When Erick De Moura woke up early Thursday morning, his cell phone had numerous missed calls and messages.
A text message from a building supervisor at his Surfside, Fla. condo asked if was okay, but he wasn’t immediately sure why she was concerned.
“Oh, my God, you’re alive,” she said when she answered his call, according to the Washington Post.
The Champlain Towers building supervisor described how the south condominium collapsed and sent him a photo of the chaos. De Moura had veered from his usual weeknight routine and spent the night at his girlfriend’s house instead of going home.
“That night was unusual. I was going to leave [my girlfriend’s] house to go home and take a shower and die,” De Moura told the newspaper.
De Moura had lived in a 10th-floor condo he rented in Surfside for three years. He worked from home and spent most of his day inside. But Wednesday night, he went to his girlfriend’s to watch a soccer game with friends. After a night of fun, he intended to drive home, but his girlfriend insisted he stay the night.
Hours later, the home he had known for several years nearly disintegrated to debris and rubble.
“I just couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing,” De Moura told the Post, saying it felt like a bad dream or movie. “It was just unbelievable to see the place that you had been living in for the past three years and called home just, you know, on the floor like that.”
De Moura, who’s been visiting the rubble of the only home he’s known in Miami twice a day, still hasn’t cried yet. He’s numb and angry. None of the neighbors his unit was attached to have been found. One neighbor’s husband told him he heard screams while on the phone with his wife as the building collapsed. Another neighbor happened to spend Wednesday night at her family’s home and, like De Moura, was miraculously spared.
“This is definitely a miracle,” De Moura said. “This is an act by God.”
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