SURFSIDE, Fla. — A torch was lit just after 1 a.m. Wednesday in remembrance of the 98 people killed when the Champlain Towers South building collapsed on June 24, 2021, one of the largest structural failures in U.S. history.
Police body cam video shows officers arriving in the darkness to find two-thirds of the 12-story condominium complex in a heap of rubble, with people in the remaining units stranded, screaming for help from their balconies.
It didn't take long for first responders to realize what they were up against.
"This is huge, I mean humongous," one officer tells his captain.
The condo collapse was the highest-level mass casualty event ever in Miami-Dade County.
"Just everything about this was surreal," Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who led the government response, said in a recent interview with NPR. "Arriving on the scene and surveying it is when you get that gut punch. Beyond belief. They call it pancaking, where the layers of the floors were all compressed and you could still see them."
First responders were called in from all around South Florida to help cordon off the site, get ambulances in place and rescue survivors.
Maimi-Dade Fire Chief Raied "Ray" Jadallah, who was assistant chief for operations at the time, recalled seeing an image of the collapse shared by one of the officers on the scene.
"The first picture just about made my heart sink," he said.
Jadallah immediately called Battalion Chief Brandon Webb, who runs Florida Task Force One – the department's elite urban search and rescue team.
When Webb arrived, first responders were trying to reach people still stranded in the part of the building that didn't cave-in.
"There were ladder trucks picking people off the balconies," Webb said. "They were bringing in injured victims on backboards down from the pile."
The part of Champlain Towers South still standing was in danger of a second collapse, Webb said, making the search and rescue operation risky.
It was a complicated endeavor involving search dogs and construction cranes - all the while respecting religious protocols for human remains. The Israeli Defense Force came to help because of their expertise in structural rescues.
Florida Task Force One also is often deployed to disasters around the world, but Webb said the Surfside catastrophe hit hard.
"We got a list of people that we were looking for, where they were probably sleeping, what color their carpet was," he recalled. "That made it very personal. They were looking basically for people that had become known to them. And I think that was particularly traumatic."
Jadallah said some 2,200 responders worked the site for nearly a month, sleeping nearby in tents, trailers and a cruise ship offshore.
"When it happens in your own backyard, it is a very different set of circumstances. It's your hometown; it's your family," he said. "It takes a toll on you mentally, physically, emotionally. We had, even within our own department, people that retired relatively early, even within weeks of the incident."
Jadallah lost 17 pounds in less than a month.
One of his tasks was briefing family members every day, twice a day, in tense meetings that could last up to three hours, where he combated mistrust and misinformation.
"You're talking about thousands of people who are emotional, who are yelling, who are frustrated because they want answers," he said.
Early on, Jadallah made the decision to take family members to the site where emergency crews were combing through the rubble.
"They actually got to see with their own eyes what I've been trying to explain to them," he said. "Then and only then, I think a lot of them actually understood the magnitude of what we were dealing with."
The part of Champlain Towers that remained standing suffered severe structural damage, so officials decided to demolish it 10 days after the initial collapse, amid the threat of a possible hurricane. Members of the community came to pay their respects when it was blown up.
Five years later, the toll of the tragedy remains very real, said Levine Cava. One of the hardest moments was shifting from the search and rescue phase to recovery, once there was no hope of finding anyone alive.
"People didn't think we'd done enough to search through the debris," Levine Cava recalled. "And family members couldn't accept that they couldn't find more of their loved ones."
Martin Langesfeld is among those who lost loved ones in the Surfside collapse: his big sister Nicky, 26, and her husband Luis Sadovnic, 28. They were newlyweds who had lived in the beachfront condo for only a few months.
"She was an extreme animal lover, very athletic, ran marathons - just happy overall," said Langesfeld, 28. "It's very hard to try to grasp the memories that we once had."
Their hometown of Doral, Florida, named a street in her memory. Langesfeld has learned to live with the pain, in part he said, by fighting for justice as he thinks his sister, a lawyer, would have done. He's advocated for accountability and a permanent memorial to honor the 98 lives lost. In April, Surfside presented him with a Key to the Town.
"Losing them in a way like this, that wasn't a regular life trajectory or accident," Langesfeld said. "We're not asking enough questions. Ninety-eight people were killed in a building collapse. That doesn't just happen."
Technical findings released this week by the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded the problem with the 40-year-old building started about three weeks before the collapse when two connections between garage columns and the pool deck failed.
"Once the first connection failed, other elements of the pool deck were left to carry their load," said Judith Mitrani-Reiser, co-leader of the federal investigation. "But they were not strong enough to handle them due to problems that stemmed from the original design and construction of the building."
Investigators will issue a final report later that includes recommendations for changes to standards, codes and practices to improve building safety.
A year after the disaster, some 30 defendants agreed to a $1.2 billion civil class action settlement to address wrongful death, personal injury and property loss claims.
But Langesfeld said that's not enough.
"No one's been arrested," he said. "How many more lives will it take for accountability?"
Local prosecutors say any criminal probe will have to wait until the National Institute of Standards and Technology issues its final report.
Today, as the site is prepared for a new luxury condo to rise, some of those impacted by the disaster just want to move on.
"No accountability, no blaming one person or one entity or one group is going to bring anybody back," said Neil Handler, whose son survived the Champlain Towers South collapse.
Jonah Handler was 15 years old at the time, and was one of only three people rescued from the rubble of the collapsed tower. Jonah's mother, Stacie Dawn Fang, didn't make it.
"It was a really terrible day for us, but I want him to remember the good stuff that he had with her," Handler said in a recent interview. "I want him to be able to think back on her with good memories, not the ones of him laying in the pile with her next to him."
It's been a long recovery for Jonah, who suffered back injuries and severe PTSD. Handler said his son doesn't like to give interviews or talk about what he's been through.
Early on, Jonah couldn't be indoors during rumbling Florida thunderstorms because the noise reminded Jonah of the collapse, so father and son would take long drives until the storm subsided. Later, Jonah found some relief after neurofeedback treatment. In the fall, he'll be a senior in college, where he's a pitcher on the baseball team.
"I'm blessed that he's even walking, let alone throwing a baseball," Handler said. "His PTSD was through the roof. It was something that as a parent, I never felt so powerless in my life."
His life has also taken a new turn. Handler left his business selling luxury cars, and with Jonah started a non-profit that helps victims and first responders recover from PTSD. And he recently opened a technology-based mental health treatment program.
Handler and his son will not attend any five year memorial observances. They've worked hard, he said, to help Jonah stay focused on his future, not on the trauma he survived.
"Life has gone on," Handler said. "I see a lot of people stuck in the morbid reflection of that day, and I refuse to let my son or myself go down that road or stay stuck there."
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