Miami-Dade County Police has released the calls they received to the 911 emergency line on the night of June 24, when the south tower of the Champlain buildings in Surfside collapsed.
At around 1:16 am, the first few calls started to come in. At first, there was no urgency, a woman calmly called to report that she had heard an explosion. After a few minutes, however, the calmness of the phone calls changed to urgency. Caller after caller began frantically relaying their stories to emergency dispatchers. One woman could be heard saying “it’s an earthquake outside.”
“Holy s–t. We gotta get outta here. Hurry up. Hurry up. There’s a big explosion,” one man told 911. He couldn’t describe what exactly was happening. “I don’t know, there’s a lot of smoke going in, I can’t see right now. Gotta get out of here. Gotta get outta here.”
When the operator asks if a bridge collapsed, the man responded, “No, a building.” The 911 operator repeated “a building” — sounding shocked herself.
After 1:25 am, the building had already collapsed, and more calls started coming in. One of the callers, Luis Tinoco, stayed with the 911 operator until his son, his wife, and him, made their way outside. He reported that the garage was filling with debris.
Tinoco, his wife and his son John made their way to the second floor, but were still 20 or 30 feet off the ground. “There are people in the rubble, yelling,” he said.
In the background, faint screams of “help” could be heard.
“They are screaming they are stuck,” he said. “Is it safe for us to stay here?”
“If there is a safe way to get through a first-floor balcony and you know no one is in (the condos) break through the door if you can,” the operator suggested.
Eventually, Tinoco and his family made it “on top of the rubble,” Tinoco said.
“Come on, you can do it,” he said, encouraging his family. “Go, go, go, go John, we are going to the beach, we are going to the beach.”
Another woman breathlessly told dispatchers she had made it to the parking lot. “Half the building collapsed,” she said. “Can someone help me get out please?”
It is believed that the collapse of the slab itself in the pool area could have generated a sound similar to that of an explosion. There are tons of concrete that fell at the same time.
According to Miami-Dade’s director of emergency management, Frank Rollason, his office has received “no information, no intelligence, and there has been no discussion about an explosion of some kind that caused the collapse.”
However, Allyn Kilsheimer, the structural engineer hired by the Surfside municipality to investigate the collapse, has told the local press that an explosion is on “his list of possibilities” about the causes of the building’s collapse.
However, even if an explosion was found, no one is investigating any type of attack, so it would be something accidental and unprovoked.
The other possibility being considered is that there was an explosion related to the gas connection. While there were proposals to connect natural gas to the building earlier in the year, there is no indication in the property’s records that gas was connected there at the time.
Federal investigators have not confirmed if this is a lead they are following, although according to statements to the press they did not rule out any theories.
Some believe that something must have triggered the collapse. Landslides of this style are rarely seen, no matter how much structural damage there is to the property. Others consider that the bad foundations lead to the deterioration of the structure which over the years resulted in the collapse.
It is unclear what caused the collapse, and there likely will be no response for several months. At the moment, the only thing confirmed is that this tragedy has taken the lives of 97 people, of which 90 have been identified. Still eight people remain as potentially missing, although authorities confirmed last week as there is no hope of finding anyone alive.
This morning, the names of four new fatalities were released, including a teenage girl.
Michelle Ana Pazos, 23, Miriam Notkin, 81, and Mihai Radulescu, 82, were identified today and their bodies were recovered last Friday. Valeria Barth, 14, was found dead last Sunday.
