Twelve-story Miami Beach apartment building collapses leaving at least one dead

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Authorities say 51 people are currently unaccounted for after a 12-story Miami Beach apartment building collapsed overnight, killing at least one – as hundreds of fire and rescue workers continue to scour through tons of rubble in search of any survivors.  

Horrifying surveillance footage, obtained by WSVN, has emerged showing the moment the Champlain Towers South beachfront building collapsed at about 1.30am this morning in Miami’s Surfside neighborhood, sending a huge cloud of debris into the air.

Authorities say one woman has already been confirmed dead and at least 10 people were injured when the building collapsed. 

Miami-Dade Commissioner Sally Heyman told CNN that officials have yet to account for 51 people who are believed to have lived in the building. It was unclear whether any, or all of them, were inside at the time of the collapse. 

Thirty-five people were rescued from the damaged building and two people, including a young boy, were pulled from the rubble in the early stages of the search operation. 

Rescue teams are currently using machinery and dogs to help trawl the wreckage for any survivors. Authorities fear many more people may be dead or remain trapped under the rubble.  

‘The building has literally pancaked,’ Surfside Mayor Charles 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.’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said it was possible that more victims could be found in the rubble, saying: “We’ll hope for the best in terms of additional recoveries, but we are bracing for some bad news, just given the destruction that we’re seeing.’      

Authorities say the building was ‘substantially full’ when it collapsed. Of the building’s 136 apartments, 55 were destroyed.   

The tower, which is located one block away from where Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump currently live, has a mix of seasonal and year-round residents.

Mayor Burkett said the building keeps a log of guests staying but does not keep track of when owners are in residence. 

Authorities have not yet determined what caused the building to collapse but confirmed that renovations had been underway on the roof in recent weeks.

Burkett said it was unlikely that the roof work had anything to do with the collapse, instead describing it as a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the building. 

‘It’s hard to imagine how this could have happened,’ Burkett said. ‘Buildings just don’t fall down. 

‘There’s no reason for this building to go down like that unless someone literally pulls the supports out from underneath.’ 

Burkett suggested that potential causes could be the result of the foundations being washed out or a sinkhole. 

The Miami-Dade Police have assumed control of the investigation as to why the building collapsed. 

The collapse left a number of units in the still-standing part of the building exposed. 

Bunk beds, tables and chairs could be seen still left inside the damaged apartments. Air conditioner units were hanging from some parts of the building where wires now dangled. 

Photos and video from the scene show the collapse affected half the tower. Piles of rubble and debris surrounded the area just outside the building. 

The debris from the collapse coated cars up to two blocks away with a light layer of dust.    

Barry Cohen, 63, said he and his wife were asleep in the building when he first heard what he thought was a crack of lightning. 

The couple went onto their balcony, then opened the door to the building’s hallway to find ‘a pile of rubble and dust and smoke billowing around’.

‘I couldn´t walk out past my doorway,’ said Cohen, the former vice mayor of Surfside. ‘A gaping hole of rubble.’

He and his wife eventually made it to the basement and found rising water there. They returned upstairs, screamed for help and were eventually brought to safety by firefighters using a cherry-picker.

Cohen said he raised concerns years ago about whether nearby construction might be causing damage to the building after seeing cracked pavers on the pool deck. 

Santo Mejil, 50, told the Miami Herald his wife called him from the building, where she was working as an aide for an elderly woman.

‘She said she heard a big explosion. It felt like an earthquake,’ Mejil told the newspaper. He said she later called him and said rescuers were bringing her down.   

One witness, who was staying in the south Florida island city with his family, was in a neighboring building at the time and said the collapse sounded and felt like a tornado or earthquake.

‘It was the craziest thing I ever heard in my life,’ he told Fox News.

Witnesses claimed to have heard people screaming beneath the rubble during frantic efforts to free them from the wreckage of the building. 

One witness told NBC: ‘They are able to rescue some people but I heard some screams.’

When the building initially collapsed, more than 80 rescue units were on the scene, including designated teams skilled in retrieving bodies from wreckages.  

The sea-view condo development was built in 1981 in the southeast corner of Surfside, on the beach. It had a few two-bedroom units currently on the market, with asking prices of $600,000 to $700,000.

The area is a mix of new and old apartments, houses, condominiums and hotels, with restaurants and stores serving an international combination of residents and tourists. 

The community provides a stark contrast from bustle and glitz of South Beach with a slower paced neighborhood feel.