A 10-person team of IDF Home Front Command reservists and representatives of the Foreign Ministry left for Florida late Saturday to assist in search and rescue efforts at the collapsed 12-story condominium tower in Surfside near Miami.
“As with any national mission, the IDF and the defense establishment are ready to respond, act and assist. Every effort will be made to save lives, support the Jewish community and our friend the United States,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Saturday.
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A Florida condominium tower collapse in Florida where more than 150 people are still missing and five bodies were found
(Photo: AFP)
Many of the more than 150 people still missing in the collapse are believed to be members of the American Jewish community.
Local Jewish groups have set up support snear the site of the
“The mission of the delegation is to assist in the life-saving efforts by mapping the challenges at the site of the destruction, assisting the Jewish community and supporting the local rescue forces,” the IDF spokesman said in a statement.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke on Saturday with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and conveyed condolences over the disaster on behalf of the Israeli public and said that Israel would assist the American authorities in any way it could.
Bennett told DeSantis that Israelis were praying for the wellbeing of the injured and said he has instructed all Israeli government agencies to render whatever assistance requested.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also expressed solidarity with the U.S. said that Israel has no greater friend that the United States.
“In such difficult moments, we stand with our American friends and the Jewish community in Florida,” Lapid said.
The disaster occurred early on Thursday morning, when a large section of the 40-year-old building crumbled to the ground.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told Kan Public Radio on Saturday that he welcomed the support of the Israeli team.
"As good as our guys are I've learned that any time there is Israeli ingenuity that can be put into something, you would be a fool not to take it," DeSantis said.
The death toll rose to five on Saturday at the site of the collapse where rescue workers methodically searched for more than 150 missing residents while firefighters made progress in battling a smoldering fire in the mountain of debris.
Search-and-rescue teams found one victim at the site in Surfside, a shore town near Miami, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during an evening news briefing.
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Couple among family members waiting for news at site of collapsed Florida condominium tower on Saturday
(Photo: Getty Images)
"Our top priority continues to be search and rescue and saving any lives that we can," Levine Cava said.
The search effort has revealed some human remains while three other victims were identified and their family members notified, she said.
A newly released 2018 report showed that an engineer found evidence of major structural damage beneath the pool deck and "concrete deterioration" in the underground parking garage of the 12-story oceanfront condominium, three years before it collapsed without warning on Thursday as most residents slept.
Officials said they still harbored hope that some of the people unaccounted for might be found alive. Firefighters made progress on smoldering fire and smoke beneath the rubble, allowing rescuers to search with fewer limitations, officials said.
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Rescue workers at the collapsed Florida condominium tower searching for survivors on Saturday
(Photo: Reuters)
Aided by dogs, infrared scanning and heavy equipment, rescuers hope that air pockets that may have formed in the debris might keep people alive.
"The biggest thing now is hope," Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said. "That's what's driving us. It's an extremely difficult situation."
The engineer's 2018 report, released by town officials, was produced for the condominium board in preparation for a major repair project set to get underway this year.
It was not immediately clear whether the damage described in the report was in any way connected with the building's collapse around 1:30 a.m. ET (0530 GMT) on Thursday.
Cava said officials had not been aware of the report. Vice mayor Tina Paul called the structural issue described in the document "very alarming" in an email on Saturday morning.
Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer who works with the condo association at Champlain Towers South, said the issues outlined in the 2018 engineering study were typical for older buildings in the area and did not alarm condo board members, all of whom lived there with their families.
"There's no 'hair on fire' - nothing that says 'you need to evacuate that building immediately,'" she said in phone interview with Reuters.
She added that the board had taken out a $12 million line of credit to pay for the repairs and asked owners to pay $80,000 each. Work had started on replacing the roof ahead of hurricane season and the board was in the process of getting bids on the concrete work, but the pandemic slowed the project, she said.
Berger said one of the board members was still missing following the collapse.
'Major structural damage'
The engineer, Frank Morabito, warned that the waterproofing installed below the pool deck had failed due to a major error in design.
"The failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas," he wrote. "Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially."
In addition, Morabito said concrete columns, beams and walls in the garage were showing "abundant cracking," including areas underneath the pool with "exposed, deteriorating rebar."
Morabito's firm submitted an 84-page document to the town in April detailing a "40-year building repair and restoration" plan for the Champlain Towers South condominium, which was built in 1981.
The condominium was preparing to go through recertification this year, a safety requirement for buildings 40 years of age in Florida.
The mayor said the county will audit all buildings more than 40 years old within the next 30 days to ensure they have all been recertified. Governor Ron DeSantis said officials were weighing whether to evacuate the condominium's sister building, which was constructed at the same time by the same developer.
Satellite data from the 1990s showed the building was sinking between 1 and 3 millimeters per year, while surrounding buildings were stable, according to Florida International University professor Shimon Wdowinski.
He said the data could suggest a structural compromise within the building, though it could also have signaled the building was settling into the soil.
While local officials provided aid and comfort to resident families, such as hotel rooms and food, search-and-rescue specialists worked the disaster site on a rotation, with a limited number allowed at any one time to prevent further collapse.
Teams from Mexico and Israel arrived to help relieve the locally based crews, many of whom have also traveled to disaster sites around the world.
Video captured by a security camera showed an entire side of the building suddenly folding in two sections, one after the other, throwing up clouds of dust.
The building had more than 130 units, about 80 of which were occupied, officials said. Roughly half appear to have collapsed.
First published: 08:38, 06.27.21