#Miami Beach building collapse

At least one person was killed and several others injured when a 12-story apartment building in Miami partially collapsed early Thursday, prompting a massive search-and-rescue effort – with one boy seen being pulled from the rubble.

It was unclear how many people lived in the Champlain Towers on Collins Avenue in the town of Surfside — just north of Miami Beach — or had been inside at the time of the collapse.

At one point, firefighters were seen pulling a boy from the debris and placing him onto a stretcher, NBC Miami reported. A CBS Miami reporter tweeted that the boy was around 10 years old.

“Over 80 MDFR units including #TRT (Technical Rescue Teams) are on scene with assistance from municipal fire departments,” the Miami Dade Fire Rescue said in a tweet.

Sgt. Marian Cruz of Miami Dade Fire Rescue said the scene is “still very active.”

“What I can tell you is the building is 12 floors. The entire back side of the building has collapsed,” Cruz said.

Chilling images and footage from the scene show piles of rubble and debris surrounding the area just outside the building.

Santo Mejil, 50, woke up when his wife called from a unit on the ninth floor of the south condo, one of three buildings that comprise the Champlain Towers complex.

“She said she heard a big explosion. It felt like an earthquake,” Mejil told the Miami Herald about his wife, an overnight caretaker for an elderly disabled woman.

As he described rushing over to the site from their home near Miami International Airport, his wife called.

“They’re bringing you down?” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “Thank God!”

One witness shared video of the aftermath on social media, saying he had been staying at a nearby hotel and had to be evacuated after the collapse, NBC Miami reported.
“The building, one of these huge buildings, gone, right there beside us, the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” the man says in the clip. “Look at the building, it’s gone.”

Another witness described the scene of destruction.

“I was able to just see probably a third, if not half of the building literally collapsed,” the witness told the news outlet.

“I just can’t put into words, it looks like a bomb hit, it looks like something in one of these third-world countries that just literally collapsed, like a pancake straight down, and there’s just an incredible pile of rubble,” the person added.

A third person said he was on vacation in the city with his family next door when he heard what sounded like a tornado and felt like and earthquake.  

“It was the craziest thing I ever heard in my life,” he told Fox News.

Officials have yet to say what may have caused part of the oceanside building — which was built in 1981 with more than 100 units — to crumble about 2 a.m.

The area around 88th Street and Collins and Harding avenues has been shut down for several blocks, with dozens of fire engines and rescue vehicles lining the streets.

A Technical Rescue Team was being assisted by municipal fire departments in the search for survivors, officials said.

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