Miami firefighters risk lives in flooded underground garage amid revelations collapsed condo was sinking for years

Firefighters searching a collapsed Miami-area condo for 99 missing people shifted their focus to a basement parking structure late Thursday, risking their lives to find survivors amid revelations the building was sinking into the earth.

Video from Miami-Dade Fire Rescue posted on Twitter showed the firefighters wading in knee-high water and using a drill to tunnel under the mountain of rubble.

They carried out the dangerous and delicate work with the desperate hope they might have better luck finding people trapped deep in the unstable debris than they did near the surface.

As rescue crews searched for life, others hunted for answers as to how the 12-story building suddenly collapsed. Many turned their attention to a 2020 study conducted by FIU Institute of Environment Professor Shimon Wdowinski.

The study found that the building had been sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters per year back in the 1990′s.

Indeed, the doomed property was “the one place on the east side of the barrier island” where the movement was specifically confirmed between 1993 to 1999, according to a posting on FIU’s website.

Wdowinski spoke out about his research in the aftermath of the building disaster Thursday, saying the sinking, formally called subsidence, likely would not have caused such a catastrophic collapse all by itself.

“We’re very shocked about it,” Wdowinski said in a video addressing the tragedy on FIU’s website.

But he said the cumulative effect of decades of subsidence could be sizable and present engineering challenges.

Rescue workers look through the rubble where a wing of a 12-story beachfront condo building collapsed, Thursday, June 24, 2021, in the Surfside area of Miami. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) (Lynne Sladky/)

Officials said Thursday the cause of the building collapse remained under investigation.

Experts said it could easily take several months or more to determine a likely cause.

A view of a building is shown after a partial collapse, Thursday, June 24, 2021, in Surfside, Fla. A wing of a 12-story beachfront condo building collapsed with a roar in a town outside Miami early Thursday, trapping residents in rubble and twisted metal. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) (Wilfredo Lee/)

As of late Thursday, the focus at the scene remained rescuing as many survivors as possible, officials said.

“Our firefighters, men and women, are working around-the-clock,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Danielle Levin Cava said at an evening press conference.

“They are proceeding with all of their might,” she said. “They are so motivated to bring people out safely and restore them to their loved ones.”