US President Joe Biden along with First Lady Jill Biden will visit the site of the condo collapse in South Florida on Thursday, announced White House on Tuesday as search and rescue teams continue to look for the dozens of people believed to be under the rubble. The 12-storey Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed last week and the search for survivors has stretched into a sixth day. At least 11 deaths have been confirmed and 150 are still unaccounted for.
“On Thursday, July 1, the president and the first lady will travel to Surfside, Florida,” the Biden administration said in a statement, adding that details for the trip would be provided later.
Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, updated the president on the tragedy after visiting the site on Sunday. On Tuesday morning, Criswell testified at a congressional hearing on FEMA’s readiness, saying the devastation was “difficult to put into words.” She apprised the US Congress that FEMA has set up a “recovery centre that is working directly with families and loved ones impacted by this tragic event to get them the assistance that they need.”
Also Read | Indian-American family among over 150 missing after building collapse in US
Amid intense speculations over the cause of the deadly collapse, US media has reported on multiple warnings about the impending tragedy. Almost three years before the deadly collapse, an engineer had warned about evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck. In the October 2018 report, he had also highlighted “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage under the 12-storey building.
An April correspondence from the board president of Champlain Towers South, Jean Wodnicki, has shed more light on the condition of the structure. Weeks before the collapse, Wodnicki wrote to neighbours warning that the “garage has gotten significantly worse since the initial [2018] inspection.”
“When you can visually see the concrete spalling (cracking), that means that the rebar holding it together is rusting and deteriorating beneath the surface,” the letter read.
