Visit to Champlain Towers site in the works today for grieving families of missing and dead
After days of pleading from families, officials are arranging for loved ones of the missing and dead from the Champlain Tower condo collapse to visit the wreckage as early as Sunday afternoon to grieve and pray.
In a Sunday morning press conference, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava confirmed that arrangements were in the works.
“There will be an opportunity for visitation and it will be a very private event,” she said.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott also confirmed to the Miami Herald that plans were underway for an afternoon visit. The official death toll rose Sunday morning to nine, with five victims identified and 156 people still unaccounted for.
At around 1:46 p.m., two Miami-Dade County buses pulled up to the Grand Beach Hotel on the 9400 block of Collins Avenue to shuttle families of the dead and the missing to the pile of rubble where they hope to pray and, in many cases, mourn.
Victim advocates with the Miami-Dade County police department helped shield the families’ faces with clipboards and umbrellas as they boarded the buses, which will be making trips in shifts for families waiting at the reunification center.
Many family members were crying, and some were wearing t-shirts adorned with photos of their missing loved ones.
A video posted to the Instagram account @abigailpereiraok of the Saturday afternoon update meeting for families and loved ones showed an official telling families they were working on setting up a Sunday afternoon visit.
In the same meeting, frustrations boiled over, with some family members yelling at Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials, Levine Cava and Gov. Ron DeSantis over the slow pace of recovery efforts.
“Maybe other eyes have other ways of going at it!” said one mother, who questioned why an Israeli team wasn’t already on the scene. The room was later told another group from Israel was on the way in addition to the Israeli rescue workers already present.
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A Miami-Dade Fire Rescue official told the group it wasn’t a matter of quantity or quality of rescue personnel — there’s a physical limit to how many workers could be on the pile.
When a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue official tried to explain the structural (surrounding buildings) and geographic (the beach) limitations that make this collapse a uniquely difficult search and rescue mission, a man said, “You’re saying this is the most complex situation you’ve ever experienced. We’re being offered help from countries who experience this every single day. So switch out this personnel who’s not experienced clearly and bring those people in and let them do the work.”
“We’re not saying “inexperienced,” the official said. “We’re saying “complex situation.”
