Indian family among people missing after building collapse in US

According to media reports on Monday, an Indian-American couple and their one-year-old child are among the more than 150 people still missing after part of a 12-story residential building in Florida collapsed on Thursday. Since shortly after 55 of the 136 flats in the building collapsed, search and rescue crews have been scouring the area. It has been confirmed that nine persons have been killed.

Vishal Patel, 42, his wife Bhavna Patel, 38, and their 1-year-old daughter Aishani Patel are among the missing. Bhavna Patel is four months pregnant.

‘I had actually called them to tell them I had just booked a flight to come to visit because they’ve been asking me to come to see their home and to meet their daughter. I haven’t met her due to the pandemic,’ a family member said on Friday. They were home at the time the collapse took place, she said. ‘We have tried calling them countless times and there’s just been no answers, text messages, nothing. They haven’t contacted anybody,’ they added. Bhavna is a British and US citizen, the British media reported.

A state of emergency has been declared by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The number of people unaccounted for is 159, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told reporters Friday — up from the figure of 99 that officials gave Thursday afternoon.

Those 159 people ‘have been identified as possibly being on the site. So those are people that maybe live there, but we don’t know whether they were there at the time,’ the mayor said at a news conference on Friday afternoon in Surfside. Numerous search and rescue personnel have been scouring the rubble, including from the surface, with search dogs, sonar, and cameras.

Structural experts have also been shoring up additional locations beneath the rubble, such as those near a parking garage, to allow crews to tunnel underneath with light machinery. With affluent families from Argentina, Paraguay, and Colombia, as well as a close-knit Jewish community, the building’s tenants mirrored South Florida’s ethnic and cultural mix.