Catholic agency offers help after ‘heartbreaking’ collapse of building

[Michie]

A woman weeps at the Surfside Community Center where authorities took residents and relatives from a partially collapsed building in Surfside, Fla., just north of Miami Beach June 24, 2021. (CNS photo/Marco Bello, Reuters)



MIAMI BEACH (CNS) — Staff members with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami were on location and developing a response strategy June 24 near the stunning wreckage of a partially collapsed beachfront high-rise apartment building.

As of early June 25, some 159 people who lived in the 12-story building remained unaccounted for, according to local law enforcement officials.

Speaking by phone from the temporary reunification center for family, friends and displaced residents desperate for information about the collapsed Champlain Towers Condo in the beach town of Surfside, a senior director of community based services for Miami Catholic Charities said she arrived at the “ground zero” site the afternoon the collapse.

“I have worked hurricanes, but nothing like this: It is just a look of sadness you see on everyone’s face. It is heartbreaking,” said Jackie Carrion, who said her agency is making temporary Catholic Charities housing and material assistance available following the catastrophe.

She told the Florida Catholic, Miami’s archdiocesan newspaper, the reunification center was buzzing with law enforcement, other charities and emergency response agencies, local religious chaplains including a Catholic pastor from Miami Beach, and distressed relatives and other people seeking updates on the situation.

The Surfside township north of Miami Beach is popular with a vibrant mix of South Americans, tourists, Orthodox Jews, Russians and others.

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Catholic agency offers help after 'heartbreaking' collapse of building - Catholic News Service