The team joined Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and a number of other USAR teams from across the world in an effort to find people trapped under the rubble of the Champlain Towers South collapse. – An integral part of the search efforts at the site of the Surfside building collapse is heading back home.Īn emotional send off for the Israeli Urban Search and Rescue Task Force was held Saturday night. "Maybe there's a confined space that somebody left, and somebody is alive in there," he said.SURFSIDE, Fla. It's natural," Vach said.īut the team has not given up hope, he stresses, saying that every day it finds new spaces and channels within the layers of debris.
"I would not say there are no chances."Īt the end of their 12-hour shifts, members of the Israeli team meet to talk and process their laborious task. Vach said his conversations with families have been difficult, and his team was committed to being transparent with them as the possibility of finding victims alive grows slimmer. On the beach, a few hundred meters from the pile of twisted metal and concrete where the tower once stood intact, the word "HOPE" is etched in enormous letters in the sand. At a makeshift memorial near the site, someone left a flower pot with orchids and a message inscribed: "Estelle, stay strong, come home." Once they know where they are on the site, the crews must penetrate meters of concrete in an effort to reach the bedrooms and search for possible cavities where survivors may have found a measure of protection, Vach said.Īuthorities have said that they could still find survivors as their search stretched into its sixth day, with 11 people confirmed dead. "Our purpose is to get the first responder to understand, where exactly is he digging?" he said. Vach's team has consulted with the families to get the best idea of where their relatives might have been within their apartments at the time the building collapsed.
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"We are looking for the bedrooms because people were sleeping," said Vach, wearing a religious skullcap and army green uniform with an Israeli flag patch on one sleeve.
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The team then carefully replicated the manner in which the tower appeared to have collapsed, aiming to understand how to excavate the site with the highest probability of finding survivors. To prepare for the operation, Vach said the teams studied the structure of Champlain Tower South while still in Israel and built 3D models of the 40-year-old high-rise. Several families had expressed hope the Israeli team, renowned for skills honed during rescue operations at buildings damaged by warfare, would join the frantic search for survivors. More than two dozen of the 150 unaccounted for were Jewish and had links to Israel, according to an Israeli official.
Joining forces with the hundreds of American first responders and a team of Mexican rescuers, the Israelis have spent every waking hour either sifting through the four-story pile of debris or meeting with the families of the missing, with two- to three-hour breaks for sleep, Vach said. "It's one of the most difficult and complicated situations that I've ever seen," Vach, who has commanded his unit for four years, said on Tuesday.
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