Around-the-clock search efforts are continuing Saturday morning at the site of a collapsed apartment building in Surfside, Florida. At least four people are dead and 159 are still unaccounted for a little more than two days after the condo tower came crashing down while people inside were sleeping.
Crews searched through the rubble overnight in hopes of finding any survivors. No one has been found in the rubble since Friday morning.
“All of our training tells us that for at least the first 72 hours there is a high likelihood of people that could be alive in there,” said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue division chief Danny Cardeso.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is calling for a timely explanation of how this could have happened.
An engineering report from 2018 warned that the building had major structural worries, Mark Strassman reported for “CBS This Morning: Saturday.” It is unclear if any of the issues in the report — from Morabito Consultants — caused the collapse, and it didn’t warn of imminent danger, although it said repairs were needed.
Waterproofing failed under the pool deck and wasn’t properly laid, so water didn’t drain, the report said. “The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas. Failure to replaced the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” it said.
It also said there was “abundant cracking” in concrete columns, beams and walls in the parking garage.
Contributing: The Associated Press
