Hoping for a Miracle in Surfside

When I first saw  the pictures of the destroyed condo in Surfside, at first I thought they were showing old footage of the Murrah Building after the Oklahoma City bombing; or else it was something from one of those TV shows about engineering disasters.  If any of those poor residents are somehow still alive in that wreckage, it will be a miracle.

This is from today's Times of  Israel:

3. Find the Jews: The press is also keeping a close eye on the building collapse in Miami, with the story leading several news sites late Thursday and early Friday.

• As noted by JTA: “As the United States woke up to news of the building collapse in Surfside, Florida, it quickly became clear that the disaster is an American Jewish tragedy.”
• The number of Jews thought to be missing varies wildly between news sites. On the low end is Haaretz, which reports that nearly a dozen Jews are missing. On the other end, the Sun-Sentinel quotes a local rabbi saying there are at least 34 Jews among the 99 missing under the rubble.
• Several Hebrew news sites put the number at “around 20,” without attribution, and the Associated Press notes that “Israeli media said the country’s consul-general in Miami, Maor Elbaz, believes that 20 citizens of that country are missing.”
• Channel 12 also asserts that the town of Surfside has 2,500 Orthodox Jews out of a population of 6,000, a number that is not attributed (and would be strange for a city to keep) but appears to come from local Chabad Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, who is cited giving the figure in a 2018 article in Vice’s Munchies minisite about an unkosher deli there.
• Walla quotes an unnamed “local source” who says the building was constructed by a Jewish Canadian developer, and that according to the source, some 90% of the condos were owned by Jews. The site reports that 18 Chabad members are among the missing and “the number of Jews in general is probably higher.”
• The true number, it seems, is too many. Jews and non-Jews alike. Yossi Dahan of United Hatzalah, which is helping rescue efforts, tells Kan that he knows some of the names on the list of missing, and that “the building had lots of Jews.”
• Speaking to Army Radio several hours later, Dahan says that “several groups are working in crews to find the missing among the rubble, but we haven’t found anyone alive.”
• Speaking to Ynet, Elbaz is equally morose: “The atmosphere here is very pessimistic,” she says. “This is a very tragic event … we are talking with relatives of the missing about the possibility of bringing an Israeli search and rescue team.”
• A consulate spokesperson tells ToI that while it has already offered search and rescue help to local authorities, it has yet to get an answer.
• Israelis could have been helping for a while already, it seems. Professor Shimon Wdowniski, a Kiryat Malachi native, gets wide press after word gets out that he authored a study last year that showed the land under the tower as the only place in the area to be sinking 1 to 3 millimeters per year.
• He tells USA Today: “I looked at it this morning and said, ‘Oh my god.’ We did detect that.”