Officials have released the name of the first victim in Thursday’s deadly South Florida condominium collapse.
According to the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office, Stacie Fang, 54, died at 3:38 a.m. Thursday, as Champlain Towers South partially collapsed around her. First responders removed Fang from the rubble and took her to Aventura Hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said crews were doing everything possible to save as many people as they could.
“We do not have a resource problem, we have a luck problem,” he said.
Officials said they still don’t know exactly how many residents or visitors were in the building when it fell, but they were trying to locate 159 people who were considered unaccounted for and may or may not have been there.
Flowers left in tribute decorated a fence near the tower, and people awaiting news about the search watched from a distance, hands clasped and hugging. Congregants prayed at a nearby synagogue, where some members were among the missing.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Friday morning three bodies were removed from the rubble overnight. That brings the death total to four after a Surfside, Florida, condominium partially collapsed early Thursday. Cava said 120 people have been accounted for.
Early Friday, President Joe Biden approved a Florida declaration of emergency, which allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to coordinate relief efforts.
»Watch WSVN’s livestreaming coverage of the condo tower collapse here
Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said authorities were working with the medical examiner’s office to identify the victims. Eleven injuries have now been reported, with four people treated at hospitals.
“These are very difficult times, and things are going to get more difficult as we move forward,” Ramirez said.
Fire Rescue personnel and others worked through the night in hopes of finding survivors. About half the building’s roughly 130 units were affected, and rescuers pulled at least 35 people from the wreckage in the first hours after the collapse. But with 159 still unaccounted for, work could go on for days.
Television video early Friday showed crews still fighting flareups of fires on the rubble piles. Intermittent rain over South Florida is also hampering the search.
Officials said no cause for the collapse has been determined.
State Sen. Jason Pizzo of Miami Beach told the Miami Herald he watched as tactical teams of six worked early Friday to pull bodies from the rubble. He said he saw one body taken in a yellow body bag and another that was marked. They were taken to a homicide unit tent that was set up along the beach.
Many people remained at the reunification center set up near the collapse site early Friday, awaiting results of DNA swabs that could help identify victims.
Video of the collapse showed the center of the building appearing to tumble down first and a section nearest to the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later, as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.
About half the building’s roughly 130 units were affected, and rescuers pulled at least 35 people from the wreckage in the first hours after the collapse.
Raide Jadallah, an assistant Miami-Dade County fire chief, said that while listening devices placed on and in the wreckage had picked up no voices, they had detected possible banging noises, giving rescuers hope some are alive. Rescuers were tunneling into the wreckage from below, going through the building’s underground parking garage.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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