Victims’ relatives interact with judge to allow property sale

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Surside, Florida – Martin Lagsfeld is saddened by the loss of his 26-year-old sister and 28-year-old brother-in-law. Crews recovered their remains a week ago. On Wednesday, he was in disbelief when he learned that a judge had agreed to sell the property as many had died.

Nicole Lagsfeld and Louis Sadovnik had lived in Unit 804 in the Champlain Towers South in Surfside. Their families were outraged when Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Michael Hansmann agreed to sell the land for commercial use.

A search and recovery operation continued on the site of the former 12-story building, at 8777 Collins Ave. , when Hansmann ordered the sale to begin. With the official death toll climbing to nearly 100 victims, several families said the oceanfront property where the June 24 tragedy occurred should be a memorial.

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“Some developers can come in here and build a building on top of this in a few months and everything will be forgotten,” Lagsfeld, 23, said Wednesday.

The University of Miami law graduate and her husband, Louis Sadovnik, lived in Apartment 804 in the Surfside apartment complex. Andrew Dawson, the law school’s vice dean for academic affairs, taught Langsfield two semesters in 2018. “She was really bright, but she was also just a brilliant presence in class because it brought her joy.” The couple met as students at the University of Florida. Their bodies were recovered on Wednesday 7 July. (Facebook / Nicole Langesfeld)

The developer could still be asked to build a monument on part of the property. Court records show that the property — which for nearly a month was the epicenter of despair in Miami-Dade County — is valued at between $100 and $110 million.

“This is clearly a case where there is no amount of money that could be available to compensate these families for their suffering and losses,” Hansmann said.

“There is no money in the world” that can pay for damages, Hansmann added, but “the law gives value to claims, and those claims must be evaluated.”

Hansmann also said that the total value of the claims the law would place on them would far exceed all amounts available for recovery, whether by insurance proceeds, assets or third-party claims.

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“We are not a case number,” Lagsfeld said. “We have lost humans. We have lost our family members. Loved ones.”

Leo Soto, whose high school friend Nicole Langesfield was murdered in Surfside with her husband Louis Sadovnik, adjusts photos at the temporary memorial he started in Surfside, Florida (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Attorney Michael Goldberg, the court-appointed receiver in charge of the insurance payments, told The Associated Press that Hansmann was exploring a potential sale to make sure the proceeds benefit victims.

“It seems that every day there is a new roadblock, but this barrier is inhumane,” Lagsfeld said of the judge’s decision.

The 136-unit condo was built in 1981. After engineers reported in 2018 that the building had sustained significant structural damage, the building association reported that Rosendo “Ross” Prieto, the city’s former construction official, reviewed the report and determined that it was in “state of Very good”.

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About two months before the collapse, the head of the association informed residents that the damage reported in 2018 had inflated the cost of repairing and there was a proposal for a $15 million private appraisal.

“A lot of this work could have been done or planned in years past,” wrote Jan Wodnicky, president of the Apartment Association.

Hansmann also ordered the return of $2.4 million in payments made to residents about the $15 million required in private appraisals to begin repairing the building.

Crews work on the rubble of the demolished section of the Champlain Towers South building, as removal and recovery work continues on the site of the partially collapsed apartment building, Monday, July 12, 2021, in Surfside, Florida (AP Photo/Rebecca) Blackwell) (Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

On the morning of the tragedy, a 911 caller said a group had thought the roof had collapsed when they fled their apartments and got stuck in the parking garage. Little did they know that the inhabitants of the northern section were trapped in a compressed mountain of crushed concrete.

“We’re going back to our apartments,” said the 911 caller, “but some of the corridors are blocked and there’s water flowing to the bottom through the garage.”

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Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel evacuated survivors from the balconies of the remainder of the building. The search and rescue operation continued day and night despite intermittent storms and spontaneous fires. Families waited in anguish. They found corpses and human remains.

Witnesses saw a veteran Miami firefighter holding his little girl after the Florida 2 Miami squad pulled her body out of the rubble. Seven-year-old Stella Catarossi died along with her mother, aunt and grandparents. Many other families mourned more than one relative.

On the Fourth of July, while other areas of Miami-Dade were showing off fireworks, engineers watched as the ruins of the South Champlain Towers were demolished. This speeded up the search and recovery mission that followed the thunderstorms triggered by Tropical Storm Elsa.

A worker waits to load his truck with debris from the rubble of a building south of Champlain Towers, as removal and recovery work continues at the site of a partially collapsed apartment building, Wednesday, July 14, 2021, in Surfside, Florida (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) (Copyright 2021, all rights reserved to the Associated Press.)

Tens of thousands of tons of concrete and metal were removed from the site. Maggie Castro, a firefighter and paramedic, is an MDFR spokeswoman. On Wednesday, she said rain continued to slow the recovery process.

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“The rubble that is being removed now is from the building that we deliberately collapsed days after,” Castro said. “Right now, the biggest problem is the weather. We have a lot of water accumulated so we are trying to remove the water from the area.”

The repercussions of the tragedy are far from over.

Related stories

The wife of the missing Surfside victim says she has many reasons to oppose the creation of a memorial at the site

This is an evolving story.

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