Miami landslide: they confirmed the discovery of four more bodies, the death toll rose to 94

The death toll in a building collapse in Surfside, southeast Florida, rose by 4 on Monday to stand at 94, with the task of identification complicated over time, local authorities reported.

Among the bodies found, 83 have been identified and 22 People who may have been in the building when it collapsed are still missing, the Miami-Dade County mayor said. Daniella Levine Cava, at the end of the 19th day of search and rescue tasks.

“Deceased persons may remain on the missing persons list until they are identifiedLevine Cava said at a press conference about the accident at a condominium in Surfside, a small town in 6,000 residents north of Miami with a large Jewish community.

But this process “it becomes more and more difficult with time and rescuers find human remains“, He admitted.

County police and medical examiners are leading identification operations at the site of the collapsed building, they compare the DNA of the wreckage or human remains with that of the families of the missing since the disaster.

The authorities have made a controlled demolition Sunday of the previous week from the rest of the building, allowing teams to advance in inaccessible excavation areas.

Champlain Towers South, a 12-story oceanfront building, partially collapsed on the night of June 24 for an unknown reason. The first elements of the investigation, however, revealed that the structure of the building appeared in places degraded.

Israeli mission concludes

Over the weekend, members of the Israeli delegation who joined the search and rescue efforts after the collapse They were fired in a moving ceremony at Surfside led by Levine Cava, who presented them with plaques and medals of recognition, before their return to Israel on Sunday.

Israeli rescuers marched on a street in Surfside on Saturday in what has been called the “reflection walkIn which Levine Cava and the mayor of that city, Charles Burkett, members of the rescue teams, also walked. relatives of the victims and the missing.

Miami-Dade police reported on Sunday that the identified bodies include the two other nephews of Silvana López-Moreira, the first lady of Paraguay: Alexia Maria Pettengill López-Moreira, 9, and Anna Sophia Pettengill López-Moreira, 6.

They are both sons of Sophie lopez–Moreira, the sister of the first lady, and Luis Pettengill, the two 36-year-old men, whose identities had already been identified by the authorities, as well as the youngest of the children, Luis López Moreira III, 3, and nanny Leidy Luna Villalba, 23.

According to the Paraguayan consulate, the bodies will be repatriated to the Latin American country as soon as possible.

(With information from AFP and EFE)

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