Surfside building collapse update

Miami-Dade County released the following update on the Surfside building collapse response and recovery:

Today, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue is transitioning the search and recovery effort to the Miami-Dade Police Department. The operation is ongoing, and MDPD is continuing to search the debris pile both for human remains and for personal items until they have completed a full additional search of the debris.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava shared the following statement:

"The men and women of Miami-Dade Fire Rescue ran into a collapsed building on the early morning of June 24 and haven't stopped since. They are true superheroes who have stepped up to serve this community in the wake of unprecedented disaster – not just by leading the search and rescue and recovery operation but through the care and compassion they demonstrated to all the families, doing everything they could to bring closure to those who lost loved ones. We're also very grateful to Miami-Dade Police Department which has been leading the investigation since the beginning, and now continues the challenging work of continuing to sift through millions of pounds of debris, searching for remains and personal items to bring closure to families."

97 victims have been identified, including 96 victims recovered from the collapse and one victim who passed away in the hospital, and 97 families have been notified. 242 people are accounted for. We believe there is one victim still unaccounted for.

At this step in the recovery process it has become increasingly challenging to identify victims, and we are relying heavily on the work of the medical examiner’s office and the scientific, technical process of identifying human remains. This work becomes more difficult with the passage of time although our teams are working as hard and as fast as they can.