At least one person is dead and 99 are unaccounted for following the partial collapse of a multi-story condominium building in Surfside, a town in Miami-Dade County, Fla.
However, at least 102 were accounted by Thursday evening, according to CNN.
Tweets from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said 80 first responder units arrived at the Champlain Towers South condo scene early Thursday morning.
According to the Miami Herald, the building, located at 8777 Collins Avenue, was built in 1981 and had more than 100 units on 12 floors.
Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said 10 people were treated for injuries, two were transported to the hospital and one person died. CNN reported that Burkett said the building was undergoing roof work, though it is unknown whether that was a factor in its partial collapse.
“This is a horrific catastrophe. In the United States, buildings just don’t fall down," Burkett told CNN.
According to a USA Today report, researchers say the building had been sinking as early as the 1990s.
It is still unclear what caused the collapse.
Sally Heyman, of the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, told CNN that 51 people were unaccounted for — but that some may not have been in the building at the time of the disaster. The tower has a mix of seasonal and year-round residents, and while the building keeps a log of guests staying, it does not keep track of when owners are in residence, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said.
Burkett warned that the death toll was likely to rise, saying the building manager told him the tower was quite full at the time of the collapse around 1:30 a.m., but the exact number of people present was unclear.
“The building is literally pancaked,” Burkett said, per the Associated Press. “That is heartbreaking because it doesn’t mean to me that we are going to be as successful as we wanted to be in finding people alive.”
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Burkett also said that rescue units were using dogs to try to find people in the rubble left by the building collapse, adding that there were likely quite a few people in the building and at least 30 units were impacted.
Nicholas Balboa, a man who was walking his dog in the area when the building came down, told CNN how he found a 10-year-old boy trapped in the debris.
“I was thinking to myself, 'how could anybody survive this?' As I was thinking that, I heard a voice yelling,” Balboa said, adding that as he got closer, he saw the boy “sticking his hand up through the debris.”
Frank Rollason, director of Miami-Dade Emergency Management said crews managed to save a few more, including a woman whose leg needed to be amputated for her to be removed from the rubble.
Although Burkett and others fear the building could totally collapse, rescue teams continued to look through the site. At least 11 streets were closed near the site to allow for the rescue mission.
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A family reunification center for survivors of the collapse was set up nearby on Collins Avenue, said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and recue efforts continue.
Rollason said some nearby buildings have been evacuated.
“We know we’re going to do everything we possibly can to identify and rescue those who have been lost in the rubble,” said Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava during a press conference Thursday.
Storms in the Surfside area disrupted the press conference and are a concern for the remaining building structure.