DES MOINES, Iowa —

An Iowa task force has completed its search for survivors at the site of a partially collapsed Davenport apartment building without finding three missing people who are feared dead, authorities said Friday. The focus has shifted to shoring up the structure so recovery efforts can begin.

The remains of the six-story apartment building were constantly in motion in the first 24 to 36 hours after it collapsed on Sunday, which officials said posed a risk to rescuers who were trying to search for survivors.

"We do what the building tells us to do," Rick Halleran, the task force's Cedar Rapids division chief, said of the delay in searching the building.

City officials earlier this week said that Brandon Colvin, Ryan Hitchcock and Daniel Prien were unaccounted for and had "high probability of being home at the time of the collapse." All three have since been listed in the National Database of Missing Persons.

The state task force was mobilized and on-site to first search for survivors and then secure the structure, Halleran said. He said the search for survivors was completed Thursday evening after electrical equipment connected to the building were controlled. The state's search and rescue team, search dogs and cameras were used in the search Thursday.

Officials fear the unstable building will eventually collapse on its own. Adding to the challenge is a giant pile of brick and steel at the base of the building that is helping to hold up the structure but also may contain the remains of people killed in the collapse.

Video above: Surveillance video shows a support brace bending before Iowa building collapse

"We are doing the best we can to balance the building conditions and the safety of our responders," said Fire Chief Mike Carlsten. He said conditions have forced a response that may take "days and weeks" instead of what ideally would have been minutes or hours after the collapse.

Mayor Mike Matson has said the debris pile "could be a place of rest for some of the unaccounted" and stressed the city would be sensitive about those remains, comparing work at the site to an archeological dig.

Work to bring down the building comes amid questions about why neither the owner nor city officials warned residents about potential danger even after a structural engineer's report issued last week indicated a wall of the century-old building was at imminent risk of crumbling.

Documents released Wednesday night show city officials and the building's owner were warned for months that parts of the building were unstable.

"Do I have regrets about this tragedy and about people potentially losing their lives? Hell yeah. Do I think about this every moment? Hell yeah," Matson said Thursday. "I have regrets about a lot of things. Believe me, we're going to look at that."

City officials said Thursday that they did not order an evacuation because they relied on the engineer's assurances that the building remained safe. Matson promised to improve inspections and to investigate what happened.

Scott County prosecutor Kelly Cunningham cautioned Friday against assuming a criminal prosecution is appropriate in the case, saying an independent investigation needs to be conducted into the cause of the building's structural failure, and right now it's in the city's jurisdiction.

The building collapsed shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday. Rescue crews pulled seven people from the building in their initial response and escorted out 12 others who could walk on their own. Later, two more people were rescued, including a woman who was removed from the fourth floor hours after authorities said they were going to begin setting up for demolition.

Davenport Police Chief Jeff Bladel said transient people also often entered the building but there was no indication anyone else was inside and missing.

Andrew Wold, the building's owner, released a statement dated Tuesday saying "our thoughts and prayers are with our tenants." He has made no statement since then, and efforts to reach him, his company and a man believed to be his attorney have been unsuccessful.

County records show Davenport Hotel L.L.C. acquired the building in a 2021 deal worth $4.2 million.

Tenants had complained to the city in recent years about a host of problems they say were ignored by property managers, including no heat or hot water for weeks or even months at a time, as well as mold and water leakage from ceilings and toilets. While city officials tried to address some complaints and gave vacate orders to individual apartments, a broader evacuation was never ordered, records show.

City officials ordered repairs after they found seven fire code violations on Feb. 6. However, they were told three weeks later by building maintenance officials that "none of the work was completed," records show.

Rich Oswald, the city's director of development and neighborhood services, confirmed Thursday that the city's chief building official, Trishna Pradhan, resigned in the aftermath of the collapse.

Pradhan had visited the building on May 25, and erroneously reported it had "passed" an inspection in notes in the city's online permitting system, Oswald said.

Pradhan attempted to change the inspection result to "incomplete" on Tuesday — after the collapse — but a technical glitch instead listed the outcome as "failed," he said. Oswald said the "incomplete" status is the correct status since the repair work was unfinished.

The city later clarified that Pradhan resigned voluntarily and not in lieu of termination.

Calls and text messages to Pradhan were not immediately returned.

Assistant City Attorney Brian Heyer said he is unaware whether the city had considered earlier civil enforcement action to protect residents. Only after the collapse did the city file a civil infraction seeking a $300 fine against Wold for failing to maintain the structure in a safe manner. He will be required to pay for the cost of demolition, Heyer said.

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Foley reported from Iowa City. Associated Press reporter Summer Ballentine contributed from Jefferson City, Missouri.

Florida officials are working on plans to tear down what’s left of a partially collapsed oceanfront condominium building after concerns about the structure’s instability prompted a 15-hour halt to the search for survivors.

After rescue efforts resumed Thursday evening, officials said they had started planning for the likely demolition of the remaining structure even as searchers continue to comb the rubble pile beneath it.

Scott Nacheman, a FEMA structures specialist, said engineers are looking at different methods for the demolition and how to proceed "to make the site safe for ongoing rescue operations."

Nacheman said that if the building comes down, there initially will be a slowdown in the rescue operation. But he said the demolition of the structure would create a safer working environment that could allow more personnel on the site and accelerate the pace of the work.

He said it would likely be weeks before officials schedule the demolition.

On Friday morning, about a dozen workers could be seen digging through the pile that now reached about 20 feet, more than 10 feet less than it was a week ago. Cranes were again lifting heavy objects from the pile and then workers would climb into the pile and begin removing smaller rubble by hand.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the decision about the demolition needs to be made "extremely carefully and methodically," considering the potential impact on the pile of debris and the effect on the search.

The rescue work was halted early Thursday after crews noticed widening cracks and up to a foot of movement in a large column.

Work resumed shortly before 5 p.m. after the site was evaluated by structural engineers, Cava said, describing firefighters as "really, really excited out there."

"We will continue to search feverishly, as we have done all along in the parts of the collapse that we currently have access to," she said.

The work stoppage had threatened to dim hopes for finding anyone alive in the debris a week after the tower came down. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said the halt was worrisome since "minutes and hours matter, lives are at stake."

The temporary halt to rescue operations unfolded on the same day that President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the devastated community.

The collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium killed at least 18 people and left 145 missing. No one has been rescued since the first hours after the collapse.

"This is life and death," Biden said during a briefing. "We can do it, just the simple act of everyone doing what needs to be done, makes a difference."

"There’s gonna be a lot of pain and anxiety and suffering and even the need for psychological help in the days and months that follow," he said. "And so, we’re not going anywhere."

Peter Milián is a cousin of Marcus Guara, who died along with his wife, Anaely Rodriguez, and their two children, 10-year-old Lucia Guara and 4-year-old Emma Guara. Milián said he understood why the rescue work had to be temporarily halted.

"I mean, they’ve done everything they can. But we trust the people that are on the ground. And obviously, they’ve got to do what’s best for their people, right? Because it is a dangerous situation," he said.

During a private meeting with family members, Biden drew on his own experiences with grief to try to comfort them. Biden lost his first wife and baby daughter in a car crash and decades later lost an adult son to brain cancer.

"I just wish there was something I could do to ease the pain," he said in a video posted on Instagram by Jacqueline Patoka, a woman who was close to a couple and their daughter who are still missing.

Biden spoke of wanting to switch places with a lost or missing loved one. "The waiting, the waiting is unbearable," he said.

The cause of the collapse is under investigation. A 2018 engineering report found that the building's ground-floor pool deck was resting on a concrete slab that had "major structural damage" and needed extensive repairs. The report also found "abundant cracking" of concrete columns, beams and walls in the parking garage.

Just two months before the building came down, the president of its board wrote a letter to residents saying that structural problems identified in the 2018 inspection had "gotten significantly worse" and that major repairs would cost at least $15.5 million. With bids for the work still pending, the building suddenly collapsed last Thursday.

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Associated Press writers Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale and Mark Kennedy in New York contributed to this report.

CINCINNATI — An artifact of a bygone era in Downtown's history came down Wednesday when crews dismantled the skywalk path crossing over Sixth Street from the Millennium Hotel.

The dismantling was part of the larger demolition project underway on the site of the shuttered, blighted hotel, which began last month.

The city began construction on Cincinnati Skywalk nearly 50 years ago. When engineers considered it "complete" in 1997, the so-called "skybridges" stretched more than three miles across Downtown's most central streets, just a few dozen feet above street level.

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In 2002, the city began dismantling them due to lack of maintenance and nuisance complaints. By 2017, there was little more than a mile left of the $16 million investment.

At its peak, the skywalks connected what is now Duke Energy Convention Center through the heart of Downtown, past Fountain Square, all the way to Riverfront Stadium, by way of the Atrium buildings at Main and Fourth streets.

Beyond being, as then-mayor Charlie Luken once said, "dark and yucky," critics of the Skywalk argued they discouraged foot traffic on Downtown streets, leading to a vacant landscape for businesses with street-level storefronts.