The partial collapse of a 12-story apartment building in Surfside, Florida, leaves at least four people dead and 159 missing. A New Jersey family announces their attempt to escape. Whereat least four died, and 159 are still missing.
Albert Agüero and his wife said they slept in the Champlain Towers South building Thursday morning while his 22-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter watched Netflix. Then they heard a loud bang and felt the walls begin to shake, Aguero told USA Today. When he looked outside, he found that Surfside Florida’s apartment had collapsed.
“When we opened the front door, we understood what was going on. I looked to my left, and honestly, there was nothing,” he told the store. “The apartment on our left was split in two. I was waiting for the elevator across from us, and there were only two holes.”
When Aguero and his family realized that the rest of the building was about to collapse, they packed up their things and left. “We are racing against time,” he said, adding that a family of four helped an elderly woman down the stairs and escape. Another survivor, Alfredo Lopez, similarly told the Wall Street Journal that he looked outside when he woke up from the explosion and saw “nothing.” “You think about people you’ll never see, about our missing neighbors,” he said. “It’s a bowel disease to know you’re dead.”
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Two days after Thursday’s tragedy, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said finding missing people was a top priority. “We know there are people in this group,” he told a news conference on Saturday. “We’ll get you out. We’ll get you out as soon as we can.”