Death toll reaches 9 in Fla. condo collapse

The number of people who died in the collapse of a condominium building in South Florida rose to nine on Sunday, while more than 150 people remain unaccounted for. Anxious relatives pressed for the search for possible survivors to speed up.

"We've been working around-the-clock," Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Sunday. "Since the wee hours of the morning, Thursday, we've been here 24 hours a day."

Levine Cava said there have been six to eight teams working nonstop on the pile of shattered concrete and metal next to the parts of the Champlain Towers South complex that is still standing.

The collapse of the 40-year-old, 12-story building in Surfside — an Atlantic Ocean coastal town of 5,700 about 15 miles north of Miami — happened around 1:30 am Thursday morning.

Searchers that have come from as far as Israel and Mexico are using dogs, sonar, drones and infrared scanners.

"Hundreds of team members are on standby to rotate as we need a fresh start," Levine Cava told the media Sunday. "So we are not lacking any personnel, but we have the best, we have the right people and the right number, and we are getting it done."

About 35 people have been rescued from the still standing portion of the building, two people have been rescued from the rubble, and 156 are missing, according to the towers' website.

Heartbroken family members of victims of the collapse have continually pleaded with authorities to do more. Some family members asked to visit the site so they could shout messages to their relatives, "so they can hear our voices". On Sunday afternoon, relatives were driven to a location next to the site as crews continued their work.

Surveillance footage shows that a large north-central section of the building collapsed first, which left the then-isolated northeast corner standing but unstable; it came down about nine seconds later.