From the moment that any sort of disaster strikes, natural or man-made, the clock starts a countdown. There is only a finite amount of time to begin plan rescue efforts for all of the potential outcomes of the situation and deciding what the most efficient path forward is after that.
Now two weeks after the 12-story Champlain Towers South partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida, officials are now making the unbearable but inevitable decision to reorganize the parameters of their mission for what is the worst possible outcome.
Florida officials have shifted gears at the Surfside high-rise collapse site from search and rescue to recovery Wednesday – meaning that they don’t expect to find additional survivors.
The search for victims of the collapse of a Miami-area high-rise condominium had reached its 14th day, and officials earlier announced they had recovered 18 more bodies from the rubble, bringing the death toll to at least 54, and said 86 people were still unaccounted for.
The decision to end the rescue effort came after crews completed a search of the last area where they expected to find “voids,” or pockets of debris large enough to possibly contain survivors.
The news came just hours after a near-direct hit from Tropical Storm Elsa, sparing rescue crews from getting set back with another round of inclement weather.
Officials were heartbroken to provide some closure to the families of the victims and spoke to each of them directly about the plans moving forward.
Speaking to families of the victims who remain unaccounted for, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said search teams would stop using rescue dogs and sonar devices meant to find survivors and instead dig through the rubble in search of human remains.
“Our sole responsibility at this point is to bring closure,” he told them, according to the Associated Press.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava confirmed the news publicly at a news briefing early Wednesday evening and said the official transition would take place at midnight.
“At this point, we have truly exhausted every option available to us in the search and rescue mission,” she said.
Authorities offered a tiny sliver of consolation, relaying the information that a vast majority of those recovered from the rubble were asleep in their beds at the time of the collapse.
