Mayor recounts story of meeting girl at site of Miami tower block collapse as she prayed for parent to be found
The mayor of the area in Miami where a tower block collapsed leaving at least 11 dead and more than 150 missing has described the moment he met a young girl sitting alone at the site and praying for one of her parents to be found.
Rescue workers digging for a fifth day into the remnants of a the block have insisted there is still hope despite no one being pulled out alive since the first hours after the building fell.
US Correspondent Emma Murphy reports from Miami where she fears the missing could be dead inside the rubble of the collapsed building
During a press conference, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett spoke of a young girl at the site, who was scrolling through her mobile phone, reading Jewish prayers by herself. He said one of her parents lived in the tower block.
"That really brought it home to me," the mayor said.
"She wasn't crying. She was just lost. She didn't know what to do; what to say; who to talk to.
"I am going to find her. I'm going to tell her that we're all here for her and we're going to do the best we can to bring out that parent."
The death toll rose by one more person on Monday to a total of 10, following the building's collapse on Thursday, with more than 150 still missing.
Earlier on Monday, a crane lifted a large slab of concrete from the debris pile, enabling about 30 rescuers in hard hats to move in and carry smaller pieces of debris away.
Andy Alvarez, a deputy incident commander with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, told ABC’s Good Morning America that rescuers have been able to find some gaps inside the wreckage, mostly in the basement and the parking garage.
"We have over 80 rescuers at a time that are breaching the walls that collapsed, in a frantic effort to try to rescue those that are still viable and to get to those voids that we typically know exist in these buildings," Mr Alvarez said.
“We have been able to tunnel through the building," Mr Alvarez added.
“This is a frantic search to seek that hope, that miracle, to see who we can bring out of this building alive.”
The work has been complicated by intermittent rain showers, but the fires that hampered the initial search have been extinguished.
Alfredo Lopez, who lived with his wife in a sixth-floor corner apartment and narrowly escaped, said he finds it hard to believe anyone is alive in the rubble.
"If you saw what I saw: nothingness. And then, you go over there and you see, like, all the rubble. How can somebody survive that?" Mr Lopez said.
Dianne Ohayon, whose parents, Myriam and Arnie Notkin, were in the building said: "We are just waiting for answers. That’s what we want.
“It’s hard to go through these long days and we haven’t gotten any answers yet.”
The building collapsed just days before a deadline for apartment owners to start making steep payments toward more than £6.5 million in repairs that had been recommended nearly three years earlier, in a report that warned of "major structural damage."
Authorities on Sunday identified the additional four people who have been recovered as Leon Oliwkowicz, 80, and his wife, Christina Beatriz Elvira Oliwkowicz, 74; and Ana Ortiz, 46, and her son Luis Bermudez, 26. The number of people left unaccounted for was 151.
Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah explained that conditions at the site have frustrated crews looking for survivors.
Alan Cominsky, chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, said his team must move slowly and methodically.
“The debris field is scattered throughout, and it’s compact, extremely compact,” he said, noting that teams must stabilize and shore up debris as they go.
“We can’t just go in and move things erratically, because that’s going to have the worst outcome possible,” he said.
Six to eight teams are actively searching the pile at any given time, with hundreds of team members on standby ready to rotate in. Teams have worked around the clock since Thursday, said Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.