Surfside apartment building collapse death toll rises to 64

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The death toll in the apartment building collapse in Surfside, Florida, rose to 64 on Thursday after more victims were recovered. Forty victims have been identified, and 76 are still missing, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniela Levine Cava said at a news conference.

Teams worked all night searching for victims and stopped around 1:20 a.m. to celebrate the two weeks since the building collapsed in the middle of the night. Levin Cava said a minute’s silence was held with first responders on Thursday “in honor of the victims and their families.”

Levin Kava said work has now shifted from rescue to recovery and continues through Thursday with speed and urgency.

“We are working around the clock to recover the victims and close their families as quickly as possible,” she said.

The searches over the past two weeks have been targeted, not random, said Christopher Valerian, medical director of the New Jersey Task Force One, an urban search and rescue team deployed to the collapse site.

“Maybe there was a K-9 unit that located a potential victim or maybe you see flies circling around, or maybe you see the remains of a bedroom with, you know, bed clothes or even a mattress or something,” Valerian said Thursday on CBSN.

“Once you locate those sites, you’ll go and start digging, literally by hand, cutting concrete with machines as necessary, looking for victims,” ​​he said.

Because there were multiple layers of the building, he said, large machinery helped move the large debris out of the way before the teams, divided into groups of six, got on their hands and knees and began digging for any survivors.

However, no one has been found alive immediately since the collapse.

Valerian said the Surfside collapse site is not typical.

“Usually in a building collapse like this you’ll find what we call empty spaces, you know, spaces created by things that block debris falling over your head, and that’s kind of where you find victims,” ​​he said. “In this particular case, I am not a structural engineer, however, the way it was explained to me was that the way the building was shattered and the pressure from the floors above created so much downward force that these normal empty spaces in which survivors could exist did not exist. to her “.

Valerian said the lack of large household appliances seen at the site is another indication of how strong the crash was.

He said, “I said to myself, Where are all the appliances? Where are the refrigerators, stoves, ovens?” “We just don’t find, like, big things. All we find are small, crushed, crushed bits of metal and concrete and steel, so it’s surprising how strong this building came down with, and I think that’s part of the problem of not being able to find survivors.”

NJ Task Force 1 Helps Restore Surfside 09:50

Caitlin Yelik and Manuel Bogorques contributed to this story.

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