Photo: CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP / Getty Images
A judge approved on Thursday to award compensation for more than $1, millions to the victims of the collapse of the Champlain Towers condominium building
in Surfside, Florida, where 98 people died, in one of the most fatalities has caused in the history of the United States.
Miami-Dade County Judge Michael Hanzman, who is handling the case, considered that this agreement is “the best” that could be reached and it is a “remarkable result. It is extraordinary.”
“It will never be enough to compensate them for the tragic loss they have suffered,” said the Miami-Dade circuit judge in the hearing held this Thursday.
The $1,24 Millions of dollars will be distributed in its vast majority among the relatives of the 98 fatalities,
although $96 millions will go to those people who owned any of the apartments in this building of 12 plants and other $100 million will be used to defray the legal costs.
This final approval is given on the eve of the first anniversary of the collapse of the building, which occurred at dawn from 24 June 2021 when many people slept in the 136 apartments of the condominium.
The building collapsed partially, but it was left uninhabitable, so it was demolished on July 4, 2021, when the tasks of rescuing the bodies of the 98 fatalities had been completed, many of them of Latin American origin .
A button could have “saved more lives” in the collapse of Champlain Towers
One year after the Champlain Towers disaster, with the cause of the collapse still under federal investigation, new documents, interviews and deposition records shed new light on a critical seven-minute period between the initial thunderous failure of the roof deck a swimming pool and the eventual cascading collapse of part of the building, leaving 98 people dead.
One of those critical incidents icos is that a button was not pressed that could have saved more lives in those minutes, according to The New York Times.
While the Champlain Towers lobby security guard hurriedly called 911 to report the initial pool failure and an alarm may have sounded at that point in a limited part of the building, although it was clearly inaudible to many still asleep .
But this building also had a sophisticated audio warning system designed to broadcast an alert to the bedrooms in each unit.
But that alert was never activated , according to testimonies of recently available statements and interviews, because the security guard had never been trained on the system and the only button needed to activate it.
“If I had known, I would have pressed it,” he said the security guard, Shamoka Furman, in an interview.
During the seven minutes between the time of the failure of the pool platform and the collapse of the condominium tower, could some of the residents who slept during the initial boom to have been able to reach a safe place?
Unfortunately, failures such as why the guard did not know the alert that would have woken many or failures of the building’s automatic fire alarm system are still some of the many questions that still exist 12 months after the collapse.
With information from EFE and The New York Times
It may interest you:
– Collapse in Miami: how the building collapsed in just 12 seconds
– Miami authorities identify the victim 97 of the 97 bodies recovered from the Champlain Towers building
– Judge approves initial settlement to pay $1, millions to families of the victims of the collapse of Chaplain Towers in Florida