Tag Archives: rescue mission

Rescuers still hope for survivors as death toll in Florida collapse hits 10

By Gabriella Borter

SURFSIDE, Fla. (Reuters) -Rescue workers pulled a 10th body from the rubble of a collapsed Florida condominium on Monday, as officials vowed to keep searching for any possible survivors five days after the 12-story building fell without warning as residents slept.

Crews were using cranes, dogs and infrared scans as they looked for signs of life amid the ruins, hoping air pockets may have formed underneath the concrete that could be keeping some people alive.

“We’re going to continue and work ceaselessly to exhaust every possible options in our search,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a news briefing.

The death toll appears certain to rise, and Levine Cava acknowledged the number of casualties is “fluid.” There are 151 people still unaccounted for.

The cause of the collapse at the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, near Miami, remains under investigation.

A 2018 engineer’s report found serious concrete deterioration in the underground parking garage as well as major damage in the concrete slab beneath the pool deck. The author, Frank Morabito, wrote the deterioration would “expand exponentially” if it was not repaired in the near future.

But Ross Prieto, then Surfside’s top building official, met residents the following month after reviewing the report and assured them the building was “in very good shape,” according to minutes of the meeting released by the town on Monday.

Reuters was unable to reach Prieto, who is no longer employed by Surfside. He told the Miami Herald newspaper he did not remember getting the report.

The engineer’s report was commissioned in advance of the condo seeking recertification, a required process for buildings that reach 40 years of age. The tower was constructed in 1981. An estimate prepared by Morabito Consultants in 2018 put the cost of repairs at $9.1 million, including electrical, plumbing and work on the façade.

After the meeting, Prieto emailed the town’s manager to say it “went very well. The response was very positive from everyone in the room. All main concerns over their forty year recertification process were addressed.”

Guillermo Olmedillo, Surfside’s town manager in 2018, told Reuters he did not recall hearing about any issues related to the tower based on the engineer’s report.

“The last thing I knew was that everything is OK, reported by the building official,” he said.

Gregg Schlesinger, a lawyer and former general contractor who specializes in construction-failure cases, said it was clear the deficiencies identified in the 2018 report were the main cause of the disaster.

But Donna DiMaggio Berger, a lawyer who works with the condo association, said the issues were typical for older buildings in the area and did not alarm board members, all of whom lived in the tower with their families.

Morabito Consultants was retained by the building in 2020 to prepare a 40-year building repair plan.

The firm said on Saturday that roof repairs were underway at the time of the collapse but concrete restoration had not yet started.

“We are deeply troubled by this building collapse and are working closely with the investigating authorities to understand why the structure failed,” it said.

Levine Cava vowed officials will “get to the bottom” of why the building collapsed but said the priority right now is searching for survivors.

‘TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE’

Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said workers have found voids large enough to keep victims alive.

“Not to say that we have see anyone down there, but we’ve not gotten to the very bottom,” he said.

He said searchers have heard some sounds, such as tapping of scratching, though he acknowledged it could be metal shifting. But he emphasized that there is no set amount of time after which the rescue effort should cease.

The teams include experts sent by Israel and Mexico to assist in the search.

Some relatives of those missing have provided DNA samples to officials, and family members were permitted to pay a private visit to the site by special arrangement on Sunday, Levine Cava said.

The police have identified eight victims, including a couple married for nearly 60 years and a mother whose teenage son is one of the few known survivors.

At a makeshift memorial a block away, tributes to the victims and “missing” posters hung on a chain-link fence, with flowers and children’s toys strewn about.

Given the scores of those still missing, the disaster may end up one of the deadliest non-deliberate structural failures in U.S. history.

Ninety-eight people perished when the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Washington, D.C., gave way from the weight of snow during a silent movie screening in January 1922. Two interior walkways collapsed into the lobby of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, during a dance party in July 1981, killing 114.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien, Brad Heath, Peter Szekely and Kanishka Singh; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Alistair Bell)

Thailand to mark boy soccer team’s dramatic cave rescue with museum

A "Restricted Area" sign is seen in front of the Tham Luang cave complex, after the rescue mission for the 12 boys of the "Wild Boars" soccer team and their coach, in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand July 14, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai construction workers on Thursday began building a museum to commemorate the dramatic cave rescue of a boys’ soccer team in the northern province of Chiang Rai and the death of one of the divers.

The 12 boys, aged 11 to 16, and their 25-year-old coach went missing on June 23 while exploring the cave complex and were rescued more than two weeks later during a perilous three-day mission by foreign and Thai divers that gripped audiences around the world.

People react as the 12 soccer players and their coach who were rescued from a flooded cave arrive for their news conference in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand, July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/File Photo

People react as the 12 soccer players and their coach who were rescued from a flooded cave arrive for their news conference in the northern province of Chiang Rai, Thailand, July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun/File Photo

Work on the museum began after a traditional Buddhist ceremony on Wednesday at the Tham Luang cave, in which authorities asked for the blessing of local spirits.

The museum, which is expected to take about five months and 10 million baht ($300,000) to build, is being funded by a Thai artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, a Chiang Rai native.

“This place will be very beneficial for our country, as it will commemorate the multinational cooperation and the hero who sacrificed his life. Tourists from around the world will visit this place,” Chalermchai said.

Thai diver Samarn Kunan died after he lost consciousness during a mission to place oxygen tanks deep inside the cave.

A four-meter statue of Samarn, currently being sculpted, will be placed in front of the museum.

The museum will also house a 13-metre-long painting, which features rescuers, including the British divers who first found the boys.

Eleven of the boys have been spending time as Buddhist novices to honor Samarn. On Saturday, they will leave the temple to return to normal life.

(Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Panu Wongcha-um; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Missing Argentine submarine had reported electrical malfunction

A car enters the Argentine Naval Base where the missing at sea ARA San Juan submarine sailed from as a picture of it hangs on a fence in Mar del Plata, Argentina November 19, 2017.

By Walter Bianchi

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (Reuters) – An Argentine military submarine reported a malfunction and was headed back to base when it went missing last week in the South Atlantic, a naval spokesman said on Monday, while storms complicated efforts to find the vessel and its 44-member crew.

Hopes for a successful search for the ARA San Juan submarine, which went missing last Wednesday off the Argentine coast, waned on Monday when the navy said satellite calls detected over the weekend did not in fact come from the vessel.

More than a dozen boats and aircraft from Argentina, the United States, Britain, Chile and Brazil joined the search effort. Authorities have mainly been scanning the sea from above, as storms have made it difficult for boats.

Gabriel Galeazzi, a naval commander, told reporters that the submarine had surfaced and reported an electrical problem before it disappeared 268 miles (432 km) off the coast.

“The submarine surfaced and reported a malfunction, which is why its ground command ordered it to return to its naval base at Mar del Plata,” he said.

Galeazzi said it is normal for submarines to suffer system malfunctions. “A warship has a lot of backup systems, to allow it to move from one to another when there is a breakdown,” he said.

Crew members’ relatives gathered at the Mar del Plata naval base, waiting for news.

Intermittent satellite communications had been detected on Saturday and the navy had said they were likely to have come from the submarine. But the ARA San Juan in fact sent its last signal on Wednesday, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said.

The calls that were detected “did not correspond to the satellite phone of the submarine San Juan,” he said on Monday.

The ARA San Juan was inaugurated in 1983, making it the newest of the three submarines in the navy’s fleet. Built in Germany, it underwent maintenance in 2008 in Argentina.

That maintenance included the replacement of its four diesel engines and its electric propeller engines, according to specialist publication Jane’s Sentinel.

 

(Additional reporting by Maximiliano Rizzi; Writing by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Alistair Bell)

 

Dramatic nighttime rescues in flooded Houston suburbs as Harvey rolls on

Dramatic nighttime rescues in flooded Houston suburbs as Harvey rolls on

By Mica Rosenberg

CYPRESS, Texas (Reuters) – The mayday call went out near midnight to all members of the Cy-Fair Volunteer Fire Department organizing rescue operations in the outskirts of Houston. There was a new emergency: Four of their own in peril.

On a suburban street transformed into a rushing waterway by Tropical Storm Harvey, a firefighter heading out to save people stranded by the storm fell into floodwaters as he was boarding a boat.

The firefighters turned all their attention to rescuing their fellow rescuer.

Matt Perkins, a 21-year veteran of the fire department of Cy-Fair, short for Cypress-Fairbanks, listened intently to the progress from the mini-command post set up in his truck at a gas station.

“Those are my guys out there. I want to make sure they are OK,” he said as he listened to his radio.

“Command Boat 21, do you need a helicopter at your location?” a radio dispatcher said.

A garbled response.

“We can’t understand your response,” the dispatcher responded. “Your mic is wet.”

Hearing no response, the call became more urgent: “Repeat. Do you need a helicopter at your location?”

Finally the radio crackled back to life: “We are extracted. The boat is tied to a tree. We are walking out with the military.”

The three on board were able to pull the fourth out of the water, but the fast current pinned the boat to a tree and left them stranded.

It was just the first hair-raising moment in a long night of rescues by firefighters, police and the National Guard as rains from the devastating storm continued to hammer Houston and the surrounding area. More than 3,000 people had been rescued from their homes by late Monday and more rain was forecast for Tuesday.

National Guard teams with Humvees and high-water vehicles coordinated with local emergency officials to respond to calls from people trapped in their homes.

Residents of this city 30 miles (48 km) north of Houston are used to floods, having just weathered a major one last year. But many said they were caught by surprise by the extent of rising water levels, as the area was expected to get as much rain in a week as it normally sees in a year.

In the dark hours of the night, the National Guard navigated their vehicles through neighborhoods transformed into inland lakes with water cresting to the tops of mail boxes and fire hydrants and garden shrubbery looking more like watery mangrove forests.

With local firefighter Cassie Fritch guiding the troops with Google Maps on her cell phone, they searched for people who had called for help. When the water rose above the Humvee doors on the outside, it also seeped up through the floor on the inside and dripped in from the hatch.

“Oh, that’s cold,” said Specialist Jaylan Dawson as the water rose over his pedals.

At one home Fritch found a man who had changed his mind about evacuating and decided to stick it out. She warned him that rescuers would not be back if he called again.

“He says he’s not coming because the water receded,” Fritch said. “That’s his choice, but the storm’s not over yet.”

(Editing by Scott Malone and Chizu Nomiyama)

‘Suicide Squad’ brave bullets to rescue civilians in embattled Marawi City

An explosion is seen following an airstrike.

By Kanupriya Kapoor

MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) – Saripada Pacasum Jr. gagged and turned away the first time he came across a decomposing body in Marawi City, where hundreds have died since Islamic State-inspired fighters attempted to overrun the southern Philippines town six weeks ago.

But the rescue and recovery volunteer had no time to waste as gunfire rang out from government troop positions and militant snipers around him: he put on a pair of rubber gloves and helped carry the remains out of the conflict zone in a pick-up truck.

“I thought of resigning after that,” Pacasum, who works in a disaster relief office told Reuters. “I was scared and not prepared for this kind of job.”

A member of a humanitarian volunteers team walks with a white flag as he searches for survirvors or victims due to the fighting in the center of Marawi City, Philippines J

FILE PHOTO: A member of a humanitarian volunteers team walks with a white flag as he searches for survirvors or victims due to the fighting in the center of Marawi City, Philippines June 25, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva/File Photo

But Pacasum, 39, continued to lead a team of about 30 young men and women who make near-daily forays to rescue civilians and retrieve victims in an urban battlefield that is infested with rebel snipers and battered by air strikes.

They have come to be known as the “white helmets” or “suicide squad” because of the risks they take when going in unarmed and wearing little protection other than white plastic construction helmets.

More than 460 people have been killed since the battle for Marawi began on May 23, including 82 members of the security forces and 44 civilians.

The military believes hundreds of civilians are still trapped by the conflict, the biggest internal security threat the Philippines has faced in decades and a shock to neighboring countries worried that Islamic State is trying to establish a foothold in Southeast Asia.

 

RESCUE MISSION

Fishermen, farmers, students, and small business owners, mostly from Marawi, are among those who have volunteered for rescue missions.

“We all grew up in Marawi and it breaks our hearts when we hear that Marawi is under siege,” said Abdul Azis Lomondot Jr., a 25-year-old university student, speaking in the team’s one-room office in the town’s capitol complex where many of the “white helmets” grab some sleep.

When the team gets a call from a trapped civilian or their evacuated relative, they first try to determine their location. Team leader Pacasum then asks for volunteers.

“We grab our helmets, IDs, a ladder, some small tools and we are good to go,” said Lomondot.

One such mission around three weeks into the siege almost went awry when the team drove into the conflict area in pick-up trucks but could not immediately find the house where four elderly people were known to be trapped.

“In that moment, I was panicking because I thought this may be an ambush,” Pacasum said as he and Lamondot recalled the mission. “We were just waiting for the sound of gunshots.”

After driving around for 20 minutes, the team finally located the house, but was shot at as they drove out with the civilians on board.

A group of rescue volunteers carry a body they found at the beginning of the fight between government troops and Maute group militants in Marawi, Philippines May 28, 2017. Picture taken May 28, 2017. Lanao del Sur Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management

A group of rescue volunteers carry a body they found at the beginning of the fight between government troops and Maute group militants in Marawi, Philippines May 28, 2017. Picture taken May 28, 2017. Lanao del Sur Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office/Handout via REUTERS

“TOO STRESSFUL”

As the siege drags on and the government pours troops into the lakeside town, soldiers have started providing cover for some of the rescue teams’ missions. Pacasum says that while this has obvious advantages, it can also mean they are more likely to be targeted by the militants.

The team has also received counseling and equipment from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and training on how to properly handle cadavers.

Pacasum, who has led more 10 rescue missions, wants to see the battle through to the end, but will consider changing professions when it’s over.

“It’s too stressful, he said.

“Some of the volunteers … they are just young kids, they are very aggressive. I’m more cautious. I have kids and I want to watch them grow old.”

 

(Editing by John Chalmers, Robert Birsel)