JULY 2021 Blues Vol 37 No. 7
• Lone Star Law's - Game Warden Jennifer Provaznik • The History of Game Wardens in Texas • July 4th Warstories • Outdoors with Rusty Barron • Healing our Heroes with Retired NYPD Detective John Salerno • Daryl Lott talks about Janus of Rome • Dr. Tina Jaeckle talks with One Tribe Foundation CEO Jacob Schick • HPOU President Douglas Griffith talks about public's attitude toward officers
• Lone Star Law's - Game Warden Jennifer Provaznik
• The History of Game Wardens in Texas
• July 4th Warstories
• Outdoors with Rusty Barron
• Healing our Heroes with Retired NYPD Detective John Salerno
• Daryl Lott talks about Janus of Rome
• Dr. Tina Jaeckle talks with One Tribe Foundation CEO Jacob Schick
• HPOU President Douglas Griffith talks about public's attitude toward officers
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Miami Condo Collapses, 54 Dead, 94 Missing<br />
Video shows moment Fla. condo collapses: Responders still hope to find people<br />
alive as they comb through the rubble.<br />
By Terry Spencer and Adriana<br />
Gomez Licon, Associated Press<br />
SURFSIDE, FL. — About 94 people<br />
were still unaccounted for as<br />
of July 7th, two-weeks after an<br />
oceanside condominium building<br />
collapsed into a pile of rubble,<br />
and searchers combing through<br />
a twisted, shifting pile of concrete<br />
and metal feared the death<br />
toll of at least 54 could go much<br />
higher.<br />
With scores of firefighters<br />
working overnight to reach any<br />
possible survivors both from under<br />
and atop the remains of the<br />
building, hopes rested on how<br />
quickly crews using dogs and<br />
microphones to sift through the<br />
wreckage could complete their<br />
grim, yet delicate task.<br />
Workers ride in a lift as smoke<br />
rises off the rubble where a wing<br />
of a 12-story beachfront condo<br />
building collapsed, late on<br />
Thursday, June 24, <strong>2021</strong>, in the<br />
Surfside area of Miami.<br />
“Every time we hear a sound,<br />
we concentrate on those areas,”<br />
said Assistant Miami-Dade Fire<br />
Chief Raide Jadallah.<br />
Three more bodies were<br />
removed overnight, and Miami-Dade<br />
Police Director Freddy<br />
Ramirez said authorities were<br />
working with the medical examiner’s<br />
office to identify the<br />
victims. Eleven injuries were re-<br />
ported, with four people treated<br />
at hospitals.<br />
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella<br />
Levine Cava said rescuers were<br />
at “extreme risk” going through<br />
the rubble.<br />
“Debris is falling on them as<br />
they do their work. We have<br />
structural engineers on site<br />
to ensure that they will not be<br />
injured, but they are proceeding<br />
because they are so motivated<br />
and they are taking extraordinary<br />
risk on the site every day,” she<br />
said.<br />
With searchers using saws and<br />
jackhammers to look for pockets<br />
large enough to hold a person,<br />
Levine Cava said there was still<br />
hope of finding people alive.<br />
The missing at what was left<br />
of the 12-story Champlain Towers<br />
South included people from<br />
around the world: A beloved<br />
retired Miami-area teacher and<br />
his wife. Orthodox Jews from<br />
Russia. Israelis. The sister of<br />
Paraguay’s first lady. Others from<br />
South America.<br />
State Sen. Jason Pizzo of Miami<br />
Beach told the Miami Herald he<br />
watched as tactical teams of<br />
six worked early Friday to sift<br />
through the debris. He said he<br />
saw one body taken in a yellow<br />
body bag and another that was<br />
marked. They were taken to a<br />
homicide unit tent that was set<br />
up along the beach.<br />
Many people remained at the<br />
reunification center set up near<br />
the collapse site early Friday<br />
morning, awaiting results of DNA<br />
swabs that could help identify<br />
victims.<br />
Officials said no cause for the<br />
collapse has been determined.<br />
Video of the collapse showed<br />
the center of the building appearing<br />
to tumble down first and<br />
a section nearest to the ocean<br />
teetering and coming down seconds<br />
later, as a huge dust cloud<br />
swallowed the neighborhood.<br />
About half the building’s<br />
roughly 130 units were affected,<br />
and rescuers pulled at least 35<br />
people from the wreckage in the<br />
first hours after the collapse. But<br />
with 147 still unaccounted for,<br />
work could go on for days.<br />
Television video early Friday<br />
showed crews still fighting flareups<br />
of fires on the rubble piles.<br />
Intermittent rain over South<br />
Florida is also hampering the<br />
search.<br />
Jadallah said that while listening<br />
devices placed on and in the<br />
wreckage had picked up no voices,<br />
they had detected possible<br />
banging noises, giving rescuers<br />
hope some are alive. Rescuers<br />
were tunneling into the wreckage<br />
from below, going through<br />
the building’s underground parking<br />
garage.<br />
Personal belongings were<br />
evidence of shattered lives amid<br />
the wreckage of the Champlain,<br />
which was built in 1981 in Surfside,<br />
a small suburb north of Miami<br />
Beach. A children’s bunk bed<br />
perched precariously on a top<br />
floor, bent but intact and apparently<br />
inches from falling into the<br />
rubble. A comforter lay on the<br />
edge of a lower floor. Televisions.<br />
Computers. Chairs.<br />
Argentines Dr. Andres Galfrascoli,<br />
his husband, Fabian Nuñez,<br />
and their 6-year-old daughter,<br />
Sofia, had spent Wednesday night<br />
there at an apartment belonging<br />
to a friend, Nicolas Fernandez.<br />
Galfrascoli, a Buenos Aires<br />
plastic surgeon, and Nuñez, a<br />
theater producer and accountant,<br />
had come to Florida to get away<br />
from a COVID-19 resurgence in<br />
Argentina and its strict lockdowns.<br />
They had worked hard to<br />
adopt Sofia, Fernandez said.<br />
“Of all days, they chose the<br />
worst to stay there,” Fernandez<br />
said. “I hope it’s not the case, but<br />
if they die like this, that would be<br />
so unfair.”<br />
34 The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE The BLUES POLICE MAGAZINE 35