‘You don't see buildings falling down in America': Mayor shocked after 12-story Miami condo 'literally pancaked'
Mayor Charles Burkett, on the scene of a partial collapse of a 12-story 100-unit condominium building in Surfside, Florida said he's lived in the town his entire life and has never seen anything like this.
"You don't see buildings falling down in America," Burkett, stunned, told CNN Thursday morning, "and here we had a building literally fall down."
He said it's "less likely than a lightning strike."
\u201cIt\u2019s less likely than a lightning strike. It just doesn\u2019t happen. You don\u2019t see buildings falling down in America, and here we had a building literally falling down.\u201d\n\n\u2014 Surfside, FL, Mayor Charles W. Burkett on overnight condo collapsepic.twitter.com/Vu5HI1gG94— The Recount (@The Recount) 1624537991
One person is reported dead after the building collapsed around 2 AM with CNN saying a "considerable portion" of the building is gone. Burkett suggests there may be more fatalities.
Authorities in South Florida were responding early Thursday to a "partial building collapse," the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said. The scene is in Surfside, a few miles north of Miami Beach. https://cnn.it/3qmBKda\u00a0pic.twitter.com/vz9LV40Ipt— CNN (@CNN) 1624532820
"The problem is the building has literally pancaked," he says. "It's heartbreaking because it doesn't mean, to me, that we're going to be successful, as successful as we want to be, to find people alive."
Surfside, FL, Mayor Charles W. Burkett on the overnight 12-story condo collapse:\n\n\u201cThe problem is the building has literally pancaked \u2026 It\u2019s heartbreaking because it doesn\u2019t mean, to me, that we\u2019re going to be successful, as successful as we want to be, to find people alive.\u201dpic.twitter.com/lrVlpGBnaJ— The Recount (@The Recount) 1624536745
