'Totally devastated': Families remain heartbroken 1 year after Surfside condo collapse

A man stands next to flowers and pictures of some of the missing from the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building at the makeshift memorial for the victims of the building collapse in Surfside, Fla., July 02, 2021.Martin Langesfeld remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing in the early hours of June 24, 2021.

Just north of the Miami Beach city limits, at 8777 Collins Avenue, Champlain Towers South was one of dozens of residential buildings perched between the street and the Atlantic Ocean. The building opened in 1981 and was home to residents like Lopez who were attracted to a quiet beachside life in a small community.

"I had a lot of friends there, a lot of good friends that died that night," Rodriguez said. "I'm just totally devastated. People don't understand what kind of community we had there." Arzola said he drove toward Champlain Towers South, not yet realizing the extent of the calamity that had just occurred."I remember hearing a loud explosion, like a bomb going off," Lopez said. "When I opened my curtain, all I saw was dense white powder."

"That night it was an east wind, and with all the debris and the glass, you could feel it hitting you," Arzola said. "You could even smell a funky smell." "The building could have fallen," Arzola said. "But I have a job, and my job is I'm a first responder and I'm there to help get him out. I wasn't going to leave him alone."

"It just seems that everyone is trying to pass this very silently and not make a big deal out of it, but we need to realize that a building collapsed and people died in their own homes," Martin Langesfeld said. Heavy machinery works next to the partially collapsed residential building as search and rescue operations continue, in Surfside near Miami Beach, Fla., June 27, 2021.A $120 million sale of the property to a billionaire developer from Dubai, which is expected to close by the end of July, would also contribute to the total settlement.

"We are being treated as not victims, but we are being treated as [if] we were responsible for the deaths of these 98 people, which is the most absurd thing that you could ever imagine," Lopez said. "We felt like we were never treated as surviving victims, and that's what we are. We were surviving victims. We had no idea that the building was in bad shape."

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