Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in Miami-Dade county on Thursday over the partial collapse of a residential building in Surfside, Florida.
According to The Miami Herald, the move will coordinate assistance between the local and federal government.
I’ve signed an executive order to provide assistance to the families and community who were affected by the tragedy in Surfside. I’m proud of our @FLSERT team for their strong coordination during this emergency to meet all requests in the area.https://t.co/kQBAvTU3oG
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) June 25, 2021
After touring the site earlier in the day, DeSantis said the images you see on the television don’t “do it justice.”
“I mean it is really, really traumatic to see the collapse of a massive structure like that,” he added.
One person has been declared dead and at least 99 are unaccounted for as search and rescue missions continue.
“Buildings like this do not fall in America," Surfside, Florida Mayor Charles Burkett told Fox News's Tucker Carlson. "This is a third-world phenomenon and it’s shocking.”
"It was not unlike what happened at the Trade Center in 2001 and it's just really disturbing," he continued, referring to the way the 134-unit building collapsed.
According to a Florida International University researcher, the structure, built in 1981 on reclaimed wetlands, had been sinking.
“I looked at this morning and said ‘Oh my God.’ We did detect that,” Shimon Wdowinski, professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University, told the newspaper.
[Shimon] Wdowinski said his research found the building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s, and the sinking could have slowed or accelerated in the time since. The study was not done for the purpose of determining the soundness of the building but as part of an ongoing project to identify which parts of Miami could be most impacted by sea-level rise and coastal flooding.
“It was a byproduct of analyzing the data. We saw this building had some kind of unusual movement,” he told the newspaper. (News 4 Jax)
The building was preparing for its building recertification, required by the county every 40 years to ensure structural soundness. It also had roofing work being done, which started in April.