ISRAELI RESCUE TEAM MIAMI FULL

'We did get a small team from Israel to come. If nothing else, the international presence is symbolic and may offer some solace, particularly to the local Jewish community. Local officials say they have plenty of help on hand and are rotating the rescue teams to keep personnel fresh. The exact roles of the Mexican and Israeli teams have not been detailed. Among those missing are relatives of Paraguay's first lady.

Official briefings are delivered in Spanish and Haitian Creole in addition to English. Officials said the complex, built in 1981, was going through a recertification process and repairs to the roof.The cooperation reflects the international nature of the Miami area, which is home to both Jewish and Latin American diasporas. The cause of the collapse remained a mystery. The building had more than 130 units, about 80 of which were occupied, officials said. The Champlain Towers South condominium is in Surfside a barrier island town across Biscayne Bay from Miami. Video captured by a security camera showed an entire side of the building suddenly folding in two sections, one after the other, at about 1:30 a.m. The disaster occurred early on Thursday morning, when a large section of the 40-year-old building crumbled to the ground. We're doing everything we can to bring your family member out alive,' Alvarez told the loved ones of the missing on CNN, pausing as he was overcome with emotion. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue chief Andy Alvarez recalled that his team once pulled a girl out of earthquake debris in Haiti eight days into the rescue effort. Heavy equipment scraped away the top layer.īelow ground, rescuers who entered through the parking garage risked their own lives searching for survivors, occasionally being hit by falling debris, officials said. Teams from Mexico and Israel arrived to help relieve the locally based crews, many of whom have also traveled to disaster sites around the world.Ītop the pile, some wielded hammers and picks looking for signs of life. While local officials provided aid and comfort to the families, such as hotel rooms and food, search-and-rescue specialists worked the disaster site on a rotation, with a limited number allowed at any one time to prevent further collapse, Levine Cava said. Miami-Dade Fire Chief Alan Cominsky told reporters that rescue operations would continue throughout the night.

'We have hope because that's what our search-and-rescue team tells us, that they have hope,' Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a news conference on Friday. Aided by dogs, cameras, sonar and heavy equipment, rescuers looked for any spaces that may have formed in the debris, leaving any possible survivors air to breathe. The death toll of four was certain to rise with one floor of the high-rise stacked atop another like pancakes.

ISRAELI RESCUE TEAM MIAMI FULL

Prospects for recovering survivors from a Florida high-rise diminished with each passing hour on Saturday, two full days after the 12-story condominium mysteriously collapsed while many residents slept.Įven so, search-and-rescue teams worked around the clock through an unstable mountain of debris looking for signs of life from any of the 159 people still unaccounted for, while smoldering fires filled the air with smoke.

Israeli rescue team miami