International Desk :
A wing of a 12-storey beachfront apartment building in a town outside Miami collapsed early on Thursday, killing at least four people and trapping dozens of people beneath the pile of rubble and twisted metal.
The number of people unaccounted for following the collapse of the Florida apartment block has risen to 159, the county’s mayor said on Friday.
“We do have 120 people
now accounted for, which is very, very good news. But our unaccounted for number has gone up to 159,” Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a news conference.
Rescuers pulled out some survivors as they continued their search through the wreckage of the condominium tower that was built in Surfside in 1981. On Friday, video showed fire crews removing a boy from the wreckage.
Residents from other parts of the building were evacuated.
Officials did not know how many were in the tower when it suddenly fell to the ground at around 1:30 am local time (04:30 GMT). Many people were asleep at the time.
“The building is literally pancaked,” said Charles Burkett, the mayor of the town of Surfside.
“That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean to me that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
Hours after the collapse, searchers were trying to reach a trapped child whose parents were believed to be dead. In another case, rescuers saved a mother and child, but the woman’s leg had to be amputated in order to get her out of the debris, Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management, told the Miami Herald.
Earlier on Friday, President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration in the state of Florida and ordered federal assistance to supplement state and local response efforts.
“The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts,” the White House said.
