Nearly a week after the sudden collapse of a Florida apartment building, the toll has risen to 18 dead, including two children, and more than 140 people are still missing, hoping to find survivors. passing.
“We found two more bodies under the rubble,” Miami-Date Mayor Daniela Levine Cava told a news conference yesterday. “With great sadness, with real pain, I am obliged to announce that the two victims were children, 4 and 10 years old,” he added.
Some 140 people remain missing, including dozens of Latin American nationals or Americans of Argentine, Colombian, Paraguayan, Chilean and Uruguayan descent.
The 12-story building, part of the so-called Champlain Towers, collapsed into a cloud of dust last Thursday at around 1:20 p.m. It was one of the worst civil disasters in US history.
Although search and rescue teams have found new pockets of oxygen in the wreckage, hopes of finding survivors are slim.
US President Joe Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill Biden, is expected to go to the scene today to thank search and rescue teams and meet with the families of the victims, for whom the wait is endless and the need for answers is endless. more and more pressing.
Authorities promised a “rapid” investigation into the causes of the disaster, which is expected to take months.
