portions of the rubble that they had previously not been able to access. In the late afternoon, officials announced that an additional 12 bodies had been located since the search resumed after the demolition of the western portion of the structure on Sunday, including 4 on Tuesday. This brought the death toll to 36, with as many as 109 people still considered missing. Of the 36 confirmed dead, 29 have been publicly identified. On July 7, in a private morning briefing with families, and a later briefing for reporters, authorities announced the recovery of an additional 10 bodies, the largest number thus far found in any 24-hour period. This brought the number of known deaths to 46. According to Mayor Levine Cava, 94 were still believed missing. Miami-Dade Fire Chief Jadallah said that families of 32 of the victims have been notified, and stated that "we haven't transitioned" to a purely recovery operation, as would occur when rescue of additional survivors was deemed no longer possible. He said they had so far not detected any voids in the rubble that would be likely to shelter survivors. Later in the day, authorities announced in another private briefing for family members that operations, now in their 14th day, were shifting from search and rescue to search and recovery. On July 11, four more victims were found, bringing the death toll to 90, while the number of missing was revised to 31. On the following day, four more victims were found, bringing the death toll to 94, while the number of missing was revised to 22. One more body was found on July 13, bringing the count to 95. On July 14, the number of missing was revised to 14. Another body was found, bringing the death toll to 96. On July 15, the total confirmed deaths rose to 97, of whom all but 7 had been positively identified. The number of missing persons was reduced to 8. On July 17, authorities positively identified 95 of the 97 recovered victims. On July 23, the Miami-Dade fire department left the area and discontinued the recovery effort. ==Response==