Death toll rises to 16 in US condo collapse

SURFSIDE, United States - Four more bodies were discovered overnight in the rubble of a collapsed apartment building in Florida, authorities said Wednesday, as the search for more than 140 people unaccounted for entered its seventh day.

The official death toll now stands at 16 after most of a building in the Miami-area town of Surfside suddenly pancaked early last Thursday, but hopes are dwindling that the hundreds of rescuers combing the oceanfront site will find anyone alive.

"We've now recovered four additional victims. The number of deceased is at 16. Twelve next-of-kin notifications have been completed, that is four families still waiting to hear," Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a news conference.

She said the personnel in what has become an enormous rescue operation were doing "everything humanly possible, and then some, to get through this tragedy, and we are doing it together."

Colonel Golan Vach, head of an Israeli military unit that specializes in search and rescue operations, told CNN his team had uncovered the bodies as they sifted through the debris, finding what he described as tunnels in the rubble.

In one case, this space was created between balconies of apartments that pancaked when part of the building collapsed, he said.

"Between them remained a big space of air," Vach said. "We crawled in those tunnels. We called people and unfortunately we didn't find anything."

He said hopes of finding survivors so long after the early morning collapse were "very, very minor. We must be realistic."

AFP