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AUTHORITIES SEARCHING FOR victims of a collapsed building in Florida have said they hope to conclude their painstaking work in the coming weeks as a team of first responders from Israel departed the site.
Miami-Dade county mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 90 deaths have now been confirmed in last month’s collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South in Surfside, up from 86 a day before.
Among them are 71 bodies that have been identified, and their families have been notified, she said. Some 31 people remain listed as missing.
The Miami-Dade Police Department said three young children were among those recently identified.
Crews continued to search the remaining pile of rubble yesterday, peeling layer after layer of debris in search of bodies. The unrelenting search has resulted in the recovery of more than 6,350 tonnes of concrete and debris, Levine Cava said.
Miami-Dade fire chief Alan Cominsky said it was uncertain when recovery operations would be completed because it remains hard to know when the final body would be found.
When the recovery phase began on Wednesday, officials were hoping it could be done within three weeks. In an interview yesterday morning near the site, Cominsky said it might now be as few as two weeks, based on the current pace of work.
“We were looking at a 14-day to 21-day time frame,” he said, adding that the timeline remained “a sliding scale”.
Surfside mayor Charles Burkett stressed the care that rescue workers are taking in peeling back layers of rubble in hopes of recovering not only bodies but also possessions of the victims.
He said the work is so delicate that crews have found unbroken wine bottles amid the rubble.
“It doesn’t get any less difficult and finding victims, that experience doesn’t change for our search and rescue folks,” he said.
“It takes a toll, but you’ve got to love the heart that they’re putting into this and we’re very grateful.”
On Saturday night, members of the community walked along Collins Avenue, the city’s main road, to celebrate the crews that have come from across the country and as far as Israel and Mexico to help in the rescue, and now recovery, effort.
The Israeli search and rescue team arrived in South Florida shortly after the building collapsed on 24 June and was heading home yesterday.
Members of the crews that have been searching the site 24 hours a day since the collapse lined both sides of the street, shaking hands and bidding farewell to the Israeli team.
They had joined other task forces from around the United States to assist first responders from Miami and Miami-Dade County, working in 12-hour shifts.
They have searched through South Florida’s intense summer heat, and in pouring rain, pausing only when lightning was spotted nearby. They also paused operations as officials made plans to implode the still-standing portion of the condo tower on 4 July.
The Israeli team used blueprints of the building to create detailed 3D images of the disaster site to aid in the search.
They also gathered information from families of the missing, many of who were Jewish, to build a room-by-room model laying out where people would have been sleeping during the pre-dawn collapse.
Levina Cava said the memorial walk on Saturday night was “a beautiful moment”. She gave the keys to the county to the Israeli commander and colonel: her first two handed out as mayor.
Four teams from Florida, Indiana and Pennsylvania are still dedicated to the recovery effort, Cominsky said. Teams from Virginia, New Jersey and Ohio were preparing to leave.
“To give you an answer when we feel we’ll recover everyone, I can’t give you an exact date,” the fire chief said.
“We’re doing everything that we can – everything possible – until we feel that we’ve de-layered every floor.”
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Is the Climate Change Advisory Council independent? Who elected theses ‘experts’?
If we can’t tackle cronyism, favouritism and nepotism. It’s what fuelling distrust of our political system. Are those you gain from political strokes the best ‘experts’ to offer advice?
@leartius: Independent from what? Surely not rom ideology. Independent means not responsible to anyone. I do demand any authority to be answerable to democratic process.
@leartius: back to the drawing board I’d say…..
More taxes will fix it
People want to work from home. Let them. It cuts down so much on commuter hours.thats where they should start. Then fix rural public transport for people who can’t work from home.
How many more opinion pieces about climate change are you going to publish?? Mainstream media here in Ireland needs to cool the jets. Even the advertisements are at it now.
We know climate change is an issue, we get it, we are doing all we can but nothing can change until the big corporations, governments and powerful nations like USA and China do something.
All these opinion pieces are targeted for the same people over and over again, it will result in climate fatigue. The average Joe just won’t care anymore. Anytime I switch on Sky or RTE or open the journal we are bombarded with it.
It’s just turning into one big cliche.
How many times can someone talk about the issue without saying what’s already been said before?
@Darren Anthony Corr: to be honest the quality of journalism is quite poor. merely emotional sound bites without logic or even a vision of a plan that might actually work. quoting young people all the time who dont really understand the issues involved. msm is just full of populist nonsense these days.
We were lighting the fire pretty much every day from the end of September onwards last year. This year we’ve had to light a grand total of two fires so far, both at the end of October. I was walking around Tralee today in a t-shirt, in mid November. Just my own experience but I should have been frozen with the cold today and it was grand. Don’t really remember it being this mild so late in the year before but I don’t remember lots of things sometimes! Anyone remember anything like this recently?
Population reduction is the only way to counter the offensive ‘emmitions’ which are caused by being alive. Our politicians strive for population growth, economy growth, investment in infrastructure, building more crappy houses, larger markets, More demand for consumable stuff, all great for business, not great for environment. There should be incentives for people to elect for sterilisation, and measures put in place to shrink the population if they were serious about it. Instead it’s wind farms and electric cars.
@Eamonn O’Hanrahan: Nothing stopping your from getting sterilised of you wish.
good point. also Govt has no solutions just taxes. we have insufficient power generation f ev’s. we have insufficient surge capacity in our grid for ev’s. Ev’s wont work for tractors, hgv’s, trains or ships but hydrogen will / no plan. No plan for hydtogen fuel cell cars for those who cannot install a charging point or who criss cross the country needing fast fill up.
@Damian Moylan: “we have insufficient power generation f ev’s… but hydrogen will / no plan. No plan for hydtogen fuel cell cars”
I don’t understand how one pivots from insufficient power for EVs to – what about hydrogen, which requires about around about 3 times the electric.
It has the motorists. I mean it must be yeah? Let’s tax them even more, they are an easy target? 2m plus vehicles on the roads. Sure it makes sense? Let’s invent new levies and new taxes because that’ll solve the problem. It’s not agriculture or other sectors nope, couldn’t be.
develop hydrogen infrastructure.
https://youtu.be/4sn0ecqZgog
We’ll have to go back to turning off the immersion
Big break through in cop-on26 Ireland is been shut down The world is saved China and the US are giving us badges for our sacrifice
We does Ireland go from here?
Subsidise materials like insulation for retro fitting so people can DIY, cut down on beaurcracy.
Stop building on low levels near the sea and rivers.
Become more food secure, diversify farming, subsidise smaller farms and organic/chemical free
Planning exemptions for buildings made with natural materials/composting loos etc.
Make rainwater harvesting mandatory in all new builds
Fuel rationing for cars, even out the rural v urban obstacle.
Limit on outdoor lighting on private dwellings.
Limit on no. Properties unless landlord.
Tax on airline travel.
@Anarch Eco: do what Colm Molloy said
@Anarch Eco: taxing air travel isnt the answer to that industry and its emmitance. The rich will continue to travel as much as always and the poor still will want to get their one sunshine holiday a year, only it will cost them more and hurt their home finances. Ireland is an island with miserable summers and you can’t bank on a decent week in August. Taxing things like this only serve to widen the gap in the haves and haven’ts.
@Jeff Cole: oh theres wealth taxes in there too.
Plenty of years with good weather in may/June/july, august should be cancelled.
Studying up on the current planetary pole shift would be an excellent start
It’s to dam cowld anyway I wouldn’t mind a bit of global warming coming into a the freezing winter
have your say