Updated June 25
Champlain Towers was home to a microcosm of multicultural Miami
The collapse of the south building at Champlain Towers is a tragedy in a metropolis at the nexus of the United States and Latin America.
By Anthony Faiola and Lori RozsaThe Washington Post
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Rabbi Eliot Pearlson walks with members of his congregation in Surfside, Fla., on Friday. He said Champlain Towers was “almost by definition, just like Miami Beach.”
Zack Wittman for The Washington Post
SURFSIDE, Fla. The scent of ropa vieja – a savory meat dish – would waft through the halls on the Sabbath, drifting from the doorways of Cuban Jewish people who’d fled Fidel Castro. Spanish and English – with identifiable accents from Argentina to Australia – were the elevators’ lingua francas. But you’d hear Hebrew and Russian and other languages in the Tower of Babel that was Champlain Towers.
it s impossible to describe unless you re standing here. they can t imagine their grandmother, alone in her apartment, but they like so many here are not giving up. in fact, this evening that heartbreaking wait continues. stephanie ramos not far from where we are tonight, at the family reunification center where they re waiting for word. stephanie? reporter: david, i spent so much time with families, including bettina obias. she has been looking for her aunt and uncle. they have lived in that tower for the last 16 years. bettina is not ruling out a miracle. she said it was fate that brought her here on a last-minute trip to visit her aunt and uncle, and when she learned the news, she raced down to that tower. she screamed, she cried, but feared in her heart that they were gone. like so many of the families we ve spoken to here, she checked the survival list. they were not on it. she checked the hospital. nothing. she says her aunt and uncle likely did not make it, but she is holding