Surfside condo rubble procurar and rescue will transition to recovery operation

The Surfside, Florida, condo collapse search and rescue efforts have transitioned to a recovery operation, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Wednesday.

“To share this news with the families this evening who are still missing their loved ones was devastating and it’s also difficult to share with all of you,” she said in an evening news briefing.

The transition will take place at midnight, she added.

“Our team has developed a very detailed plan to guide the transition and to ensure that the operations proceed at the same speed and intensity,” Levine Cava said.

The mayor said the death toll now stands at 54, with 86 people “potentially unaccounted for.”

The decision to transition to a recovery operation was based on the facts that emerged throughout the search and rescue mission in the past two weeks, Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said.

“To determine the viability of life in the rubble, we considered engineering, medical and other factors,” Cominsky said.

Those factors included “the building collapse itself, the pancake, which gives you the lowest probability of survivability,” Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Fire Chief of Operations Raide Jadallah said. “Typically an individual has a specific amount of time, in regards to lack of food, water and air. This collapse, you know, just doesn’t provide any of that sort.”

“The other factors that we have to include, you know, the fact that we did not get in the alert (from) a K-9, a sensor trip forward, sound, and any visual utilizing our cameras. The last known alert that we received was in the initial hours the day of the collapse,” Jadallah added.