In the early morning of June 24, 2021, a part of the south tower of the Champlain complex, which had 12 floors and 40 years of construction, collapsed. The balance was 98 dead people.
Érika Benítez, the spokeswoman for the Miami-Dade Fire Department, had just taken her mother out of the hospital, where she had been battling covid 19 for three months, when she learned that a building in Surfside had collapsed and that she had to run there.
(Also read: This was inside the Champlain Tower, a building that collapsed in Miami)
Surfside, a small coastal city located between Miami Beach and Bal Harbor, has a population of 5,869 people according to the 2020 census, spread over a large number of oceanfront condominiums such as the Champlain South Tower, many of them over 40 years.
That June 24, 2021, Erika, like many other people, changed her life. As a member and spokesperson for the Fire Department, this bumanguesa had to be the communication bridge between the rescuers and the families, in addition to disseminating the information of what was happening to the media.
“It has been the hardest experience of my life, physically, mentally and emotionally. You are never the same person after going through something like this.”, Benítez told EL TIEMPO.
(You may be interested: See in 3D why the Miami building would have fallen)
His days went from 6 am to 11 pm and lasted for 30 days until all the deceased were identified.
“It didn’t matter the extreme heat, the dust and the rain, we were there to help,” he said.
For Benítez, it was very difficult to accept that 98 people had died, but at the same time it was very gratifying to rescue 37 human beings, three of them from the midst of the rubble.
The Colombian commissioner
That June 24, Nelly Velásquez was in Orlando, Florida, when around 1:30 am she received a call from an officer from Surfside, where this Bogota native is a commissioner, alerting her to the collapse of one of the city’s buildings.
“When I returned to Surfside the next day, what I saw was so shocking to me that I immediately relived 9/11/2001 when I lived in New York.”, Velásquez told this newspaper, who 10 years ago decided to change his residence in the “Big Apple” due to the warm climate of Florida.
(You can see: Video: the demolition of the rest of the building that collapsed in Miami)
Velásquez never imagined that something like this could happen in the city where she serves as a commissioner (the equivalent of a councilor in Colombia) and in which she was re-elected.
From that moment on, his work focused on creating bridges between the city and the victims and streamlining the processes for the recertification of buildings.
According to Velásquez, half of the inhabitants of Surfside are Latino and there are a large number of Colombians living there.
The Colombian Victims
Seven people of Colombian origin died in the tragedy:
-Marina Restrepo Azen (76) was a widow and had lived in apartment 401 for 22 years. Marina came to live in Miami in the 1960s, where she obtained a medical technician degree from Miami Dade College. She met the internist doctor Norman Azen, with whom she had a daughter: Karla, who told the press that her mother had contagious optimism and that she loved to play parquet. Her body was found on July 10.
-Louis Ferdinand Barth (51), his wife Catalina Gómez (45) and his daughter Valeria (14), who were in apartment 204 and had arrived in Miami a month and a half before to get vaccinated against covid 19 and were staying in the apartment of a friend.
The Barth family later planned to spend a few days with their Miami-based brother Sergio before traveling back to Colombia. Luis Fernando was the director of the Sustainable Territories Area of the Antioquia Science and Technology Center and was teleworking from Florida.
(Also: Victims of building in Florida will receive compensation of US $ 1,000 million)
Miami Dade police reported that the bodies of Luis Fernando and Catalina were recovered on July 10, while that of their daughter Valeria was identified 5 days later.
-Julio Velazquez (67), his wife Angela Palacio (60) and their daughter Theresa (36). The couple were permanent residents in apartment 304, coincidentally just upstairs from where the Bart family was staying. Angela owned a menswear store in Weston called Fiorelli, where she was well loved by the community.
For her part, Theresa or Terry, as her brother David called her, was a well-known executive in the music industry and was living in Los Angeles, where she worked at Live Nation, an event promoter based in Beverly Hills. Theresa had come to Surfside the day before to spend time with her parents.
The stories of Valeria and Theresa, who surely did not know each other, were intertwined when it was initially said that it was the teenager’s voice that was heard among the ruins in the garage.
However, according to a Miami-Dade Fire Department report released a month ago, it was Theresa’s voice and not Valeria’s.
(Keep reading: Miami landslide: leaked call from the first rescuer)
no answers yet
But what was it that happened? Why did part of the south tower of the Champlain collapse?
So far there are two ongoing investigations: an independent approved by the city of Surfside, which hired Allyn Kilsheimer, a famous structural engineer, and that of the Federal agency NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).
Kilsheimer, who had originally planned to have answers by the first anniversary of the building collapse, recently told reporters that family litigation, as well as police and federal investigations, had contributed to the delay in his team gaining access to materials and debris. structural.
“At this time we do not have a factual determination as to why it happened,” he said, adding: “I promised the people of Surfside that I would find out what happened so I can tell you that if you see something (unusual) in your building, you need someone else to look at it quickly.”
As Commissioner Velásquez confirmed to EL TIEMPO, it was only until the end of last year that engineer Kilsheimer had access to the rubble.
For its part, NIST researchers have also not come to a conclusion and this one seems to take longer than the independent one.
“Right now we have about two dozen hypotheses about what could have happened,” Glenn Bell, who co-leads the NIST investigation, told reporters.
(In other news: 2018 report warned of structural damage to collapsed building)
At this time we do not have a factual determination as to why it happened
“I have been doing this type of work for more than 40 years and this may be the most complex and challenging research of its kind ever conducted,” Bell said, adding that the results will be ready in the fall of next year and the recommendations published. one year later.
However, it has been known that many survivors stated that the building showed signs of destruction and deterioration that created friction between some residents – who did not want to pay for the repairs – and the homeowners association.
Champlain’s south tower had a long history of maintenance problems and questions have been raised about the quality of its original construction and inspections conducted in the early 1980’s.
More frequent inspections
A month ago, the Florida legislature approved a bill led by Representative Daniel Pérez, from Miami, which requires inspections to be carried out on buildings with more than three stories when they reach 30 years of age. age and every 10 years thereafter. For buildings on the coast, the first inspection will have to be at 25 years.
Another key point, representative Pérez explained to EL TIEMPO, is that the associations must carry out a reserve study of what it would cost them to change the structural components of the building (such as the roof, windows, etc.) and start collecting that money in the next three years.
“The most important thing about this law is that it ensures that no other family in Florida goes through what the residents of Surfside went through.“, he claimed.
(Also read: The controversy over what to do with the land where the Miami building collapsed)
The compensation
On June 23, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Michael Hanzman met his deadline and gave final approval to a $1 billion settlement among more than two dozen defendants, sued for negligence, and families of victims and survivors.
According to documents released by The Miami Herald, most of the money will come from Securitas Security Services USA. His security guards monitored visitors at the front desk and operated the building’s alarm system in case of an emergency.
But a company manager acknowledged, in a statement to victims’ lawyers, that Securitas had not trained all of its guards on how to use the system to alert residents to evacuate and that it was not activated the night of the collapse. .
The other defendants include the condominium association, a law firm, engineering and architectural consulting firms, plus the builders of the luxury condominium next door, who will pay using their insurance coverage. It is worth clarifying that none has admitted any guilt in the tragedy.
The money will be divided proportionally to the size of the unit among the owners of the 136 condominiums, both those who survived and those who died.
Judge Hanzman will oversee claims hearings in August, during which family members will defend the value of their loved ones’ lives and survivors will defend their physical and psychological injuries.
The land of the 0.72-hectare building would have been acquired last month, through an auction, by Hussain Sajwani, a Dubai billionaire, who would have paid 120 million dollars.
For its part, the city will place a memorial to honor the deceased on public land near the property.
ANA MARIA JARAMILLO
FOR THE TIME
MIAMI
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