Shafaq News/ The death toll has risen to four but more fatalities are expected as authorities warned the number of missing from the collapsed apartment complex in Florida could increase from the current figure of 159.
Meanwhile, a researcher at Florida International University has revealed that the building had been sinking into the ground since the 1990s.
Firefighters rescued 35 people from the Champlain Tower South building that collapsed in the middle of the night in Surfside, a beachside town just 6 miles (9.6 km) north of Miami.
Two were pulled from the rubble, including a young boy, as early hope of finding more survivors faded with each passing hour. Eleven were treated for injuries and four transported to local hospitals for further medical attention.
A pregnant British woman along with her husband and their one-year-old daughter are thought to be among those still unaccounted for since the collapse.
A state of emergency was declared as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) arrived to help search and recovery efforts, and to provide assistance and shelter to the 102 people who have been “accounted for” from the building. The 12-storey apartment building built in 1981 was only 40 years old when it collapsed about 1.30 am local time Thursday morning.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue assistant chief of operations Ray Jadallah said that the sonar sound devices from various areas inside the debris have detected signs that could potentially be from some of the 159 people still missing.
“We did receive sounds, not necessarily people talking, but sounds,” Mr Jadallah said.
“What sounds like people banging, well not people but sounds of a possibility of a banging, short of that we haven’t heard any voices coming from the pile.”
Officials said no cause for the collapse has been determined.
Video of the collapse showed the center of the building appearing to tumble down first and a section nearest to the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later, as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.
About half the building’s roughly 130 units were affected, and rescuers pulled at least 35 people from the wreckage in the first hours after the collapse. But with 159 still unaccounted for, work could go on for days.
Television video early Friday showed crews still fighting flareups of fires on the rubble piles. Intermittent rain over South Florida is also hampering the search.
Jadallah said that while listening devices placed on and in the wreckage had picked up no voices, they had detected possible banging noises, giving rescuers hope some are alive. Rescuers were tunneling into the wreckage from below, going through the building's underground parking garage.
Source: The Independent