Surfside condo collapse: Death toll rises to 9, search and rescue efforts continue

Officials confirmed the death toll from the building collapse has risen to nine. One victim had died in the hospital while workers pulled more bodies from the wreckage. More than 150 people remain unaccounted for.

The death toll from the collapse of a Florida beachfront condo building has risen to nine as search-and-rescue efforts continue, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Sunday.

One person died in the hospital, and workers pulled four more bodies from the wreckage, the mayor said.

Scores of rescue workers remained on the massive pile of rubble, working to find survivors among the more than 150 people who remain unaccounted for. Four of the dead have been identified and next of kin notified, the mayor said.

Four days after Thursday’s collapse, more than 150 people remain unaccounted for in Surfside, and authorities and loved ones fear the toll will go much higher.

As rotating teams of rescuers used heavy machinery and power tools to clear the rubble from the top and tunnel in from below, the Noriega family hoped that their 92-year-old matriarch, Hilda Noriega, had somehow survived.

When Mike Noriega heard that part of the condominium tower where his grandmother lived had collapsed, he rushed with his father to the scene. They arrived at a nightmarish 30-foot pile of broken concrete and mangled metal, the remains of the 12-story building known as Champlain Towers South.

But among the flying debris, they stumbled across mementos that bore witness to Hilda’s life on the sixth floor: an old picture of her with her late husband and their infant son, and a birthday card that friends from her prayer group sent two weeks earlier with the acronym "ESM," Spanish for "hand-delivered," scrawled across the yellow envelope with a butterfly etching.

"There was a message in the mess of all this," said Mike Noriega, who last spoke with his grandmother the day before the disaster. "It means not to give up hope. To have faith."

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett sought to assure families Sunday that rescuers were working nonstop. "Nothing else on our mind, with the only objective of pulling their family members out of that rubble," he told ABC’s "This Week."

"We’re not going to stop doing that -- not today, not tomorrow, not the next day. We’re going to keep going until everybody’s out."

The Noriega family described Hilda as a fiercely independent and vivacious retiree — in Mike’s words, "the youngest 92-year-old I know ... 92 going on 62."

"There was a message in the mess of all this," said Mike Noriega, who last spoke with his grandmother the day before the disaster. "It means not to give up hope. To have faith."

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"We’re not going to stop doing that -- not today, not tomorrow, not the next day. We’re going to keep going until everybody’s out."

The Noriega family described Hilda as a fiercely independent and vivacious retiree — in Mike’s words, "the youngest 92-year-old I know ... 92 going on 62."

They are among dozens of anguished families awaiting word on the fate of loved ones. The wait has been agonizing.

The atmosphere inside a hotel ballroom where around 200 family members were being briefed by authorities Saturday was tense, two people present told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

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The two said families frustrated with the slow pace of recovery efforts had demanded they be allowed to go to the scene and attempt a collective shout — an attempt as much to find survivors as a cathartic farewell to those who had died.

The mayor said Saturday that the identification of three bodies had dropped the number of people unaccounted for down to 156, and crews also discovered other unspecified human remains. The remains are being sent to the medical examiner, and authorities are gathering DNA samples from family members to aid in identification.

A video posted online showed an official briefing families. When he said they had found remains among the rubble, people began sobbing.

Late Saturday, four of the victims were identified, as Stacie Dawn Fang, 54; Antonio Lozano, 83, and Gladys Lozano, 79; and Manuel LaFont, 54.

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Burkett said a city official had led a cursory review of the nearby Champlain Towers North and Champlain Towers East buildings but "didn’t find anything out of the ordinary."

The news came after word of a 2018 engineering report that showed the building, which was built in 1981, had "major structural damage" to a concrete slab below its pool deck that needed extensive repairs, part of a series of documents released by the city of Surfside.

Further documentation showed the estimated cost of the repairs would total over $9 million. That included more than $3.8 million for garage, entrance and pool remediation and nearly $3.2 million for fixes to the exterior façade.

While officials said no cause for the collapse early Thursday has been determined, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said a "definitive answer" was needed in a timely manner.

Watch FOX 35 for the latest on the Surfside condo collapse.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.