Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) declared a state of emergency in Miami-Dade County in response to the partial collapse of a residential condo in Surfside, Florida. The move comes as nearly 100 people remain unaccounted for as of Thursday.
The state of emergency, signed Thursday afternoon, makes it easier for officials to coordinate and direct resources — including federal resources — toward the response and recovery efforts, which rescue officials said involved over 80 units from around the U.S., reports the Miami Herald.
According to WSVN, a local new site, 102 people have been accounted for following the collapse, including 35 who were rescued from the rubble. One person has been declared dead. (Update: The Miami-Dade Mayor said Friday morning that four people have died and 159 people remain unaccounted for. In total, 120 people have been accounted for.)
The building collapse, which occurred before sunrise at the Chaplain Towers South Condo, has “resulted in fatalities and nearly 100 people remain unaccounted for,” DeSantis wrote in the state of emergency declaration. A significant portion of the 12-story condo building “has been destroyed and the remainder of the structure has been rendered uninhabitable,” notes the order.
President Joe Biden has promised to help local efforts, telling Floridians in a message from the White House, “Whatever help you want the federal government will provide.”
Related: Death Toll Rises In Condo Collapse; Number Of Missing Persons Grows To 159
DeSantis, who visited the recovery site on Thursday afternoon, said that he and his team were hopeful that more survivors would be rescued from the rubble. “The first responders were able to save a lot of people. They are going to be going through more and, you know, it’s a really, really tragic situation so we’ll hope for the best in terms of additional recoveries, although we are bracing for some bad news just given the destruction that we’re seeing,” he said.
Florida Gov. DeSantis consoles a couple with 5 family members missing after the Miami condo building collapsed this morning pic.twitter.com/Fb8fylarL0
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 24, 2021
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett called the collapse a “tragedy beyond our imagination” on Fox News, and warned that, despite optimism from the search and rescue teams, “the worst” is likely “yet to come.”
“We got the call at about 2:00 this morning and we came out and we’ve got a modern building that just collapsed. A large modern building, 12 stories, 130-unit condominium on the ocean just collapsed, it looks like there was an earthquake, it’s inexplicable and we are all scratching our heads trying to figure out what the problem is,” Burkett told Fox News in an interview. “We’ve got a tragedy here that’s beyond any of our imagination. We’ve got 15 families out this morning in the middle of the night, we’ve got a third or more of the building that collapsed like a pancake that I don’t even want to think about what we’d find in that area.”
Related: WATCH: Firefighters Pull Boy Out Of Rubble Alive After Miami Building Collapse In ‘Miracle Rescue’