Surfside Recovery Nears End

Judge OKs sale of Champlain Towers South site
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jul 15, 2021 4:35 PM CDT
Florida Recovery Effort Winds Down
A worker waits to load his truck with debris from the rubble of the Champlain Towers South building, as removal and recovery work continues at the site of the partially collapsed condo building on Wednesday in Surfside, Fla.   (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

The recovery efforts at the site of a South Florida condo building that collapsed last month might be coming to an end soon. Miami-Dade County police identified four more victims of the Surfside condo collapse Thursday, meaning that 90 of the 97 confirmed dead have been identified as the recovery enters a final stretch. County officials have been able to account for 240 people connected to the building, the AP reports, with eight people still classified as missing or "potentially unaccounted for." If seven of those missing are matched to the seven still-unidentified remains, search teams would be looking for one more missing person, though officials have not confirmed that scenario nor said when the search would be complete.

A judge approved the sale of the oceanfront property on Wednesday, with proceeds intended to benefit victims of the deadly disaster. At a hearing, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman ordered that the process begin to sell the site of Champlain Towers South, which could fetch $100 million to $110 million, according to court records. The judge also approved returning $2.4 million in deposits that some Champlain condo owners had already made toward an assessment to pay for $15 million in planned major repairs. A cause has not yet been pinpointed for the collapse, though there were several previous warnings of major structural damage at the 40-year-old building.

(More Florida condo collapse stories.)

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