911 call from Surfside gives a bleak picture of a tragic morning

In the early morning hours of June 24, police and rescue departments across Miami were flooded with phone calls to 8777 Collins Ave. The site of one of the deadliest buildings in US history.

Nearly two dozen callers repeated this now infamous address to senders in an hour, according to 911 recordings released Wednesday.

The calls from the morning of the tragic collapse of the South Champlain Towers present a grim picture of what witnesses and those inside the part of the building that remained were exposed: confusion, horror, panic.

The first call came at 1:16 a.m. and first responders were dispatched to the crash site within minutes. In early calls, witnesses described what they thought was a large explosion or earthquake.

In one call, the sender repeats again and again, “Hello. Madam? Hello?” The only answer before the line breaks: “Come, come, come.”

At 1:21 AM, a caller reported a breakdown in the building’s parking garage. He tried to describe what had happened but said he could only see smoke. People shouted in the background.

A woman’s voice asks where they are going, and her voice is filled with fear.

“We can’t see anything. Everything here is smoke,” the caller told the dispatchers.

In a moment of panic, the caller tried to calm his panting mother, and she took a breath next to him.

“Relax. Take a deep breath. We are here. We are here. We are safe, Mom,” he said.

“Earthquake!” The mother shouted to someone in the background. “It’s an earthquake outside!”

Minutes later, someone called to report a fire after seeing plumes of smoke rising into the air after the collapse.

“The building is completely smoking,” she said.

Another caller who was staying in a building adjacent to the South Champlain Towers called at 1:25 a.m.

When asked what he saw, he replied, “A very large building has collapsed. The building next to us has disappeared.”

You hear a woman in the background worrying if there are people inside.

The story continues

At the same moment, another caller described how a noise she could not see woke her and described seeing the building fall.

“I looked outside, and saw the yard area began to sink,” she told the dispatcher. “The patio area, the pool area is starting to sink.”

The dispatcher tried to reassure her that the police and paramedics were at the scene.

“Yes, but there are too many parts of the building that have collapsed,” she said, sobbing. “The building just went into a hole, so there will be many, many dead.”

Just before 1:30 a.m., people stuck inside the still standing part began calling 911.

“I’m in Champlain Towers. Something’s going on here. You gotta get us out of here,” said one of the callers, standing on the balcony of one of the units.

“Half of the building is gone!” She screams.

She said there was no exit from the building. I asked for help.

In a 14-minute call, a man described his and his family’s escape from the remainder of the building. For those inside the remaining building, the calls show how chaotic and disoriented it is for them to get out, shouting the names of their family members. They weren’t sure where they had to go or whether it was safe for them to take another step.

“We can’t find the way out. We’re up the stairs, but we don’t know which rungs we can go down,” he told the dispatcher.

Someone shouted “I want to get out!” in the background.

“There are people screaming saying they are stuck in the part of the building that collapsed,” he said. “Keep on screaming. Is it safe for us to stay here?”

He and his family descended from the second floor to the garage floor to find that the garage had been submerged by two feet of water and debris before finally getting out safely.

At least 96 people died in the collapse, Miami-Dade police said Wednesday, after identifying another victim. A police spokesman said a total of 11 people were still missing in the collapse.

In the nearly three weeks since the crash, local, international and national leaders have vowed to get to the bottom of what caused the unexpected tragedy.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which investigated the collapse of the Twin Towers after the September 11 attack, has begun investigating the cause, a feat that could take months or years.

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