5-year anniversary of Surfside rental collapse approaches

For the family members who lost loved ones in the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, June 24 is a day that will forever fill them with dread.

Ninety-eight people died that night in 2021. Most were asleep when the building crumbled. Family and friends waited days or weeks while rescue workers searched through the rubble. The victims ranged in age from 1 to 92.

Now, five years later, even partial closure is hard to find.

There have been some steps forward. In the months after the collapse, the affected parties reached a nearly $1 billion court settlement. A receiver sold the collapse site to a developer to help compensate families, survivors and condo owners. Legislators passed new state laws regarding condo safety and financial reserves.

But much remains unresolved.

Construction of a permanent memorial, planned for the street adjacent to the property, has yet to begin.

A federal investigation into what caused the collapse is nearing completion but still ongoing.

The fate of the site itself is uncertain; the billionaire developer who bought it has struggled to sell units in a proposed ultra-luxury condo building.

And Florida’s condo market has been in flux ever since the collapse, straining affordability for people living in older buildings near the coast.

Meanwhile, those closest to the victims have tried to move forward while continuing to honor the ones they lost.

Raquel Oliveira, whose husband, Alfredo Leone, and their 5-year-old son, Lorenzo, died in the collapse, has made a ritual of traveling each year in May, the month of her and Leone’s anniversary and Lorenzo’s birthday.

On those days, Oliveira, 46, prefers to be by herself, she said, reflecting and doing things she would have liked to do with her husband and son. On one wedding anniversary, she attended the Formula One Grand Prix in Monte Carlo, something she and Leone had talked about doing together.

On Lorenzo’s birthday, she typically eats ice cream or goes to a park.

“It’s kind of creating a happy ritual out of something sad,” Oliveira said.

During her travels, Oliveira has also spread Leone’s ashes in places where the couple had happy memories, she said. In January, she did so in Morocco.

Marking five years since the collapse is a “weird” feeling, Oliveira said, especially because she has watched Lorenzo’s friends grow up and seen adults in her life grow older.

“As I keep living and time passes, I see that everything gets older except for them,” she said.

Waiting for a memorial

Advocating for a permanent memorial near the collapse site has also taken a toll, Oliveira said. She has helped lead a small group of families involved in the process, which has faced repeated delays since the town of Surfside designated the east end of 88th Street, directly north of the collapse site, for a memorial in 2022.

Most recently, in April, a new crop of Surfside elected officials voted to reduce the cost of the project from $5.5 million to less than $3.6 million to avoid a requirement for a town-wide voter referendum. Designs for the memorial were completed last year.

“Everything that we did in those five years, now we have to go back to stage one,” Oliveira said. “I think I am losing my strength.”

Martin Langesfeld, whose sister Nicole and brother-in-law Luis Sadovnic died in the collapse, echoed that frustration. Langesfeld, 28, and his father, Pablo, 60, have been among the most outspoken family members about the importance of a memorial.

“We’ve been fighting nonstop for a memorial, and we haven’t broken ground on anything,” Langesfeld said. “It’s just a complete lack of respect to the victims and the families fighting for this.”

In response to questions from the Miami Herald, acting Town Manager Mario Diaz said Surfside officials are “working to modify the full project scope to keep the project cost at the $3.55m commission-approved budget.”

There hasn’t been true accountability for the catastrophe, either, Langesfeld said.

An investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology has zeroed in on likely causes of the collapse, including design, construction and maintenance errors. But the goal of that probe is to prevent future tragedies — not to hold individuals liable, civilly or criminally, for what went wrong.

“It’s clear that corners were cut, and 98 people died because of it,” Langesfeld said. “You can’t just kill 98 people and move on with no accountability.”

In the court settlement, over $500 million came from Securitas Security Services USA, whose employees managed the Champlain Towers South alarm system, front desk and visitors under a contract with the condo association.

In a deposition, a Securitas manager revealed that a company employee in charge of the front desk on the night of the building’s collapse was not trained by the firm on how to operate an “all-call” alarm system designed to alert the residents of an imminent catastrophe.

The guard on duty also said in a statement that she did not activate the alarm system in the seven minutes between the collapse of the building’s pool deck and the collapse of the residential tower because she didn’t know how to use it.

Securitas USA admitted no wrongdoing or responsibility for the building’s collapse or the loss of lives.

‘Money can’t compensate for that’

The collapse continues to take a toll on a wide range of people connected to it.

Survivors who were rescued from the part of the building that remained intact, or managed to escape before the tower fell, have struggled to return to normal life. Some who previously spoke about their trauma are trying to move on; multiple survivors did not respond to the Herald’s interview requests for this story.

First responders who sifted through the rubble have suffered from PTSD.

Even Michael Hanzman, the former Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge who oversaw the emotional, contentious litigation after the collapse, told the Herald he has had “major issues … which is why I try not to talk about the case a lot.”

“I’m asked to do a lot of seminars and all kinds of things, and I really shy away from it,” Hanzman said. “You get to a point where, if you’re not thinking about it for months or whatever, it starts to dissipate a little bit. But then when you have things like [the fifth anniversary], you begin excited about it once more.”

Hanzman, who is now an attorney at Bilzin Sumberg, said he “had no idea what I was getting into.” While presiding over the lawsuits, Hanzman ultimately had to make agonizing decisions about compensating unit owners, renters and visitors at Champlain Towers South.

“It turned out to be much more psychologically and emotionally harmful than I thought it was going to be,” he said.

Michael Goldberg, who acted as the receiver for the Champlain Towers South condo association in the litigation and grew close to many of the victims’ families, had to be hospitalized at one point for exhaustion.

His work included not only leading the complex legal battles but also deciding what to do with the cash, valuables and religious items found in the rubble, a process that is still being finalized. Goldberg, a partner with the Akerman law firm, also had to coordinate the sensitive sale of the two-acre Surfside property for $120 million to a Dubai-based developer.

He told the Herald that, while the process was excruciating for him, it doesn’t compare to what the families went through.

“Money can’t compensate for that at all, even though they got compensated,” Goldberg said. “What is compensation? Everyone I know would give up their money and everything else they have to have their loved one back.”

Honoring the victims

The victims in the Surfside tragedy were diverse in experience and age.

They included lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, college students, retirees, a musician, a flight attendant, a Pilates instructor and a rabbi.

There were the Guara sisters, Lucia, 10, and Emma, 4, who died with their parents.

There was Elena Chavez, 87, still working as a travel agent, who died with her daughter, Elena Blasser, 64.

Theresa Velasquez, 36, who died with her parents, Julio and Angela, was a LiveNation executive and former Miami Beach DJ.

Their names are listed on a temporary memorial banner on a fence across the street from the collapse site at Veterans Park. But a permanent memorial, said Oliveira, would be “a way of immortalizing them.”

Earlier this year, federal investigators returned rubble from the collapse site to the town of Surfside to be used in construction of the permanent memorial.

“It would be a place where people would go for grieving, for reflecting, for crying or for meditating,” Oliveira said. “For having good memories and bad memories.”

The town of Surfside will hold a remembrance event on Wednesday, June 24, at 10 a.m., at the corner of 88th Street and Collins Avenue.

Oliveira plans to attend. But going forward, she said, she may forego the annual events and only attend those for milestone anniversaries every five or 10 years as she tries to move forward while continuing to advocate for a memorial.

“I also need to move on with my life,” she said.