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Four Dead and Over 100 Missing after Building Collapses in Surfside, Florida; Family Whose Wife/Mother Missing in Building Collapse in Florida Interviewed; At Least 4 Dead, 159 Now Unaccounted for in Condo Collapse. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 25, 2021 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

[08:00:10]

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta in Surfside, Florida, just about a block away from this heartbreaking building collapse you've been hearing about. Thirty hours now roughly it's been since the building collapsed. These desperate search and rescue missions are underway. There is going to be a news conference from officials here shortly. We'll take you to that.

We've gotten some grim news recently that four people have now been confirmed to have died. This is the work that is ongoing. I'm joined now by the Spiegels, Kevin, Michael, Josh. Thank you for joining me. I know this is a tough day, and I'm going to explain why. Kevin, you lived in that building for five years with your wife Judy.

KEVIN SPIEGEL, WIFE IS MISSING IN SURFSIDE CONDO COLLAPSE: Yes.

GUPTA: You were out of town, but your wife was still in the building.

K. SPIEGEL: Correct.

GUPTA: I'm so sorry. I just -- I can't even, I can't even begin to wrap my head around this. Tell me --

K. SPIEGEL: I was just there this weekend. We had the most wonderful, wonderful weekend with our granddaughter Scarlet (ph). It was wonderful. And how from one second to the next second, a dramatic change in life. It's unbelievable.

GUPTA: Tell me about your wife.

K. SPIEGEL: Judy was a philanthropist. She raised money for the Children's Hospital, New York Medical College, Westchester Medical Center, the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital, and then to the Erlanger Children's Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She was a philanthropist, but she was a wife, she was a mother, and she was a grandmother. And she was unbelievable. She was full of life. She looked half her age. She was so fit, so thin, and she really kept -- she was the glue that kept our family together.

GUPTA: Josh, how did you find out? You're living in Orlando. You're a doctor. You're a trauma surgeon yourself. Tell me what happened.

JOSH SPIEGEL, MOTHER IS MISSING IN SURFSIDE CONDO COLLAPSE: I've seen a lot of trauma. I've seen a lot of bad stuff. I got a call from my sister and my dad, and couldn't believe what I heard. I immediately drove down here to meet my sister while my dad and my brother Mike here were flying in. We went to the community center, which was very nice, everyone there was very supportive. But as with any of these types of situations, very chaotic. And we are hopeful that today will be the day that they find our mom, and that she's brought home to us safe.

GUPTA: How are you going about collecting information, Kevin? Are you getting information from officials?

K. SPIEGEL: It's really not -- and I don't even think it's their fault. It's just an evolving scene, as you can see behind us. Today we were a little shocked of the amount of fires that are breaking out in the debris and the smoke and the water. That's not a good sign. So -- but we're dealing day by day. They're now finding more and more people, and I hope and pray she's found soon and everything is good. But it's not a promising sight if you've been here.

GUPTA: I'm sorry. And I don't, I don't mean to talk about this in clinical terms by any means. It's very hard to reconcile what we're seeing behind here with all that we're hearing. Michael, tell me about your mom.

MICHAEL SPIEGEL, WIFE IS MISSING IN SURFSIDE CONDO COLLAPSE: My mom is the greatest person in the world. She would call us almost every day just to check in on us. She's just the most amazing person in the world, and we would do anything to have her back.

GUPTA: So, obviously you were out of town. You came back. You tried to call your wife. She's not answering. You hear about what has happened to the building. What do you do next? You obviously fly back.

K. SPIEGEL: Well, I was in Watsonville Community Hospital. I woke up in the middle of the night, as normal older gentlemen do in the middle of the night, wake up. I looked at my phone. I had an email from Surfside about a traffic disturbance just to alert everybody that there was a -- but then I noticed it was our building. And that was the disturbing part.

And unfortunately, I saw the building and the part of the building that was missing, and that's where our apartment is because I live there. So I knew exactly, and I knew it was a catastrophe. So that's when I called all the kids.

[08:05:00]

I got into my car and I drove to the San Francisco Airport and flew to Atlanta, met Michael, who came from North Carolina. We met and we were here yesterday afternoon, and we went right to the community center to meet everybody.

GUPTA: I think about what has happened here, and part of me sort of wonders, were there any signs? This is a building that you lived in. We live in buildings -- in this country, you just don't expect something like this.

K. SPIEGEL: This is a fairly modern building. It's only 40 years old. If you look at some of the buildings around us, the one next door is actually brand-new. But the one next to it is probably 50 or 60 years old. And it appears to be fine. But this past weekend there was some water in the garage, and it was coming up. Whether that was the real sign that there was something wrong, I don't know. It would be interesting to find out what the manager did or didn't do that they were supposed to do to find out what was going on.

GUPTA: Yes, I imagine some of those answers will be forthcoming. But right now, we're in the middle of this search and rescue mission. Can you tell me about your neighbors, people who lived in the building? What kind of people were they?

K. SPIEGEL: It was a vacation type of building. We've lived there full time, but when we purchased it, we were living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and this was our getaway place. Plus, we had two grandchildren here. So a lot of people were in and out. I was actually a little surprised to find out that there were still -- there's 99 missing people in the building. That to me is a lot. So I think more and more because of COVID, more and more people started to actually live in the building.

GUPTA: People all over the world are paying attention right now to what's happening here. What do you want them to know about this place, this community?

K. SPIEGEL: I think that deferring maintenance in the building and all the politics of being part of a condominium where people actually have a voice and a vote, deferring maintenance because you're afraid of your maintenance going up is probably not the right decision for everybody. So my real decision -- my real recommendation to you all is to invest in the infrastructure, to invest in preventative maintenance in your building so something horrific like this doesn't occur.

GUPTA: I think it's such an important point. I covered the earthquake, for example, in Haiti, and there are no building codes, really, or very minimal, and it was less of a surprise. Here, this I think is something that people are going to be paying attention to for a long time.

I'm trying to put myself sort of in your position, and I really appreciate you talking to us. I've got to be honest, I don't know that I would have been able to do it right now because it's got to be so -- what is the sentiment right now?

K. SPIEGEL: The thing is we're here, not for us, we're here for Judy. And she would be part of this. She is the one who always led, connected to the communities that we lived in. I was always in the hospital working. She was always working with the community and bringing everybody together. She was a wonderful person, and all the texts from everybody, from Bardsley (ph) to Westchester, to Southampton to Surfside, to Chattanooga, Memphis, Warren, Ohio -- she is -- she touched so many lives over the years. That was amazing, and that's who she was. And she would want us to be here.

GUPTA: I've just been watching you guys. I have three kids of my own. I can tell you, you're such a tight family. People are praying for you, they're praying for Judy. Keep talking to us. If we learn anything, we'll certainly tell you. Please do the same, OK? I'm glad you got a chance to talk about her.

John, these are the stories that are happening here on the ground. Unfortunately, there's so many of them, but there's a lot of hope still and optimism as we see these search and rescue missions continue.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, look, dealing with in explicable loss, literally no explanation for a loss like this. And I love what the Spiegels had to say. They're there and they have hope because Judy would be there and have hope right now. They're acting like they think she would be acting under these circumstances. Please give them our love here, Sanjay. Thank you.

This morning we're also hearing from the Miami-Dade fire rescue chief on the ongoing search. This is what he just had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF ANDY ALVAREZ, MIAMI-DADE FIRE RESCUE: We've been here nonstop, 24-hour operation, and a haste effort of trying to search and find as many victims we possibly can. There's always hope.

[08:10:00]

I've been deployed around the world, in Haiti, and the collapse in Barbados, and other collapses that we've been at, and there's always that hope, and that's why we're here. We fight 24/7, we don't stop. And when it gets to that point that it's just incompatible with hope, then we'll reach that point. But for right now, there's always hope, and that's what we're here to do, we're here to rescue as many people as we still can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: It is hard to reconcile some of the images that we're seeing. The work that is going on there with what we just heard from the Spiegels. You don't think of sights like that and think of people who are still trapped, people who still need to be rescued, but that is what is happening.

Rosa, it's so tough. I think sometimes we think about these things from a macro level, and then you hear from the Spiegels, Kevin and Josh and Michael, his wife, their mom is still in there. And I know that that's obvious to people, but it's just very hard to process, I think, right now. This is real. This is happening, and people haven't seen something like this here for some time. We are getting a better sense of exactly what happened to the building

and what it looks like, right?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We are. And my producer John Kyles (ph) was able to obtain some photos from the fire marshal that I think gives us a better idea because they're close-up photos. And we have them so we can show them to our viewers.

And, Sanjay, if you just look at these photos, you're able to see how, when officials describe this pancake collapse, you'll see the layers, almost like layers in a cake. You see the concrete floors. You see the balconies. You see patio furniture. And then the mangled wires and also the dangling concrete, and even people's belongings still dangling. And like you said, this gives us a better idea of structurally what it looks like.

But really what people are going through right now, like the Spiegels, and looking at this and looking at what's behind us, that's where the real pain is right now, because they look at these images and they think of their loved ones.

GUPTA: Let's hold that thought. We're going to listen to the news conference for a second. I want to come back and talk to you afterward.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know. It's just I know, it's going to be in certain people's faces. I'll get it. I'll get it. I'll get it. That's probably why it fell.

Good morning, good morning. Thank you for being here. The format is going to be the same. For those that are new that weren't here yesterday, we're going to go with English, then immediately following Spanish, then we're going to go into the questions and answers. To open it up we have the honorable Daniela Levine Cava, mayor of Miami- Dade County.

MAYOR DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA: So, good morning, everyone. Unfortunately, this has been a tragic night. We do have 120 people now accounted for, which is very, very good news. But our unaccounted-for number has gone up to 159. In addition, we can tragically report the death count is now four.

I want to be very clear about the numbers. They are very fluid. We'll continue to update you as we have them, but we have confirmed four deaths. The search and rescue team worked throughout the night, and it was a very active scene from above and below. And we also brought heavy machinery onto the site to assist with the operation.

And so we are very, very grateful that our president has now authorized FEMA support, and we are joined here today by our FEMA representative who can tell you more. And that is going to assist us in our recovery efforts as well to assist the families.

We have the resources for the families at the family reunification center. We've been actively providing them everything that they need -- food, shelter, cash to assist with their basic needs, and grief counseling.

[08:15:02]

Obviously, a very critical component as we move forward, as people are anxiously waiting for news of their loved ones.

At this time, we have received all of the donations of goods and volunteers that we can handle at this time. We are very, very grateful for everyone who has contributed, and we will let people know as the need presents. But we do have two funding sites available for cash donations -- supportsurfside.org and chesed, two sites that are receiving donations.

So as we work tirelessly and stand united, local, municipal, county, state and now federal support, we are going to work as hard as we can to continue our search and rescue effort. That is our priority. That is where we're focused, and protecting our first responders who are on the scene.

So, thank you, everyone. God bless.

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They are obviously doing this news conference in Spanish, now. Rosa, we're going to dip back in when they go into English. You heard the headlines, 159 people unaccounted for. It was 99 before.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We were expecting this, Sanjay. Fire rescue telling us yesterday that they were asking family members to fill out wellness forms, and this is the outcome of this as more of these families figure out where their loved ones are, we were expecting these numbers to go up. And, unfortunately, the death toll has increased to four. So, I think about those families at the reunification center.

There's families there who are hoping for good news and still have hope, and there's three families overnight who received the news that their loved one has perished.

GUPTA: Yeah, I mean, I imagine what it must be like for them. Obviously they want to continue to remain hopeful. We're going on 30 hours now roughly since the building has collapsed. It's a very, it's a very tough thing right now for these rescuers, these conversations that are happening with families.

When you were showing those pictures, I don't know if we have those pictures, you really got a sense that this was completely unexpected, right? We knew that. But it was kind of like life interrupted. You see their things. You see clothes. Even I look over the shoulder, I still see the balconies that are standing close to the collapsed towers, things that are hanging there. This really seemed to come out of nowhere.

FLORES: You think of the hour this happened. If this happened in the middle of the day when people are outside enjoying the beach, doing something else, but this was in the middle of the night at 1:30 in the morning. And so most people were probably, the ones that were inside and were living here, were probably inside their unit.

As I look behind us, you can also see, they're using claws to clip portions of the building. That's what you're hearing, that's what's happening behind us. We think about the painstaking work that the firefighters are doing, risking their lives, hoping to give news.

GUPTA: Let's listen back in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The members from Florida Task Force 1 to echo the message of our great mayor. We are pulling additional resources from FEMA to assist, and to provide relief for some of those individuals.

This is coupled with the firefighters already on scene, bringing the total of 130 firefighters through this operation. As you saw, that we did have the fire reignite, but it did not slow down our search and rescue operations.

However, during our search and rescue operations, we did encounter three victims that were deceased. They were removed. And as she had mentioned, we bring the total to four fatalities.

Again, search and rescue operations still continue. We have heavy machinery on scene to start pulling some of the superficial metal from above as we look for additional voids from above. Again, search and rescue still continues from below as we tunnel, utilizing light machinery. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Chief.

[08:20:01]

To provide Spanish, we're going to have Public Information Officer Erika Benitez from Miami-Dade Fire.

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

GUPTA: When they're conducting this news conference in Spanish, we'll talk about this for a second. When you see the numbers change like that, what does that really mean? Are these family members, so we now have 159 unaccounted for? Are these families that have called in to public information and said, my family was also in there, we can't get hold of them? Is that what's driving the numbers?

FLORES: That's our understanding. We understand from officials that we talked to yesterday, they were making this outcry really, asking people who knew that individuals that lived in this building to contact the reunification center to let them know who was missing, because one of the things we really have to think about, Sanjay, is that this is south Florida.

This is the gateway to Latin America. We know that some of the missing individuals are from countries like Paraguay.

GUPTA: Very hard to get hold of. Let's go back to listening. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have four victims that lost their lives.

Homicide detectives are working with the medical examiner's office right now to identify those victims, and we have victim advocates as well, next of kin notifications will be made. In terms of the scene here, we're here supporting fire rescue with their search and rescue. Scene security is paramount because heavy equipment is arriving and we are going to have a strict access to this area.

Go to Spanish really quick.

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Director.

We're going to have Kevin Guthrie. He represents the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

KEVIN GUTHRIE, DIRECTOR OF THE FLORIDA DIVISION EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Good morning, everyone. Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division Emergency Management.

Overnight we had a mutual aid request go in that is being handled by the state fire marshal's office for additional urban search and rescue teams. I know that Florida Task Force 2 which is out of the city of Miami is going to be the first to help rotate in to help Miami-Dade rescue fire here at the site. We approach the additional search and rescue teams throughout the state.

There's a total of eight teams throughout the state, so that's an additional six teams put on stand by to rotate in as needed at the request of Miami-Dade fire rescue. So that has happened.

At 12:26 this morning, you heard the mayor refer to it at 12:26 a.m. this morning, I received the emergency declaration from FEMA, and that has happened. That is going to turn on what is referred to as category a, debris removal, category B protective measures and individual assistance for FEMA reimbursement. We will be providing throughout the day additional details as more FEMA staff roll in on the individual assistance piece, but I think we should set the expectation now is that that will be limited to addresses at 8777 Collins Road. So please just know that that is coming.

As I said, FEMA is on the way. The first individual came in about 3:00 a.m. this morning. That is our state regional coordinator Paul Williams. He is going to be followed by about 15 additional personnel from FEMA throughout the day.

And then we also have additional staff from the Florida division management coming in today. I'd be remiss if I didn't say the entire team that works in Tallahassee is activated. The men and women there are ready to support as needed.

And again, as we've always said at these disasters, FEMA helps federally support a disaster, the state helps manage the disaster, but everything is executed at the local level. So, again, federally supported state managed locally executed. We are teaming up here with Miami-Dade County to make sure that that happens. Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. Guthrie.

Next speaker we're going to have, Mr. Ryan Logan giving important information regarding the Red Cross.

RYAN LOGAN, REGIONAL DISASTER OFFICER, AMERICAN RED CROSS: Good morning. I'm Ryan Logan. I'm the regional disaster officer for the American Red Cross here in South Florida.

And we like these other organizations were on scene in the early hours of yesterday morning beginning to provide whatever support we could to those that have been displaced. Yesterday morning we worked with the city of Surfside, as well as the Miami-Dade County to begin to support the opening and the operation of the reception center and the family reunification center, as well as we have mobilized additional resources, supplies.

[08:25:00]

And most importantly, some of our trained help, mental health and spiritual care workers are coming in here locally, but we are also bringing in trained experts that have really dealt with this type of situation from across the country because we really want to make sure we're truly providing the necessary support for not only just those that have been directly and indirectly impacted, but the community at large. We also have been working with the families that have been displaced to try to secure temporary lodging for them, and we have begun the casework process to start to think about some of the basic next steps that they may need to take moving forward.

In addition to that, we know that everybody really wants to help during these times, and it's what makes us the country that we are. But for the Red Cross, we would just say that we have the necessary supplies and financial assistance that we need to support these organizations, so we would just encourage anybody that wants to make a donation, we reference to the groups the mayor referenced to funnel their resources there.

And then most importantly, I think it's important that folks know this is a difficult time for everybody. Whether you're here locally or you're seeing these images 3,000 miles away.

So one of the things we really encourage folks is really take time for yourself. Go to our website, redcross.org. We have a ton of information how folks can help manage their own coping with this as well as how to have the conversations with children that may be seeing these images, asking a lot of questions. And then we also will be bringing that same level of community support here so that we can also actually focus on the community resilience as we move forward.

Thanks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to break into the questions and answer session. I ask you to please raise your hand. Once you're called upon, identify who it is the question is referred to and then we'll move one at a time, we'll try to get to everyone as much as possible.

REPORTER: Mayor, if we can. First, thank you for breaching us. This is still a search and rescue operation. Have you seen anything that leads you to believe there are still people alive there?

LEVINE CAVA: We will continue search and rescue because we still have hope that we will find people alive. That is exactly why we are continuing, and that is why we are using our dogs and our sonar and our cameras, everything possible to seek places where there may still be people to be found.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

LEVINE CAVA: No, I can't confirm that. They are actively involved in search and rescue from both below and from above at this time.

REPORTER: Can you please talk about the tactics that your teams are using? You mentioned going above --

RAIDE JADALLAH, ASST. CHIEF OF OPERATIONS, MIAMI-DADE FIRE RESCUE: So, throughout the night, no different than from when we began operations. So, as the heavy machinery comes in, we will begin removing some of the debris above, some of the light debris. As we place those devices to look for voids, we start looking for additional victims.

We are looking for -- we are listening for sound. It's not specifically human sounds. It could be tapping. It could be steel, you know, kind of twisting. It could be some of the debris kind of raining down. So, we concentrate on those areas. From below we continue using light machinery -- saws, jackhammers as we continue to tunnel through underneath.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

JADALLAH: It's not necessarily tapping. It's just sounds. And what I reference to sounds, it could be various things. It could be steel twisting. It could be debris raining down, but not specifically sounds of tapping or sounds of a human voice.

REPORTER: Are there a lot of --

JADALLAH: Channel 4?

REPORTER: Yes, Chief, if you can, can you talk a little more about the sounds that maybe your crews are listening for and are they hearing -- as well, do you still believe there are people trapped alive under that rubble?

JADALLAH: As the mayor said, we have hope. Every time we hear a sound, we concentrate in that area. So we send additional teams utilizing the devices, utilizing canine, utilizing personnel. So as we continue to hear those sounds, we concentrate on those areas.

REPORTER: When was the last time your crew heard sound out there?

JADALLAH: Throughout the night, every night, or every --

REPORTER: Even now --

JADALLAH: Currently as we continue through the operations, as we hear the various sounds, we deploy those devices, including personnel, and we start concentrating on those areas.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Last two, sir.

REPORTER: Chief -- "The New York Times."