Surfside Kondo’s son collapses victim demands justice

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“She’d write letters, be in front of every camera, reporter, whatever, and make sure whoever was in charge took responsibility for it. That’s what keeps me going.”

by Amber Jamieson

Reports from

Surfside, Florida

Amber Jamieson BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reports from

Surfside, Florida

Posted on June 29, 2021 at 1:51 PM ET

Courtesy of Pablo Rodriguez

Elena Placer and Elena Chavez smiling with Pablo Rodriguez and his son John.

Surfside, Florida—Water lover Elena Placer adored that her two-bedroom apartment on the eleventh floor of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, overlooked both the ocean and the pool.

But the idea of ​​those opinions is now haunting her son.

“From there, I saw cracks around the pool deck,” Pablo Rodriguez, 40, told BuzzFeed News, standing just blocks from where his 64-year-old mother’s building collapsed as several residents slept around 1: 30 a.m. last Thursday.

His grandmother, 88-year-old Elena Chavez, was staying at Placer’s house that night. Now both women are among the 150 people missing in the Surfside building collapse, 11 people have been confirmed dead and an intense search continues.

But Rodriguez does not hope that they will be found alive. Instead, he is actually demanding justice in the deaths of his mother and grandmother and calling for accountability, asking why the property has not been properly maintained to the point that a building housing hundreds of people could collapse in the middle of the night without warning. The Miami Herald reports that concerns about the building’s safety have been raised several times in recent years, including a 2018 inspection report that showed a “fatal error” in its construction and photos from a swimming pool contractor that showed standing water in a parking garage. The contractor also reportedly raised issues regarding cracked concrete under the swimming pool just two days before the collapse.

“My wife keeps telling me, ‘What would your mom do if she was here?'” Rodriguez said, crying. “She would write letters, she would be in front of every camera, reporter, whatever, and she would make sure that whoever was in charge took responsibility for it. That’s what keeps me going.”

Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Search and rescue teams search for potential survivors in the 12-story South Condo building in the partially collapsed Champlain Towers on June 29 in Surfside, Florida.

Rodriguez, a lawyer born and raised in Miami, knew the building had problems. He saw it with his own eyes. Every week, he, his wife, and their 6-year-old son would meet his mom to hang out, often visiting her Surfside home to go to the beach or take a dip in the pool.

“When you go into the building, you’ll see cracks in the pool deck, water in the garage, and you’ll see the paint they painted and it’ll be cracked,” Rodriguez said, “but nothing thinks that’s going to make the building collapse, otherwise none of us would be.”

Officials want to face the full extent of the law.

“What I really hope is that the prosecutors will step in, they will investigate, and if there is negligence on their part – and the building is no longer there, so in my opinion there is negligence, but that is something they decide – but if there is, I hope they investigate, and they are responsible for their actions,” Rodriguez said.

The only updates he was getting about how the meltdown happened were coming from the media. “Every piece of information that comes out is a little more frustrating,” Rodriguez said.

Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

Search and rescue teams search for potential survivors in the 12-story South Condo building in the partially collapsed Champlain Towers on June 29 in Surfside, Florida.

On Monday, USA Today reported that the president of the Condominium Association warned residents in April that damage to the building’s basement garage had gotten “much worse” and noted that the repairs cost an estimated $16.2 million.

“I don’t understand how the painting allowed the building to be in the state it was in,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think they planned to bring down the building, but they collected over a million dollars each year in maintenance fees, so where does that money go? Because it won’t be maintained – not in the pictures you see and the condition the building was in.”

Rodriguez said his mother often complained about the condition of the building. “I talked a lot, many other owners often talked about mismanagement and misappropriation of money,” he said.

Now, Rodriguez is determined to draw attention to what he describes as mismanagement, even as he lives through a personal nightmare. “That’s the only reason to do this,” he said. “Over the years I’ve seen many tragedies on TV, and tragedies that no one talks about fade away.”

Courtesy of Pablo Rodriguez

Placer and Chavez swim with John Rodriguez.

But it is not easy. He’s slept about five hours total since the crash five days ago. His son does not know the full extent of what happened and keeps asking for FaceTime for his grandmother. The 6-year-old also refuses to be alone, crawling to bed with his parents in the morning for the first time in years.

Rodriguez described his mother and grandmother as independent and fun-loving – Placer loved the beach, and Chavez traveled to Europe annually – who lived alone and adored their close family. “They will always be together,” he said. In the photos he shared with BuzzFeed News, the love between family members was evident – visiting Rodriguez’s brother in the capital, taking pictures at the beach, cuddling and kissing during holiday festivities and family meals.

On Monday, Rodriguez visited the wreckage from a distance for the first time.

Pointing to the side of the road, Rodriguez said, “When I got out of the car—and walked right out of there, by the railing, and if it wasn’t for the railing, I’d end up in the ground, just my feet. Standing here is tough.”

Any glimmer of hope he had of finding his family alive was dashed when he watched the security video that showed the building collapsing.

He recounted that he was struggling to speak: “I could see the balcony of their unit was completely collapsing, and another building was falling on top of it.” “For me, that’s all I see when I close my eyes.”

But he is determined to find something good – “if that’s the word we can use” – to get out of unspeakable tragedy, to make sure no other family suffers like his.

“I hope investigations happen, people take responsibility, and reform gets out of this so this doesn’t happen again.”

His face collapsed. After that, Rodriguez dried his eyes and headed to the next interview, to keep the story of what happened to his mother and grandmother alive.

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