SURFSIDE, Florida: A wing of a 12-story beachfront condo building collapsed with a roar in a town outside Miami early Thursday, killing at least one person and trapping residents in rubble and twisted metal. Rescuers pulled out dozens of survivors and continued to look for more.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett warned that the death toll was likely to rise, saying the building manager told him the tower was quite full at the time of the collapse around 1:30 a.m., but the exact number of people present was unclear.
“The building is literally pancaked,” Burkett said. “That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean, to me, that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
Hours after the collapse, searchers were trying to reach a trapped child whose parents were believed to be dead. In another case, rescuers saved a mother and child, but the woman’s leg had to be amputated to remove her from the rubble, Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management, told the Miami Herald.
Video showed fire crews removing a boy from the wreckage, but it was not clear whether he was the same person mentioned by Rollason.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who toured the scene, said television did not capture the scale of what happened.
Rescue crews are “doing everything they can to save lives. That is ongoing, and they’re not going to rest,” he said.
Authorities did not say what may have caused the collapse. On video footage captured from nearby, the center of the building appeared to fall first, with a section nearest the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.
Work was being done on the building’s roof, but Burkett said he did not see how that could have been the cause.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said she got a call from President Joe Biden, who offered federal aid. Hotels opened to some of the displaced residents, she said, and deliveries of food, medicine and more were being hastily arranged. Rescue officials tried to determine how many people might be missing and asked residents to check in with them.
About half of the building’s roughly 130 units were affected, the mayor told a news conference. Rescuers pulled at least 35 people from the wreckage by mid-morning, and heavy equipment was being brought in to help stabilize the structure to give them more access, Raide Jadallah of Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue said.
Fifty-one people who were thought to be in the building at the time of the collapse were unaccounted for by mid-morning — but there was a possibility that some weren’t at home, said Sally Heyman, of the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners.
The tower has a mix of seasonal and year-round residents, and while the building keeps a log of guests, it does not keep track of when owners are in residence, Burkett said.
Earlier, Burkett said two people were brought to the hospital, one of whom died. He added that 15 families walked out of the building on their own.
The collapse, which appeared to affect one leg of the L-shaped tower, tore away walls and left a number of homes in the still-standing part of the building exposed in what looked like a giant dollhouse. Television footage showed bunk beds, tables and chairs inside. Air conditioners hung from some parts of the building, where wires now dangled.
Piles of rubble and debris surrounded the area, and cars up to two blocks away were coated with with a light layer of dust from the debris.
Barry Cohen, 63, said he and his wife were asleep in the building when he first heard what he thought was a crack of thunder. The couple went onto their balcony, then opened the door to the building’s hallway to find “a pile of rubble and dust and smoke billowing around.”
“I couldn’t walk out past my doorway,” said Cohen, the former vice mayor of Surfside. “A gaping hole of rubble.”
He and his wife made it to the basement and found rising water there. They returned upstairs, screamed for help and were eventually brought to safety by firefighters using a cherry-picker.
Cohen said he raised concerns years ago about whether nearby construction might be causing damage to the building after seeing cracked pavers on the pool deck.
Surfside City Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer told Miami television station WPLG that the building’s county-mandated 40-year recertification process was ongoing. Salzhauer said the process was believed to be proceeding without difficulty. A building inspector was on-site Wednesday.
“I want to know why this happened,” Salzhauer said. “That’s really the only question. ... And can it happen again? Are any other of our buildings in town in jeopardy?”
At an evacuation site set up in a nearby community center, people who live in buildings neighboring the collapse gathered after being told to flee. Some wept. Some were still dressed in pajamas. Some children tried to sleep on mats spread on the floor.
Jennifer Carr was asleep in a neighboring building when she was awakened by a loud boom and her room shook. She thought it was a thunderstorm but checked the weather app on her phone and saw none. The building’s fire alarms went off, and she and her family went outside and saw the collapse.
“It was devastation,” Carr said. “People were running and screaming.”
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said in a tweet that more than 80 units were at the scene with help from municipal fire departments. Teams of firefighters walked through the rubble, picking up survivors and carrying them from the wreckage.
Nicolas Fernandez waited early Thursday for word on close family friends who lived in the collapsed section of the building.
“Since it happened, I’ve been calling them nonstop, just trying to ring their cellphones as much as we can to hep the rescue to see if they can hear the cellphones,” she said.
The seaside condo development was built in 1981 in the southeast corner of Surfside. It had a few two-bedroom units currently on the market, with asking prices of $600,000 to $700,000 in an area with a neighborhood feel that provides a stark contrast to the glitz and bustle of nearby South Beach.
The area has a mix of new and old apartments, houses, condominiums and hotels, with restaurants and stores serving an international combination of residents and tourists. The main oceanside drag is lined with glass-sided, luxury condominium buildings, but more modest houses are on the inland side. Among the neighborhood’s residents are snowbirds, Russian immigrants and Orthodox Jewish families.
Patricia Avilez considered spending the night in her brother-in-law’s vacant condo on Wednesday but didn’t, only to awake to news of the collapse.
“And then I came here, and it’s gone,” she said. “Everything is disaster.”
Many feared dead after Florida beachfront condo collapses
https://arab.news/636pj
Many feared dead after Florida beachfront condo collapses
- Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett warned that the death toll was likely to rise, saying the the tower was quite full at the time of the collapse
- Gov. Ron DeSantis said rescue crews are ‘doing everything they can to save lives — that is ongoing, and they’re not going to rest’
Ukraine says Russian drone, missile attacks damage power facilities
- Regional officials said Russian forces had attacked infrastructure in the Kamianske district near the city of Dnipro
KYIV0: Russian missile and drone attacks hit thermal and hydro power plants in central and western Ukraine, power grid operator Ukrenergo said on Friday, the latest assault on the already damaged power infrastructure.
“During the night, the Russians struck again at energy facilities in a massive and combined attack,” Ukrenergo said on the Telegram messaging app.
“Thermal and hydroelectric power plants in the central and western regions were damaged,” it said.
Regional officials said Russian forces had attacked infrastructure in the Kamianske district near the city of Dnipro. At least one person was wounded, they added.
Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko also said power facilities in Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Cherkasy regions were attacked this morning.
“Electricity generation facilities were targeted by drones and missiles,” Gelushchenko said on Facebook.
Ukrainian television reported that explosions were heard in Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytskyi regions and the city of Dnipro as Russian cruise missiles were spotted in Ukrainian air space.
The largest private power firm DTEK said its three thermal power plants were attacked.
“The equipment was severely damaged. After the attack ended, the power engineers promptly started to repair the damage,” the company said on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian power distributor Yasno said this week DTEK lost about 50 percent of its capacity after being hit by Russian missile and drone attacks.
‘A unique place’: Foreigners visit post-war Afghanistan
- Decades of conflict made tourism extremely rare in Afghanistan, but most violence has now abated
- Yet visitors are confronted with extreme poverty, dilapidated cultural sites and scant infrastructure
MAZAR-I-SHARIF: His soldier son toured Afghanistan with insurgents in his crosshairs, but American traveler Oscar Wells has a different objective — sight-seeing promoted by the Taliban’s fledgling tourism sector.
“It is a unique place, it touches my heart,” the 65-year-old Indiana farmer told AFP, praising “its magnificent mountains” with “people living in the old way.”
Marvelling at the 15th century Blue Mosque in northern Mazar-i-Sharif, Wells is among a small but rising number of travelers coming to Afghanistan since the war’s end.
Decades of conflict made tourism extremely rare, and while most violence has now abated, visitors are confronted with extreme poverty, dilapidated cultural sites and scant hospitality infrastructure.
They holiday under the austere control of Taliban authorities, without consular support after most embassies were evacuated following the fall of the Western-backed government in 2021.
They must register with officials on arrival in each province, comply with a strict dress code and submit to searches at checkpoints by men armed with Kalashnikovs.
Islamic State attacks also still pose a potential threat in the country.
“The first thing your loved ones say is: ‘You’re crazy to go there!’” said French tourist Didier Goudant, a 57-year-old lawyer, of a country that Western governments warn against visiting.
Security concerns worried Nayuree Chainton, the 45-year-old Thai owner of a travel agency in Bangkok, who made a trip for six days recently with a group to test the waters.
“I feel safe despite the checkpoints in the cities,” she said, during a visit to a shrine in the capital Kabul.
The number of foreign tourists visiting Afghanistan rose 120 percent year-on-year in 2023, reaching nearly 5,200, according to official figures.
The Taliban government has yet to be officially recognized by any country — in part because of its heavy restrictions on women — but it has welcomed foreign tourism.
“Afghanistan’s enemies don’t present the country in a good light,” said information and culture minister Khairullah Khairkhwa.
“But if these people come and see what it’s really like... they will definitely share a good image of it,” he said.
But Wells and Goudant — on a trip with firm Untamed Borders, which also offers tours of Syria and Somalia — describe their visit as a way to connect with Afghanistan’s people.
Tourists “like us are curious and want to be in contact with the population, to try to help them a little” said Goudant, on his second trip, which included skiing in central Bamiyan province.
He said part of his visits is making donations to local groups, something he describes as “small-scale humanitarian work” in a country that has seen foreign aid drastically shrink since the Taliban takeover.
For Wells, there is a “sense of guilt for the departure” of US troops.
“I really felt we had a horrible exit, it created such a vacuum and disaster,” he said. “It’s good to help these people and keep relations.”
Untamed Borders brought around 100 tourists to Afghanistan last year, with a nine-day package starting in neighboring Pakistan costing $2,850.
The end of the fighting means tourists “can do more things,” said founder James Willcox.
“But on the other hand it is disruptive,” he added, noting a woman tour guide with the company fled to Italy after the Taliban return.
While the Taliban government has shut girls and women out of education, and much of public life, foreign women are granted greater freedoms.
For solo traveler Stefanie Meier, a 53-year-old American, who spent a month traveling from Kabul to Kandahar via Bamiyan and Herat in the west, it was a “bittersweet experience.”
“I have been able to meet people I never thought I would meet, who told me about their life,” she said, adding that she didn’t face any issues as a woman on her own.
She experienced “disbelief that people have to live like this,” she added. “The poverty, there are no jobs, women not being able to go to school, no future for them.”
With little by way of official information, tourists band together on social media and messaging apps to trade tips.
While two airlines serve Afghanistan’s major cities, backpackers prefer the bus, and don’t shy away from the 20-hour journey from Kabul to Herat.
An active WhatsApp group named Afghanistan Travel Experience brings together over 600 people from places as far flung as Mexico, India and Italy who are already in the country or on their way out.
They pepper the group with questions, such as one from user Alberto asking if it is “haram” (not allowed) to travel with a dog, or if it’s a problem to have visible tattoos.
Another, Soo, asked: “Is there a co-working space in Mazar?”
Bus plunges off a bridge in South Africa, killing 45 people; 8-year-old child is lone survivor
- Authorities said the bus carrying worshippers was traveling from the neighboring country of Botswana to the town of Moria, which hosts a popular Easter pilgrimage
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: A bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in South Africa on Thursday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said.
The only survivor of the crash was an 8-year-old child, who was receiving medical attention, according to authorities in the northern province of Limpopo. They said the child was seriously injured.
The Limpopo provincial government said the bus veered off the Mmamatlakala bridge and plunged 50 meters (164 feet) into a ravine before busting into flames.
Search operations were ongoing, the provincial government said, but many bodies were burned beyond recognition and still trapped inside the vehicle.
Authorities said they believe the bus was traveling from the neighboring country of Botswana to the town of Moria, which hosts a popular Easter pilgrimage. They said it appeared that the driver lost control and was one of the dead.
Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga was in Limpopo province for a road safety campaign and changed plans to visit the crash scene, the national Department of Transport said. She said there was an investigation underway into the cause of the crash and offered her condolences to the families of the victims.
The South African government often warns of the danger of road accidents during the Easter holidays, which is a particularly busy and dangerous time for road travel. More than 200 people died in road crashes during the Easter weekend last year.
The Zionist Christian Church has its headquarters in Moria and its Easter pilgrimage attracts hundreds of thousands of people from across South Africa and neighboring countries. This year is the first time the Easter pilgrimage to Moria is set to go ahead since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Macron says G20 must agree before inviting Putin to summit
BRASILIA: French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that members of the G20 would have to agree before Russian leader Vladimir Putin is invited to attend the group’s summit in Brazil in November.
“The meaning of this club is that there must be consensus with the 19 others. That will be a job for Brazilian diplomacy,” he said during a joint press conference in Brasilia with his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
If such a meeting can be “useful, it must be done,” Macron said, though he warned division on the matter could scuttle any Russian invitation.
Brazil, the current chair of the G20 group — which represents 80 percent of the global economy — has opposed the US-led drive to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western countries share some of the blame for the war.
Putin missed last year’s G20 summit in the Indian capital New Delhi, avoiding possible political opprobrium and any risk of criminal detention under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.
In September 2023, Lula said there was “no way” that Putin would be arrested if he attended the Rio de Janeiro summit.
Shortly after, he backtracked and said that it would be up to the justice system to decide on Putin’s eventual arrest and not his government.
Biden, Trump provide campaign split-screen with dueling NYC events
WASHINGTON: Joe Biden and Donald Trump were on the campaign trail in New York on Thursday as the Democratic president prepared to host a star-studded fundraiser and his Republican predecessor and 2024 rival paid tribute to a fallen police officer.
Trump made a short statement after attending the wake of police officer Jonathan Diller, who was shot and killed on Monday during a traffic stop.
“We have to stop it. We have to get back to law and order,” said the 77-year-old billionaire, who refrained from criticizing his 81-year-old rival directly.
Trump’s entourage contrasted his solemn trip with a lavish fundraiser Biden will headline later alongside former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, which organizers say has reaped an eye-watering $25 million.
“President Trump will be honoring the legacy of Officer Diller and paying respects to his family, friends, and the NYPD,” said the Republican’s spokesman Steven Cheung.
“Meanwhile, the Three Stooges — Biden, Obama, and Clinton — will be at a glitzy fundraiser in the city with their elitist, out-of-touch celebrity benefactors.”
The White House said Biden had called New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday to offer his condolences over Diller’s killing.
The Democrat has not been in contact with the officer’s family but “grieves” with them, his spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said, adding that the president “has stood with law enforcement his entire career and continues to stand with them.”
Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that Biden was “deeply grateful for the sacrifices police officers make to keep our communities safe.”
Biden’s fundraiser will feature a debate between the three Democratic leaders, hosted by late-night TV comic Stephen Colbert.
Singers Lizzo and Queen Latifah, among others, will perform at the event, to be held at Radio City Music Hall in midtown Manhattan in front of 5,000 people.
The star-studded fundraiser is the first event of its kind to feature the three Democratic presidents.
According to NBC News, guests can pay $100,000 for a photo with the trio.
“The numbers don’t lie: today’s event is a massive show of force and a true reflection of the momentum to reelect the Biden-Harris ticket,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the campaign’s chief fundraiser, said in a statement, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris.
He contends that Biden will raise more money in one evening than Trump did in the entire month of February.
Biden has better-stocked campaign coffers than his Republican opponent, who is using some of the funds raised from his supporters for legal expenses in the multiple lawsuits he is facing.
Trump’s trial for allegedly covering up 2016 hush money payments to a porn star when he was running for his first term in office begins in New York on April 15.
He devotes much of his campaign rhetoric to attacking illegal immigration and criticizing his Democratic rival for being lax on policing.
But the Republican, who faces 88 felony counts for a wide variety of alleged criminality, is also a harsh critic of law enforcement, regularly accusing the FBI of pursuing a politically motivated “witch hunt” against him.