Death toll rises to 11 in Florida condo collapse

The partially-collapsed Champlain Towers South building. — (Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Two more bodies were found in the rubble of a partially collapsed 12-story residential building in Florida on Monday, bringing the confirmed death toll to 11.

The Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside collapsed last Thursday morning, and Monday was the fifth day of search and rescue operations. There are still 150 people unaccounted for, and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said in a Monday press conference that the numbers are "very fluid and they will change." She promised there will be a "thorough and full investigation of what led to this tragic event. We are going to get to the bottom of what happened here. Right now, our top priority is search and rescue."

About 55 of the building's 136 units were destroyed in the collapse, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Raide Jadallah said on Monday, adding that rescuers are digging through "rubbles of concrete the size of basketballs, the size of baseballs." Crews haven't been able to make it to the bottom of the pile yet, but Jadallah said cameras that were lowered in show that there are air pockets were people could be trapped. There are more than 80 rescuers working at a time, searching through humidity and rain, and an underground sonar system is also aiding in efforts to find victims.

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Champlain Towers South was built in the 1980s, and was undergoing roof work, Surfside officials said. A 2018 structural field survey found the waterproofing below the condo's pool deck and entrance drive was failing and causing "major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas." Read more at ABC News.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.