Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky told reporters during a midday briefing that rescue workers are “not seeing anything positive” concerning signs of life or available voids for survivors to be sheltered in the rubble of the collapsed Surfside condo complex, CNN reports.
Thirty-two people are now confirmed dead from the pancake-style collapse of Champlain Towers South, and more than 120 are still unaccounted for. The dead range in age from four years old to 92.
The searchers are continuing to treat the site as a rescue operation, though the likelihood of survival for people two weeks after the collapse seems slim. The portion of the structure that remained standing after the June 23rd collapse was demolished Sunday night in hopes that it would give rescuers additional safer routes to burrow into the rubble and alleviate a potential danger of the tower falling on the rubble pile unexpectedly.
“With this type of collapse and that pancake, there are several layers of floors per se, that would be sub-terrain,” Cominsky said. “We’ve definitely de-layered several, several floors, but each grid is different. …The magnitude of this collapse and the way the building collapsed in certain areas,” varies across the collapse site, adding, “We’ve been able to go through floors lower in one grid per se, than in the other.”
The chief also noted that there have been no serious injuries to anyone on the rescue crew, although various team members have been removed from the operation due to exhaustion or dehydration.