One death was confirmed and 51 people are unaccounted for after an apartment block in Miami collapsed Thursday morning. A thunderstorm is hampering rescue efforts, officials said, and Florida's governor warned news media to "brace for some bad news."
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Ray Jadallah said that 55 units collapsed. Photos and videos of the scene show the building complex reduced to rubble.
"A massive search and rescue is underway, and we know we are going to do everything we can possibly to identify and rescue those who have been trapped in the rubble," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Thursday morning. Rescuers helped a boy from the debris alive, a witness said, and video showed responders helping others leave the standing portions of the building, sometimes using a bucket atop a fire truck's ladder. Jadallah did not speak about the conditions of the two people he said were pulled from the rubble.
Note that a lot of media (such as the police courtesy photo above) is focusing on the opened-up side of an adjoining part of the building that is not the collapsed block. Video below shows the scale of the disaster; be warned that the footage records the "complete catastrophic failure" of an inhabited building.
