It is with great sadness that I announce to you this afternoon that we have made the very difficult decision to move from the rescue and search phase to the assembly phase. [des cadavres]
Daniela Levine Cava added that 86 people are still missing.
Searching around the clock for the past two weeks for the pile of rubble that used to be a 12-story waterfront building in Surfside Town, no survivors other than a daytime teen have been found, even from the collapse.
A former Montrealer is among the victims
The first Canadian victim identified in the Surfside building collapse is a former Montreal native.
Ingrid (Etty) Ainsworth, 66, died in the meltdown with her husband, Zvi Ainsworth, 68.
Their identities were revealed earlier this week by Miami-Dade police after their bodies were found on Monday, 11 days after the building collapsed.
Mrs Ainsworth, née Village, is originally from Montreal, and her husband is from Australia, where they lived for about 20 years before returning to Florida, where many of their families live. Mrs. Ainsworth still has an extended family in Montreal.
Information from the Canadian press
Mexican and Israeli rescuers, along with American rescuers, took part in the rescue operations under the rubble of the building. Most of the latter, called the South Champlain Towers, have collapsed in a way that is still largely unexplained, even if the building’s structure appears to be in dilapidated places.
The rest of the building, whose instability is considered dangerous, was exposed todoomed demolition Sunday evening, allowing teams to advance into hitherto inaccessible excavation areas.
The site was swept away Tuesday by winds and rain carried by Tropical Storm Elsa, which made landfall on Florida’s west coast on Wednesday.
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