FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. —

Video above: Vigil held for Florida building collapse victims

At the Seaview Hotel in Surfside, a vast and once impersonal ballroom has become a refuge — a shared space of hope and sorrow where grieving families comfort each other during the agonizing wait for news of relatives trapped inside a collapsed condo building.

Twice a day, every day, for more than two weeks, relatives of the 79 who perished and 61 still missing have huddled in the spacious room, a new daily routine thrust upon them by an unfathomable disaster.

Many members of this tiny community forged in the tragedy have started arriving to the meetings early and staying late. They linger in small groups, talking. They hug each other, bring each other water and tissues. On days when information is scarce, rescuers, including those from other countries, circulate through the room, offering more detailed tidbits.

Officials announced on Wednesday that they were switching their mission from rescue to recovery, but there is no plan to stop the private briefings for the families, said Maggie Castro, a Miami-Dade firefighter and paramedic who keeps relatives updated and has forged her own connections with them.

"Obviously, this is a huge tragedy, but if I can find some kind of bright spot in this whole thing, it's to be with these families, watching their emotions come and go and ... watching them evolve through their stages and then also watching them bond," Castro said.

Soriya Cohen's husband, Brad Cohen, is still missing. Her brother-in-law Gary Cohen was found Thursday, and her two children are begging rescuers to search a similar grid line to find their father.

"The community outpours so much love," she said, recalling how volunteers wrapped her in a blanket, brought her food and coffee in the initial days after the collapse and "surrounded me with so much emotional support."

She still has the blanket, she said in a text Friday.

Rachel Spiegel, whose mother, Judy, is still missing, said she, her father and brother also have made connections with other families inside the room, but she stopped short of calling it comforting.

"I don't know if I would define it as comfort yet because we still don't know where my mom is," she said. "She's still missing."

While sobs could be heard in the background Wednesday night as officials announced they would shift from rescue to recovery, largely dashing any hope of survivors, some families said they won't feel different until they have final word on their loved ones.

"It's hard to digest," Spiegel said in a phone call. "Many people did say they feel the shift. For us, we just want to find my mom and be reunited with her. We're still hoping for the best. We're going to have this shift once we find her and are reunited with her."

The Cohen family said not having any updates about Brad Cohen was agonizing.

"I don't think the terminology of rescue versus recovery matters. It's semantics," said Soriya Cohen. "They will find people in whatever state they are in, however it's termed."

Other families told rescuers they did feel a sense of finality once workers started searching for victims instead of survivors.

"There has been a sort of shift I think toward acceptance but also obviously with that comes some sadness," said Castro, adding that the families are physically and emotionally exhausted. "It's a lot, a lot of emotional roller coasters that they've been on, just trying to stay positive and hold out the wait," she said.

The family briefings are surrounded by heavy security, with various checkpoints to protect their privacy.

Organizations set up at a line of tables in the room offer everything from free international phone calls and counseling to clothing and housing. Several snowbirds are offering their Surfside homes to displaced survivors, said Rabbi Yakov Saacks, a family friend who flew from New York to comfort the Cohens. The owner of a 16-unit building opened it up rent-free to Surfside survivors for the month of July.

Huge platters of catered food sit day and night, including glatt kosher meals, all donated by community members longing to ease the pain.

Meanwhile, Support Surfside has raised $2 million for victims with another $2 million pledged, and GoFundMe has separately raised $1.7 million for various families.

The nearby Shul has been transformed into a huge clothing and dry goods facility for families to pick up items while they wait.

Saacks described the ballroom as painfully quiet at times.

"While families were either sitting or standing together, they were, for the most part, just silently and painfully waiting for news," he said. "While some families would welcome any news at that stage, others would welcome only good news."

SURFSIDE, Fla. —

Emergency workers who have spent 14 days pulling apart the rubble of a collapsed condo building near Miami said Wednesday they were switching from rescue to recovery mode, signaling the effort to find survivors was all but over.

The news followed increasingly somber reports from emergency officials, who indicated they had been preparing families for the worst outcome.

Rescue crews pulled 10 more bodies from a collapsed condo building Wednesday, and the emotional toll mounted as officials fought back tears and lamented the ordeal of exhausted families still awaiting word on missing loved ones.

The 14th day of the search yielded the highest number of bodies found in a single day and pushed the death toll up to 46.

Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told families at a private briefing Wednesday afternoon that the emergency crews would remove the rescue dogs and sound devices, but otherwise would continue to search through the rubble for the bodies of their relatives.

"Our sole responsibility at this point is to bring closure," he said, as relatives sobbed in the background.

For about two weeks after Champlain Towers South collapsed, officials stressed their focus on finding survivors — a hope that was rekindled after workers demolished the remainder of the building, allowing rescuers access to new areas of debris. The hope was that they might find "voids," or open pockets in the rubble where someone could have survived.

Some of those voids did exist, mostly in the basement and the parking garage, but no survivors were found. Instead, they recovered more than a dozen additional victims. Because the building fell in the early hours of June 24, many were found dead in their beds. There are 94 people who are still unaccounted for.

No one has been pulled out alive since the first hours after the 12-story building fell.

Twice during the search operation, rescuers had to suspend the mission because of the instability of the remaining part of the condominium building and the preparation for demolition.

After initially hoping for miraculous rescues, families have slowly begun bracing themselves for the news that their relatives did not survive.

"For some, what they're telling us it's almost a sense of relief when they already know (that someone has died) and they can just start to put an end to that chapter and start to move on," said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue firefighter and paramedic Maggie Castro, who has updated families daily at private briefings.

Authorities are launching a grand jury investigation into the collapse and at least six lawsuits have been filed by Champlain Towers families.

CINCINNATI —

The desperate search continues in South Florida as 147 people remain missing in the condo collapse. One of the missing is a UC grad.

Dr. Brad Cohen attended the UC College of Medicine from 1993-97. Cohen's dear friend, Mitchel Sutin, calls him a one-of-a-kind person.

"You don't meet many people in the world that have a manner which is mild yet very focused but very empathetic, and he was all those things," Sutin said.

Cohen is an orthopedic surgeon that owns his own practice while also very involved in the North Miami Jewish community.

After the collapse, Sutin sent Cohen a message.

"In the car I texted him, I said call me immediately, how are you? and he and I talk frequently and he's always very responsive," Sutin said.

A text message still hasn't been returned.

Sutin wants everyone in Greater Cincinnati to know how much brad cherished his time in the Midwest, and he talked about it often.

"I remember him telling me how he liked the chili in Cincinnati, because they're famous for that over spaghetti.He would tell me it was a great place to go to school, nice people, nice relaxed environment, and he learned a lot," Sutin said.

He called him a brother and a people person who touches the lives of everyone he knows and helps.

"His general nature was someone who would go above and beyond his general nature is of someone who would do more, not just enough," Sutin said.

A gofundme has been set up for the family during this time.

SURFSIDE, Fla. —

Video above: View from air shows destruction at condo collapse

When Mike Noriega heard that part of the condominium tower where his grandmother lived had collapsed, he rushed with his father to the scene. They arrived at a nightmarish 30-foot pile of pancaked concrete and mangled metal, the remains of her 12-story building — and no sign of 92-year-old Hilda Noriega.

But among the flying debris, they stumbled across mementos that bore witness to Hilda's life on the sixth floor in Champlain Towers South: an old picture of her with her late husband and their infant son, and a birthday card that friends from her prayer group sent two weeks earlier with the acronym “ESM,” Spanish for “hand-delivered,” scrawled across the yellow envelope with a butterfly etching.

“There was a message in the mess of all this,” Noriega said. “It means not to give up hope. To have faith.”

Days after Thursday's collapse, Hilda remains among more than 150 people unaccounted for in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, with five confirmed dead and authorities and loved ones fearing the toll will go much higher.

As scores of rescuers continue to use heavy machinery and power tools to clear the rubble from the top and tunnel in from below, the Noriega family still have hope she will be found alive.

“Some miracles are very big, others are small,” said Mike, 36, who last spoke to Hilda the day before the disaster.

They described Hilda as a fiercely independent and vivacious retiree — in Mike's words, “the youngest 92-year-old I know ... 92 going on 62.”

Hilda Noriega had called Champlain Towers South home for more than 20 years. But six years removed from her husband's death, she was ready to leave. The condo was up for sale, and her plan was to move in with family.

She had loved living near the ocean and friends, but “when you lose a spouse, you want to be surrounded by family ... and she wanted to spend more time with her family and grandchildren,” said Sally Noriega, Hilda's daughter-in-law.

Sally called Hilda a sweet, loving person who built a life with her husband and raised a family after coming to the U.S. from Cuba in 1960.

“She was just one of those people who from the first time she met a person she instantly loved that person, and that person instantly loved her,” Sally said.

Carlos Noriega, Hilda's son and police chief of nearby North Bay Village, was one of the emergency responders clambering atop the pile.

The Noriegas don't entirely know what to make of the treasured mementos found amid the chaos, but Sally said: “We are a family of faith. We’ll just leave it at that.”

They are among dozens of anguished families awaiting word on the fate of loved ones. The wait has been agonizing.

The atmosphere inside a hotel ballroom where around 200 family members were being briefed by authorities Saturday was tense, two people present told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

The two said families frustrated with the slow pace of recovery efforts had demanded they be allowed to go to the scene and attempt a collective shout — an attempt as much to find survivors as a cathartic farewell to those who had died.

The confirmed death toll rose to five Saturday as rescuers battled fire and smoke deep inside the heap in a race against time. With a sulfur-like stench hanging in the air, they used everything from trained dogs and sonar equipment to buckets and drones.

“Our top priority continues to be search-and-rescue and saving any lives that we can,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said.

The mayor said the identification of three bodies had dropped the number of people unaccounted for down to 156, and crews also discovered other unspecified human remains. The remains are being sent to the medical examiner, and authorities are gathering DNA samples from family members to aid in identification.

A video posted online showed an official briefing families. When he said they had found remains among the rubble, people began sobbing.

Late Saturday, four of the victims were identified, as Stacie Dawn Fang, 54; Antonio Lozano, 83, and Gladys Lozano, 79; and Manuel LaFont, 54.

The Paramount Miami Worldcenter tower in downtown Miami was also lit with the words “One World, One Prayer.” Organizers plan to light up the condo building with the message every night for two minutes on the hour until all victims of the Champlain Towers South collapse are accounted for.

Also late Saturday, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said a city official had led a cursory review of the nearby Champlain Towers North and Champlain Towers East buildings but “didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”

The news came after word of a 2018 engineering report that showed the building, which was built in 1981, had “major structural damage” to a concrete slab below its pool deck that needed extensive repairs, part of a series of documents released by the city of Surfside.

While officials said no cause for the collapse early Thursday has been determined, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said a “definitive answer” was needed in a timely manner.

___

Don Babwin in Chicago contributed to this report.

Search teams have been using drones, sonar, highly sensitive microphones and a range of other new and established technologies to help search for people in the oceanside condominium building near Miami that collapsed into a smoldering pile of rubble.

Will any of it help?

About 160 people were still unaccounted for Friday amid fears that the death toll of at least four could go much higher.

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES HAVE PROVEN USEFUL IN SUCH COLLAPSES?

The most common, time-tested technologies used to try to locate survivors in rubble are acoustic detection and sniffer dogs.

Aerial drones equipped with cameras and other sensors can be useful to get a close look at the collapse, especially in the earliest stages of a search to help rescuers know where it's safe to enter. Data from smartphones and telecommunications carriers can show if a missing person was in the area — and cellphone-detecting gadgets can pick up a phone’s signals, as long as it hasn’t been destroyed.

Joana Gaia, a professor of management science and systems at the University of Buffalo, said it's common for search teams to use radar and microwaves that bounce off objects and can identify people and objects. She said it's similar to the technology in cars that beeps when you're close to hitting something backing up.

That can be more useful than cell phone geolocation, especially when speed is of the essence. In a disaster situation, data is only useful if it can be interpreted quickly.

“Responders are operating on a speed rather than accuracy standpoint,” she said. “They think, ‘If I think a body is there I don’t care how accurate the signal is, I’m just going to try to go save the person.’”

WHAT ARE MIAMI RESCUERS USING NOW?

Search and rescue teams worked through the night hoping to detect any sounds coming from survivors.

The crews, which include some 130 firefighters working in teams, are approaching the pile from above and below as they search for any signs of life in what had been a wing of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida.

They've said they are using sonar, cameras and sensitive microphones. Microphones, though, won't pick up cries for help if a trapped, unseen victim is unconscious but alive, because there won't be any.

Neighboring communities have shared their drones, and at least one company is shipping a ground robot from California to help with the search as crews work to tunnel underneath the building.

“Once you get into that subterranean realm, ground robotics become incredibly useful,” said David Proulx, a vice president of unmanned systems at Teledyne FLIR, a defense contractor that specializes in thermal sensing. “It can safely go where humans can’t.”

DO THEY STILL USE DOGS TO SNIFF OUT SURVIVORS?

Search and rescue operations use two types of dogs on disaster scenes, both trained to detect human scent, said Mark Neveau, a former FEMA presidential appointee and disaster expert. First, there are dogs trained to pick up the scent of live bodies, but as the operation shifts to a recovery operation, cadaver-sniffing dogs take the field.

A drawback with dogs is that they tend to tire with time, and can get confused.

Chemical tracing devices are being developed that also pick up on scents that humans can’t detect, but these haven’t replaced dogs yet. These are portable labs that can analyze chemical traces and gas. They use sensors to detect moisture, carbon dioxide, or any chemicals emitted through breathing, like acetone or ammonia, said the University of Buffalo's Gaia.

“It’s almost like a mechanical sniffing dog, that can be trained to smell things we can’t,” she said.

WHAT OTHER TECHNOLOGIES COULD PROVE USEFUL IN THE FUTURE?

Drones and ground robots are already used in search operations, but the most sophisticated machines are still expensive, hard to come by and rarely as fast as the skilled human rescuers controlling them. That could change as they become smarter, more nimble and a standard part of search and rescue operations.

“It will be part of the kit that first responders have,” said Proulx, of Teledyne FLIR. “The operation of those drones and robots will be progressively more autonomous. They will be much more independent and operate as teammates rather than tools.”

One technology available to the responders — but not on the scene Friday — is a microwave radar device developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the Department of Homeland Security that “sees” through concrete slabs, detecting the signatures of human respiration and heartbeats.

A prototype saved four lives after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal and it was used two years later in Mexico City. Its developers say it provides an edge over acoustics, the usual method for detecting people in rubble, because disaster sites tend to be noisy.

“Noise doesn’t affect us and we can see through smoke,” said Adrian Garulay, the CEO of SpecOps Group, a Sarasota, Florida company that sells the technology under license. Although it can penetrate up to eight inches of solid concrete it cannot see through metal, he said. It uses a low-powered microwave signal about one-thousandth the strength of a cellphone signal and evolved from NASA’s efforts to develop low-cost, small spacecraft radios.

Several family members related to Paraguay's First Lady Silvana López Moreira are missing after a 12-story condominium in Miami partially collapsed on Thursday.

Paraguay’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed in a statement that they were monitoring the situation and added that six Paraguayans were missing, including Luis Pettengill, Sophia López Moreira, Lady Luna Villalba, and three children.

Paraguay’s foreign minister Euclides Acevedo reportedly said in interviews with media outlets on Thursday that Sophia is Silvana's sister, Luis is Sophia's husband, and Villalba is a worker accompanying the family, NBC News reported.

According to Miami-Dade Police Department, at least one person has died following the collapse, which occurred in Surfside early Thursday morning.

The Washington Post and CBS News are reporting that that 99 people are still unaccounted for.

Officials say rescue efforts are still ongoing.