Florida building collapse: Death toll rises to a dozen, 149 unaccounted for

At least one dozen people have been reported dead from the Surfside building collapse in Florida after authorities pulled out another corpse from the rubble, according to statements from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, Mayor of Miami-Dade County.

As the search and rescue efforts are in full swing at the site of the incident, the tally of people who are unaccounted for was 149 as of Tuesday. On the other hand, 125 people have been accounted for since the collapse, Levine Cava said.

The death toll has slowly ticked up — four confirmed dead on Friday, and 11 as of midday Tuesday and one other on the same day.

“Over the past few days, we have been conducting an audit of our list of missing persons and we have been working to verify and remove duplicates wherever possible”, said Levine Cava according to reports from CNN. She further tagged the audit, which is currently underway, as a “slow and methodical process”.

A study from 2020 concluded that the building had experienced slight subsidence in the 1990s. But the author of the study told CNN said he did not know if the building’s collapse could have been predicted, reported AFP.

US President Joe Biden, along with First Lady Jill Biden, is expected to visit the site in Florida on Thursday, according to AFP.