Shocking video footage from inside the Miami condo shows the moment before the 12-story building collapsed and reveals how residents didn't get a chance to react before it fell and turned into debris. The 13-second video posted on Twitter shows debris falling in one of the apartments as the building starts shaking and then the video goes off.
The video was posted by one of the residents of the condos. However, even she didn't realize that condo was about to collapse in seconds and was clicking the video just to capture the debris falling from one of the apartments. Officially, one woman has been confirmed dead and 11 injured after the Champlain Towers South beachfront building collapsed at about 1:30am on Thursday in Miami's Surfside neighborhood.
Horrifying Moments
The footage appears to capture small debris falling into the apartment before it shakes, not unlike an earthquake, and then the video abruptly ends. The Twitter user who posted the video, @_rosie Santana, said in the tweet that she's a resident of one of the condos.
She said the feed was disconnected after that point. One of the reasons behind the video ending suddenly is because the resident may have panicked and ended the video before running to save herself. "This is a video from my camera footage inside from the start of the collapse until the lose (sic) of connection (I was away from the building today). Towards the end, you hear the structure failing," she tweeted.
According to reports, the area surrounding the building was shaking initially and then took the shape of an earthquake as the building was razed to the ground in second.
Too Unnerving
The video is quite unnerving given that it captures the moment when the building hadn't collapsed and even at that time it was shaking enough to make one shiver with fear. Although many residents knew about the poor condition of the condo, no one expected it to come down crashing.
The collapse affected an estimated 55 of the 12-story tower's 136 condos, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said. The resident who shared the video said she owned one of the 55 condos that collapsed.
Besides, the initial reports of 1 person dying and 11 seriously wounded, 99 people are missing, so the death total could certainly climb. Hundreds of rescue crews are searching through tons of rubble while desperate families wait for news of any survivors.
Rescue efforts began around 1:30 a.m. at Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Fla., about five miles north of Miami. Thirty-seven people were rescued from the debris including a young boy, who was photographed being pulled from the rubble in the early stages of the rescue operation. Two of those people, including the woman who has since died, were taken to hospital.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during a press conference shortly before 5 pm that 102 people have been accounted for and are safe. However, she hasn't given any official cause of the collapse.
Experts who had studied the building as recently as last year said the 40-year-old building was unstable and had been sinking since the 1990s, just 10 years from the time it was built.
