Florida Condo Collapse: 99 Still Missing, Building Had Signs Of Sinking Since 90s

[Update: June 25th, 2021 at 8:55 a.m.]: USA Today reports that the death toll from the collapse has increased to four, after rescue crews encountered three additional bodies while working through the rubble overnight. The deaths were confirmed by Raide Jadallah, the Assistant Fire Chief of Operations for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.

[Original Story]:

Nearly 100 people are feared to be missing after a high-rise condominium in Florida partially collapsed on Thursday.

At least 99 people remain unaccounted for after 55 of the 12-story Champlain Towers South condo’s 136 units collapsed around 1:30 a.m. ET. The Miami-Dade Fire Rescue team successfully pulled out 37 people from the rubble, but many are still missing. One has been confirmed dead.

Rescuers are now using sonar equipment to navigate the collapse in hopes of finding more people underneath the debris.

"It is a very slow and methodical process because every time we start breaching parts of the structure, we get debris that falls on us," Raide Jadallah, assistant chief of operations for the Fire Rescue, told NBC News.

Jadallah noted that some rescuers have detected possible "banging" sounds from the rubble. However, they have yet to hear any voices.

"We did receive sounds, not necessarily people talking, but sounds … of a possibility of a banging," Jadallah said. "Short of that we haven’t heard any voices coming from the pile."

Pablo Rodriguez, whose mother and grandmother are among the 99 people listed as missing, said his mother heard “creaking noises” a day before the devastating collapse.

"She just told me she had woken up around 3 [or] 4 in the morning and had heard like some creaking noises," he told CNN. "They were loud enough to wake her."

Video footage from inside one of the condo units showed pieces of the ceiling falling into view before the camera cut off as the building falls apart.

Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University, said the building had shown signs of sinking in the 1990s, with a subsidence rate of two millimeters a year between 1993 to 1999.

Wdowinski noted that his research may not be the cause of the condo’s collapse, but said it could be a contributing factor.

"I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that," he told USA Today. "It was a byproduct of analyzing the data. We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement."

In 2015, a lawsuit was filed against the building's management wherein a condo owner alleged that the management failed to maintain an outside wall, leading to water damage and cracks. A separate lawsuit was previously filed by the same owner for the same issues.

Kenneth Direktor, an attorney for the association of residents at the Champlain Towers South, said the building had been thoroughly inspected by engineers over the last several months. The inspection determined that the building needed repairs, but the condo has only undergone roof replacement at the time of the collapse.

"The building was in the condition you would expect for a building that is 40 years old, that is located on the Atlantic Ocean," Direktor told CNN, before adding "the building has been maintained over its existence."

"What that tells you is… nothing like this was foreseeable, at least it wasn’t seen by the engineers who were looking at the building from a structural perspective... There was nothing to indicate something like this was going to happen."