"Tragically, I awakened to find out that three bodies had been pulled from the rubble last night," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Friday morning. "It does bring our count to four of these who've lost their lives during this tragedy."
The mayor of Miami-Dade says they "still have hope" of finding survivors. Search teams working round the clock have reported hearing people banging beneath the debris.
What caused the 40-year-old building to collapse early Thursday morning remains unclear.
At least 102 people have now been accounted for, but it's uncertain what percentage were within the building when it decreased . Dozens of individuals are evacuated from what's left of the structure.
President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Florida, meaning the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) will help state agencies with the relief effort.
Overnight many rescuers used sonar cameras and specially trained dogs as they scoured the rubble for survivors. Teams were tunnelling from an underground parking lot below the building in an attempt to succeed in victims.
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There were 120 people accounted for from the building and 159 people unaccounted for, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters Friday morning.
In an interview Friday with ABC's "Good Morning America," the mayor said the price had grown from one to four.
"Tragically, I awakened to find out that three bodies had been pulled from the rubble last night," she said. "Devastating news for families expecting any hope of survival. And in fact , we're getting to still search. Those three people haven't been identified at this point . It does bring our count to four of these who've lost their lives during this tragedy."
"Quite a few" people were within the building at the time of the collapse, and a few were ready to make their thanks to the front of the structure because the back fell, officials said.
Rescuers with sonar equipment were carefully navigating the collapse in hopes of finding more people.
“It may be a very slow and methodical process because whenever we start breaching parts of the structure, we get debris that falls on us," said Jadallah, adding that alittle fire sparked by the moving rubble had to be put out.
Rescuers are keeping their ears open for any sounds, albeit not voices.
“We did receive sounds, not necessarily people talking, but sounds … of an opportunity of a banging," Jadallah said late Thursday afternoon. "Short of that we haven’t heard any voices coming from the pile.”
Euclides Acevedo, Paraguay’s secretary of state , said in interviews Thursday that members of President Mario Abdo BenÃtez’s family were among the missing. They were identified as Sophia López Moreira, the sister of first lady Silvana López Moreira, and her husband, Luis Pettengill. Their three children and woman Luna Villalba, a worker accompanying the family, were also missing,
What caused the collapse?
It remains unknown. A full investigation will begin after the rescue mission.
As the building has stood since 1980, it had been due its standard 40-year review. The building was undergoing its "recertification" process and required repairs, officials said.
A study from researchers at Florida International University published last year found that the building had been sinking at a rate of two millimetres per annum within the 1990s, which can have affected the building structurally.
But the author has cautioned that the study was just a snapshot in time. The building was constructed on reclaimed wetland, which experts say is usually of concern because the land underneath can compact over time, resulting in shifts.
On the sinking, the author of the study, Prof Shimon Wdowinski, told the Miami Herald newspaper: "We've seen much above that, but it stood out because most of the world was stable and showed no subsidence."
Prof Wdowinski said the research isn't meant to suggest certainty about the newest incident.
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