Florida condo victims honoured one year after building collapse
Global News
Friday's agenda includes a private overnight gathering for families to light a torch. First Lady Jill Biden is expected to speak at a public event.
A year ago in the middle of the night, a 12-story oceanfront condo building in Surfside, Florida, came down with a thunderous roar, leaving a giant pile of rubble and claiming 98 lives – one of the deadliest collapses in U.S. history.
The disaster at Champlain Towers South also turned into the largest emergency response that didn’t involve a hurricane in Florida history.
Its victims were being honored Friday at events on the ground where, for two weeks last June and July, rescue crews descended from elsewhere in Florida and from as far away as Mexico and Israel to help local teams dig through the pile and search for victims.
Friday’s agenda includes a private overnight gathering for families to light a torch. First Lady Jill Biden is expected to speak at a public event organized by the town of Surfside.
Only two teenagers and a woman survived the fall and were pulled from the rubble, while others escaped from the portion of the building that initially remained standing.
Images of one survivor’s rescue traveled widely, offering a glimmer of hope right after the collapse, but the long, grueling search produced mostly devastating results as families torturously waited only to learn about the remains of their loved ones.
Those missing in the collapse included the 7-year-old daughter of a firefighter who helped in the search, later found dead with her mother, aunt and grandparents; a woman whose cries for help were heard in the early hours but suddenly stopped; and two sisters, 4 and 11, pulled from the rubble, who were so tiny they were buried in the same casket. A 12-year-old girl sat down to pray across the rubble for her physician father, who was ultimately found dead.
The victims included local residents as well as visitors who were Orthodox Jews, Latin Americans, Israelis, Europeans and snowbirds from the Northeast.
Nearly 2,200 layoff notices went to workers in Washington and another 220 in South Carolina, the two states where Boeing builds commercial airliners.
The deadly haze covered monuments and high-rise buildings in the capital of New Delhi, with visibility so low that airlines warned of delays.
The death is being investigated by federal authorities but "the preliminary cause" has been ruled an accident.
The incident took place more than a month ago, on October 13, but it wasn't reported until the British tabloids got wind of the story.
Health officials said Saturday they have confirmed the first U.S. case of a new form of mpox that was first seen in eastern Congo.
Washington is easing limits on what Ukraine can strike with U.S.-made weaponry, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Ukraine plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days, sources said, without revealing details due to operational security concerns.
Concerns storm surges could raise water levels between one and three feet above ground level as Tropical Storm Sara makes landfall in Belize.
Air defenses could be heard engaging drones over Kyiv in the night, and a series of powerful blasts rang out across the city as the missile attack was under way in the morning.
John Kirton, head of the G20 Research Group, says the forum is the main tool countries have to prepare for the second Donald Trump presidency.
Israeli airstrikes on the village of Khreibeh in the Baalbek District of eastern Lebanon killed six people on Saturday, including three children the Lebanese health ministry said.