UPDATE: 4 dead, dozens more missing after a 12-story Florida condo collapsed
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The death toll from Florida's condo collapse has increased to four, the Miami-Dade mayor said.
159 people are unaccounted for after the Thursday morning collapse.
President Joe Biden signed an emergency declaration for Florida, allowing FEMA to coordinate relief.
The partial collapse of a Florida condo building early Thursday has left at least four person dead, with dozens more unaccounted for after the disaster, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County told a Friday morning news conference.
Three more people were found Thursday night, though they have not yet been accounted for, ABC News reported earlier Friday.
As of Friday, 120 people have been accounted for, but 159 people remain unaccounted for, Levine Cava told the press conference.
A section of Champlain Towers South, located on Collins Avenue in Surfside, Florida, crumbled just after 1 a.m. on Thursday.
Levine Cava told reporters on Friday that search-and-rescue teams worked over night, and that heavy machinery was on site to assist with the operations.
President Joe Biden signed an emergency declaration for Florida after the collapse, allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief. Fifteen people from FEMA are set to arrive later on Friday, spokesman Kevin Guthrie of FEMA told the Friday press conference.
The way the building collapsed has made it difficult for rescue teams to locate survivors, Mayor Charles Burkett of Surfside previously said.
"The problem is the building has literally pancaked," Burkett said. "It's heartbreaking because it doesn't mean, to me, that we're going to be successful, as successful as we want to be, to find people alive."
In an interview with the "Today" show, Burkett said the building damage was catastrophic.
"It looks like a bomb went off, but we are pretty sure a bomb didn't go off," Burkett said.
Videos and images posted on Twitter showed rubble from the caved-in building and fire department personnel responding.
Video from the scene showed rescues from the collapsed condo's balconies, including NBC Miami footage showing a young person being pulled from the rubble.
Tweets from the student reporter Eric Wasserman, who was at the scene, said residents were trapped in the portion of the building that had not collapsed, and that more than one person was injured, including a firefighter.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said that more than 80 rescue units were helping at the scene of the collapse.
A real-estate profile for Champlain Towers South said it was built in 1981. There are 136 units on the 12-story property, with two- and three-bedroom units that range from $590,000 to $915,000.
The site of the building collapse is located just minutes from the posh Arte Surfside, where Kushner and Trump are said to be leasing a home.
This is not the first time Collins Avenue in Miami Beach has seen a building collapse. In 2018, CNN reported that an empty 12-story building at 5775 Collins Ave. due for demolition collapsed at an unscheduled time, critically injuring one person.
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