24 people are confirmed dead. 121 others still missing. Their families awaiting answers with hope for a miracle, all but gone. The demolition comes as tropical storm elsa takes aim at florida. Watches and warnings now up for the keys and much of the state s west coast. The outer bands of the storm expected to have a broad impact. Let s take you now live to surfside, florida and cnn s natasha chen live with our top story. Natasha, bring us up to speed. What is the latest? reporter: boris, the search and rescue mission really resumed shortly after that demolition at 10:30 p. M. Last night. I m told they got back on site 20 minutes later and continued searching and the families have been very grateful for that action. So urgently resuming. So right now that controlled demolition has really helped in making sure that they could access areas that they weren t able to get to before. Prior to the demolition, it was difficult for the search and rescue teams to get to the part closest to the re
Engineer s report highlighted major structural damage. Also new today, the miamiherald reports that a cond tractor who serviced the pool 36 hours before the collapse saw standing wautter a cracks under the pool deck and the white house confirmed that president biden and the first lady dr. Jill biden will travel here to surfside on thursday. We ll have extensive live coverage of that. Let s begin our coverage this hour with rosa flores on the search and rescue investigation that is underway right now. Rosa, i know we re working your sources. It is so painful for everyone including us to hear all of this information. What is the latest? well, wolf, we re learning more about what people knew before this collapse about the integrity of this structure. Now from the photos that you just mentioned that were obtained by the miamiherald, you could see some of that damage and we also know from the 2018 report that we ve been talking about, that structural survey that in 2018 there were warnings
Details about the building structural integrity from a 2018 engineers report that warned of what was described as major structural damage that required immediate repair. Despite that, cnn has learned that residents were assured that the tower was in, quote, very good shape. Let s begin our special coverage this hour, cnn s rosa florez has the latest on the search efforts. You re not very far away from where all of this is unfolding. Update our viewers. Reporter: well, according to the fire chief, they are using every single tool in their tool box. Very aggressively. Canines, cameras, sonar and we ve seen drones over the debris site. They re using a grid pattern to search and rescue, looking for signs of life. The weather today has been a little bit better. It was better yesterday which helped the search efforts. All of this as we re learning more from a 2018, a structural survey that exposed a lot of the deficiencies in this building. It said, quote, that there were structural major st
That at the county level. And we will be working with our municipalities to do the same. Here s new reporting from npr moments ago that a surfside official said the building was safe. The report says, quote, minutes of a november 2018 meeting show a surfside town inspector met with residents of the building and assured them the building was, quote n very good shape. And then, just in the last hour i spoke with rachel speigle, whose mom remains unaccounted for. Here s what she told me. Obviously, i am disappointed that there were red flags that were made and brought to light and there there wasn t action that was taken. Yes, they said that there were issues, but no one said that it was unsafe to live there. Well, the death toll is now at nine. 156 people remain unaccounted for. Let s go to nbc s antonia hilton joining me from surfside. You are getting word that families may soon be headed to the collapsed site? that s right alex. We are hearing that families have asked officials for an