Aljazeera :
A wing of a 12-story beachfront apartment building collapsed in a town outside Miami early Thursday morning, killing at least one person while trapping residents in rubble and twisted metal. Scores of rescuers pulled survivors from the debris as a cloud of dust floated through the neighbourhood.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett warned during a news conference that the building manager told him the tower was quite full and the death toll was likely to rise.
“The building is literally pancaked,” Burkett said. “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.”
Miami Dade Commissioner Sally Heyman told CNN that officials have yet to account for 51 people believed to be residents of the building, but cautioned that it was unclear whether any or all of them were inside at the time of its collapse.
