The commander of the Israeli military team in Florida said Thursday that rescuers are facing the “reality” that no survivors will likely be found at the site of the collapsed condo tower.
“Each time we go, we see a different situation that gives us with one hand, the reality that there are not many chances to find people alive,” Col. Golan Vach told CNN’s John Berman.
But the head of the Israeli National Rescue Unit still held onto a sliver of hope for a miracle.
“On the other hand, we see another situation, another void that we can enter and search after people,” Vach said. “Unfortunately, as you know, all the people that we found are not alive.”
Meanwhile, the colonel said rescue workers are making “new discoveries all the time.”
“Families will be the first to know every time, so I will keep the updates to the families,” he said of the victims they have recovered.
Vach also said he was personally there when workers recovered the bodies of two young sisters, 10-year-old Lucia Guara and 4-year-old Emma Guara.
“As a father, I can be with the families in this very difficult moment,” Vach said. “All I can say to the families is we are trying to scale up, we are trying to do our work very professional to reach them quickly, but delicately, with all the respect that you can give them in these very hard moments.”
The girls’ parents — Marcus Guara, 52, and Anaely Rodriguez, 42 — also died in the collapse.
The death toll on Thursday stood at 18, with 145 people still unaccounted for.