Champlain Towers South · Surfside, Florida. A 12-story condominium collapsed in the night. Multiple task forces worked a 1.4-acre pile around the clock for 13 days. All 98 victims were recovered.
At about 1:22 a.m. on June 24, 2021, the central and eastern sections of Champlain Towers South, a twelve-story beachfront condominium in Surfside, Florida, suffered a progressive collapse that lasted under twelve seconds. Ninety-eight people were killed. It ranks among the deadliest non-deliberate structural failures in United States history.
Elements of Florida Task Force 1 deployed before sunrise, including structural engineers and canine search teams, then the full Type 1 task force was activated. Florida Task Force 2 mobilized and deployed the next morning. Five DHS and FEMA task forces ultimately worked the site, supported by a FEMA Incident Support Team brought in to coordinate the compressed, dangerous 1.4-acre site.
By the time the operation transitioned from rescue to recovery, more than 450 search and rescue personnel from across Florida and roughly 400 federal personnel had worked around the clock, 24 hours a day, for thirteen days. Crews came from Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, among others. An international team from the Israeli Defense Forces' Home Front Command also worked the pile, the first time a foreign military unit participated in a domestic U.S. disaster operation.
Surfside is the discipline of this work at its hardest. Rescuers were given details about who was likely sleeping where, down to the color of the carpet, and they searched accordingly. Every one of the 98 victims was eventually recovered. The operation became a national reference case for how multiple task forces integrate under one command on a single, unstable site.
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