They just reported that 35 people have been rescued from the building, 10 people were treated on the scene, 15 families got out of the building on their own, 2 were rescued from the rubble but many many folks are still missing and unaccounted for.

(136 units with unknown occupancy)

53 people are now accounted for, but 99 are still unaccounted for.

102 people are now accounted for (with good news, she said) 99 people are still unaccounted for.

It is horrifying.

Surfside Mayor Charles W. Burkett confirmed roof work was being done at the building, but said roof work is constantly being done on buildings and doesn’t believe that is a reason for the collapse. He said he is sure an application must have been completed before the work started and that an inspection would have been made beforehand. The mayor said he can’t imagine any reason for the tragedy other than if a sinkhole occurred or someone pulled the supports out of the building.

It feels like he's already made up his mind before any investigation. Does he have connections to the building owners or construction company?

so far.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the end it's learned that either building codes weren't followed in the first place, or some kind of changes were made at the last minute that ultimately resulted in this. Somewhat like the collapse of the walkways at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City in 1981.

It was very early this morning when they first reported 2 people were removed from the rubble and one died on the way to the hospital, but since then - no new deaths have been officially announced. But I imagine that in the next day or so, after all the rubble is removed we are going to see some very sad numbers....

It wasn't until Hurricane Andrew in 1992 that Florida building codes were really brought up to national standards. That was because they found that so many houses and buildings were destroyed because of lax building codes and inadequate inspections.

This building was put up about 1980 according to reports, so well before the improvements Andrew brought about were in place.

...that building has been extensively added on to several times.

Regarding the number dead, I think it may be likely that they're buried. There are 90-some people unaccounted for.

Were that 159 people were missing and 4 were confirmed dead. It sounds like many more people were in the building than they originally thought.

My local news station has been covering this 24/7 since it happened, and it is starting to take a toll on me, I am so very sad. I appreciate your posting those new numbers for me, Dreampuff. Thank you.

All of our local news still runs the update as their headline story, but since we are over 200 miles away, I'm sure we don't hear as much as that area. So much has happened since Friday and the 2018 inspection has come to light. I have been watching the updates on CNN and they had a huge renovation on the agenda. I have read that one of the original developers was from Canada and was sent back to settle his tax evasion problems, but he was originally from a different country. Other Developers seemed to struggle to get their developments built compared to this original group. It was later learned that two local politicians were given very good donations and the developers who built these then asked for the money back once everything was out in the open. There had been issues with the sewer and they had agreed to pay part of the expense so the properties were built. There was also an interesting update that had the amount it would cost each owner and they had to sign their papers by July 1st 2021. I will post in a new post.

I used to live in Miami-Dade county years ago and spent a lot of time in the Miami Beach area, not so much lately. Thanks for picking up the news baton and passing it on - I was consuming just too much of the coverage and it just left me feeling ill, I couldn't do it anymore. But there is still a lot of important information to learn about this tragedy, please keep posting (a new thread would be great, there isn't much traffic anymore on this old one) Thanks again, Dreampuff.

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/miami-florida-building-collapse-06-28-21-intl/index.html If you scroll down to the story about the 15 million dollars in renovations it explains how much the special assessments would have been and some of it seems to be cosmetic. They were already paying over $900 per month condo fees and they had been selling at 600,000 on up. I guess you don't always get what you pay for. I still find this fall heartbreaking.