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Miami building collapse: one dead as rescue crews say 51 unaccounted for | Miami | The Guardian

At least one person was killed, 10 injured and dozens more unaccounted for on Thursday after a condominium building in Miami collapsed in the early hours.

Rescue crews were searching for survivors through the rubble of the 12-storey Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, which came down at about 1.30am. Authorities said as many as 51 people were unaccounted for.

Witnesses said the sound of the collapse was “like a bomb going off”. The Miami-Dade department of emergency management reported that about 70 of the development’s 130 apartments were destroyed.

Officials said at a morning press conference that the reason for the collapse was not yet known.

“It’s the unimaginable,” Daniella Levine Cava, the Miami-Dade mayor, said. “A massive search and rescue mission is under way. We are going to do everything we can possibly to identify and rescue those who have been trapped in the rubble.”

More than 80 fire-rescue crews attended the scene in Surfside, a small, oceanfront city just north of Miami Beach. Early video of the aftermath of the collapse showed a boy being pulled from the wreckage, one of 35 people rescued alive, the Miami-Dade commission said.

“They brought dogs who can sniff for survivors in the rubble,” Eliana Salzhauer, a Surfside commissioner, told the Miami Herald. “They aren’t turning up very much. No one is celebrating anyone being pulled out.” …