The death toll in a Miami building collapse rose to four on Friday morning a day after a 12-storey condominium slumped into rubble on the south Florida Atlantic coast.
Joe Biden granted an emergency declaration for the area late on Thursday, unleashing federal-crisis funding to help with the catastrophe.
The White House said the move authorized the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to coordinate all disaster relief efforts.
“It’s the unimaginable,” Daniella Levine Cava, the Miami-Dade mayor, said. “A massive search and rescue mission is under way. We are going to do everything we can possibly [do] to identify and rescue those who have been trapped in the rubble.”
Rescuers were hampered in the night by heavy rain and thunder and lightning, working in 15-minute stints with heavy equipment to move wreckage.
Authorities and witnesses had spoken about hearing banging and cries from inside the collapsed structure.
Much of the Champlain Towers South building on the beach side of the Miami residential structure has sheared off, for unknown reasons, pancaking into a pile of concrete and metal more than 30ft high.
Cava added on Friday morning that three more bodies were pulled from the rubble overnight, bringing the official death toll so far to four.
She said she had hope that rescuers would be able to save more lives. More than 150 people were still unaccounted for early on Friday.
Very sad. Prayers to the families as well as the first responders/everyone involved.
Democrat’s Fault !!!
Watch for some reason it will be Trumps fault or they will blame it on the guns.
A lot of foreign nationals living there. There is more to this story.
Hmm – which one had dirt on Hillary? You make comments it was Dems fault, but its not beyond them kill thousand to hide, support their cause. Look at Covid?
It’s the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City again!