Hope was beginning to fade Saturday as tapping sounds in the rubble of a collapsed Florida condo “dissipated,” one rescuer said.
“We haven’t really heard anything in a while now, but that’s not to say that there’s still not people trapped that are alive,” Dr. Howard Lieberman, a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue trauma surgeon told CNN.
Lieberman said search crews would continue to frantically comb the debris for any of the 159 people still currently unaccounted for.
Leo Soto, a friend of some of the residents who went missing after the building partially collapsed, visits a memorial to the missing persons in Surfside, Florida. EPA“As time’s running out they might be getting a little more sick or ill – not as vocal as before – but, like I said, we’re going to keep searching,” he added. “I think these guys, you know, that’s their mindset also, they’re just going to keep going, keep going, keep going until, like I said, every stone is turned over and all the rubble is removed.”
It’s been more than 48 hours since the Champlain Towers South condominium partly collapsed early Thursday. The condo, just south of Miami, has reportedly been sinking for decades and faced other structural problems, according to inspection reports that have since come to light. Cracks in the walls had reportedly been the subject of lawsuits fled by building residents.
Lieberman said search crews would continue to comb the debris for any of the 159 people still currently unaccounted for. REUTERS