Residential Building Near Miami Beach Partially Collapses

…Commissioner Sally Heyman of Miami-Dade County said county officials informed her that as of 10 a.m., 51 people who own units in the building had not been accounted for. That did not mean they were missing, she said, just that the authorities had not been able to reach them. She added that not all of the units may have been occupied by full-time residents.

Daniella Levine Cava, the mayor of Miami-Dade County, said that about half of the 136 units in the 12-story tower had collapsed. “We’re going to do everything we can possibly do to identify and rescue those who have been trapped in the rubble,” the mayor said at a news conference Thursday morning. …

Note that “partially collapsed” understates the severity of this failure.

The building is a a 12-storey (some reports say 13) residential condominium. A substantial wing has collapsed, another section is still standing. Roughly half the building is down. This tweet shows the now-collapsed and still-standing sections.

55 of 130 units collapsed.

The building appears to have pancaked straight down.

The collapse occurred at about 2 am local time.

"Partial" in the sense that "the entirety of the building didn't fall", but misleading in that "the half that did is now rubble and dust". By photos, the rubble itself seems slightly below-grade, suggesting both that it's very compressed and has occupied a sub-surface void, whether a basement structure or geological in origin.

Reports are that 35 people have been rescued from the building, two pulled from the rubble. There are two people in hospital in critical condition (unclear if the same two). Search dogs have had few hits, “there’s just not a lot of voids that they’re finding” according to the mayor of Surfside, FL. Two confirmed deaths, numerous unaccounted for.

Large residential structures collapsing in the dead of night is not normal for the US.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/06/24/us/miami-building-collapse

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